Enhancing ESL Writing Creativity via a Literature Based Language Instruction

Abstract

The notions of success in learning writing in English is associated with self-expressions, the flow of ideas, outsider expectations, growing confidence and enjoyment of L2 academic writing. The most common problem that confronts teachers of a writing class does not lie so much on what to ask the students to write about; the difficulty is more on motivating the students to write interesting and effective materials or in other words, creative pieces of essays. What constitutes and contributes to language creativity in writing? This paper discusses the results of a quasi-experiment in which a literature – based language instruction was incorporated in an ESL writing class to evaluate the language creativity of students’ essays. Descriptive and inferential statistics show that a literature based language instruction can help students develop creativity in classroom writing.Key words:  literature based language instruction; creativity and language creativity