Teaching Creative Writing
(Parallel Session 3: Room B, 15.00-15.50)

John Rippey, Associate Professor, Department of English, St. Margaret’s Junior College

Abstract

Creative writing find an excellent home in foreign language writing classes, where students demonstrate natural inclinations and aptitudes for written expression of this type, as well as enjoyment, and high levels of investment, and where teachers who are themselves interested in literature, if not necessarily writers themselves, can establish a facilitating continuum between their inner lives and their occupations. In this presentation, we outline an approach to teaching creative writing to learners of English as a foreign language in Japan.

The approach is an adaptation of the creative writing workshop, in which students first read and discuss examples, both professional and peer, of texts in a given genre (personal narrative, short story, dramatic dialogue, poetry, and so on), then work through drafts of their original work in the genre, receiving peer and teacher feedback along the way, and generating, over the course of a semester, a portfolio of writings. Examples will be provided of short literary readings, in various genres, which have demonstrated a consistent appeal to undergraduate learners and prompted them to written work of their own, along with examples of student written work. Ample time will be devoted to discussion and the sharing of similar or complementary approaches to the teaching of creative writing.

Biographical Data

While living and teaching English as a foreign language in Japan for over twenty years, John Rippey has managed to collect a good amount of literary reading material which has proved serviceable at secondary and undergraduate levels and for students across various concentrations and majors. For the past ten years or so, he has framed EFL writing skills classes, partly or wholly, as creative writing workshops. He is a native of the U.S. His personal literary love is poetry and he has published creative and critical work in that area.