The effect of creative writing on students’ writing processes and text quality
Submitted by:
Anouk ten Peze
Abstract:
Although creativity is one of the ‘21st century skills’, creative writing is no longer part of the secondary school curriculum in the Netherlands. Students are seldomly required to write fictional, imaginative or expressive texts, as opposed to expository texts. Instead, only functional writing and some academic genres (essay, argumentation) are being taught. However, instruction in creative writing might be an effective way to improve secondary school students' writing skills. A meta-analyse by Graham et al. (2012) shows four studies in which the quality of the texts improved if students received instruction in creativity. Most studies were undertaken in primary schools and focused on poetry writing.
Writing process research shows that students’ distribution of cognitive activities during the writing process influences the quality of their text (Rijlaarsdam et al., 2005). This research focuses on argumentative writing. However, for creative writing we know far less about the relation between the writing process and the quality of the resulting text.
In this study we examine whether adolescent students distribute sub processes of their writing process (e.g. planning, formulating, revising) differently when writing creative texts compared to expository texts. Twenty-one students (aged 15-18, 11th-12th grade) wrote 4 expository and 4 creative texts. Students' writing processes were recorded using a keystroke logging program and by making screen recordings. We expect a difference between the organization of the sub processes when students write creative tasks compared to expository tasks. We also assume that differences in the quality of the creative stories are a result of the different ways students organize the sub processes of the creative writing process. The data analysis is in progress and will be finished before the spring of 2017.
Keywords: Writing process, creative writing, secondary education
References
Rijlaarsdam, G. Braaksma, M., Couzijn, M., Janssen, T., Kieft, M., Broekkamp, H., & Van den Bergh, H. (2005). Psychology and the teaching of writing in 8000 and some words. In P. Tomlinson, J. Dockrell & P. Winne (Eds.), Pedagogy–Teaching for Learning. British Journal of Educational Psychology Monograph Series II, 3 (pp. 127-153). Leicester: The British Psychological Society. doi; 10.1348/000709905X62156
Graham, S., McKeown, D., Kiuhara, S., & Harris, K. R. (2012). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for students in the elementary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 879-896. doi: 10.1037/a0029185