Creative Writing for Language, Content and Literacy Teaching

Abstract

This paper reports on pedagogies that promote language, content and literacy in English by stimulating learners' creativity. The starting point to promote creativity among learners was music and art. There seems to be a natural connection between music, language and thinking which suggests that incorporating musical experiences into daily instruction results in creative thinking. By being exposed to music and art, learners of different ages and from different language contexts developed visualization abilities and invented stories. According to many authors, stories are excellent vehicles for teaching and learning because they contain all the ingredients from which learners can benefit. The learners in this study moved from listening to music, to the word and sentence levels, to finally telling their stories in English, and the stories the learners created proved to be a vehicle for internalizing language and for literacy development. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]