Teaching expression to young learners

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It is heartening that a positive shift from quantity to quality is observed in our educational institutions. Some schools have started allocating space in their academic timetable to creative writing in the early classes. However, when things are done for the sake of things, the real objective is the first thing to disappear. It also entails the loss of time and talent.

Creativity pursued in one subject helps solve mysteries in other subjects as well, and the learning of a language serves purpose the best. At the embryonic stage, one's native or national language facilitates one to speak or write one's heart out. Possibility should be availed of at the early stages if a bilingualist teacher is ready to teach creative writing in the national as well as the second language.

Story-telling and paragraph writing in a native or national language removes the barriers to entry, providing a threshold effect for creative writing in English. It also helps students learn narrative or descriptive structure by default without being hogtied by grammar. Provided the sparse exposure to spoken English, we think first in the native or national language, then translate it into English. This thought pattern originates in the grammar translation method prevalent in our educational institutions.

In our part of the world, overemphasis on learning grammar holds back the starters from writing creatively. The main objective must be first to let students say or write whatever they think. Water flows only when the tap is turned on. Assignments of creative writing must arouse students' emotional engagement with the topic. Instead of saying, "Write ten lines on your pet", ask, "Why do you love your pet?" Students can write easily on palpable instead of abstract topics e.g., trees instead of honesty.

Another anomaly is that with low and poor input, high output is expected. Having vocabulary and a sense of syntax not enough to transform thoughts and feelings into words, students cringe for the fault not of their own. Arguably, without nurturing the habit of intensive and extensive reading, teaching creative writing is reduced to nothing but a Sisyphean task.

Story-telling and their enactment in classrooms have their own ineluctable importance in stirring the imagination and building a word bank for students. Story-telling, role-playing and dialogue provide students with contextual vocabulary and collocations when they pay attention to people's word choices in conversations. It will condition students to think in English, ushering in spontaneity in speaking and writing.

When students fail in turning out high output, teachers jump on downplaying the students' capabilities. Negative and demotivating remarks are real killers of creativity. A teacher must be a coach, not a critic. Teachers must also allow for unrecognised learning disorders. Creativity must be prioritised over correctness as too much correction kills confidence. After a creative writing session, students must feel much more confident and happier.

Creative writing should be creative. Special care must be taken in choosing the topics or props for the creative writing assignments. Students find it much easier to describe their daily routine, general events and festivals. Moreover, tasks like picture descriptions must require students to write in the present tenses. However, picture descriptions of fables like those of Aesop's require their writing in the past tense whose handling is a bit difficult for novice learners. The present tenses provide immediacy against the remoteness of the past whose perception eludes the young minds.

To calibrate the written creative tasks at the early stages proves the last nail in the coffin as it quantifies the skill of creative writing, equates self-expression to solving a mathematical problem and transforms a fun activity into a race for grades. Moreover, evaluation leads to perfectionism which may paralyse the young writers. As writing reflects one's personality, comparing one's work, triggered by the grading of tasks, with someone else's lowers one's self-esteem.