THE PRACTICE OF CREATIVE WRITING FOR BUILDING PHILOLOGY STUDENTS’ RESILIENCE

Abstract

The article analyses the creative writing practice as an instrument for building the resilience of philology students, namely, future translators. The paper outlines the meaning of the term “resilience” as the ability to “bounce back” from negative life experiences, deal with stress, recover from traumatic experiences, and continue growing and learning. It is stated that resilience includes metacognitive adaptation, sociability, optimism, perseverance, and communicative efficacy. In terms of the recent pandemic and especially the war in Ukraine, this skill acquires even more importance and necessity to be developed in the young people who will have to regain confidence and strength in order to rebuild our country. The author emphasizes that one of the effective ways of building resilience in students is creative writing. This practice helps students become more self-confident, raises their self-awareness, the ability to study and deal with traumatic events and negative life experiences, to process the accumulated stress, and fosters their motivation and engagement. Creative writing also helps equip students to deal with the real world, quickly adapt to changes and accept them as a part of life by “playing” different possible scenarios of events in their heads. By writing personal stories, students are able to make sense of their thoughts and emotions, as their written personal stories help building a sense of self. The stages of the creative writing process are described, which include preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The author also provides examples of creative writing activities that vary depending upon the size and difficulty, can take different time, be differentiated according to the level of students, and used for a full-scale or warm-up activity. These activities can be effective in using during the foreign language teaching and learning to build students’ resilience and develop their psychological and emotional well-being. The complex effect of creative writing practice both inside and outside the classroom can greatly contribute to building students’ resilience and provide them with a self-regulation tool they can use in their future lives.