CW AND SLA · Creative writing as a tool in second language acquisition
FP7 — People (Marie Curie Actions)
- Duration
- 2009-01-01 → 2012-06-30
- EU contribution
- €25,200
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MC-IRSES
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Creative writing as a tool in second language acquisition
This project has produced a corpus of texts in English by native speakers, advanced learners with Polish as first language and advanced learners with Arabic as first language. The texts were produced by comparable teaching methods and constitute an invaluable tool for analysing the distinction between culture and native language as factors in errors by near native speakers of English as a second language. In addition, the corpus illustrates the value of creative writing as a tool in teaching ESL, showing how students can be freed from expectations of register and teacher guidance to experiment with writing. This gives them the opportunity to try new vocabulary, but it also gives teachers the opportunity to accurately diagnose problems which are not always visible in standard exercises. The project involved secondments of specialists in creative writing and linguistics to universities in the UK, Tunisia and Poland. Linguists observed creative writing teaching methods and then identified ways they could be used in their own countries as a tool in SLA. They also collaborated on ways of producing comparable texts by students from all three countries which could be compared in a corpus. The patterns of variation revealed the differing roles of culture and first language in producing the texts.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
This programme will investigate the effectiveness of creative writing as a tool for SLA (second language acquisition) teaching in different cultures and linguistic contexts, using the test cultures of Tunisia and Poland. There are five objectives: to advance current knowledge of effective SLA teaching in different linguistic and cultural contexts; to improve SLA teaching at the Jagiellonian University and the Institut Supérieur des Sciences Humaines de Tunis (ISSHT), enabling curriculum reform in the ISSHT as Tunisia expands its SLA provision, and allowing for greater integration between linguistics and literature in SLA teaching; to raise awareness of creative writing teaching methodology at Strathclyde University; to build the base for future research in SLA by creating a corpus of comparable texts written by Polish learners, Tunisian learners and native speakers; to encourage future cooperation between the partner countries and universities. The scheme involves visits by experts in SLA from the Jagiellonian and experts in teaching creative writing from Strathclyde to the ISSHT in order to transmit specific methods of creative writing teaching and to allow for cooperation between Tunisian and Polish linguists over standardised creative writing tasks which will be suitable for inclusion in an SLA corpus. The later stages of the scheme involve visits by SLA experts from the ISSHT in Tunis to the Jagiellonian and then to Strathclyde to analyse data and share findings respectively.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITY OF STRATHCLYDE · GlasgowCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union