Facilitating creative writing (story writing) in English using concrete materials

Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Master of Education (M. Ed.)

Department

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

Abstract

Creative writing, being an imaginary task, goes hand in hand with imagination; whereas imagination requires some means to be triggered in the first place. Thus, this case study research in the qualitative paradigm, with a strong belief in multimodality, tries to see how three dimensional concrete materials can be utilised in triggering imagination to develop imaginary stories – one genre under creative writing. With special reference to the National Curriculum for English Language 2006, Grade 6 classroom of a community-based school in Chitral, a rural context of Pakistan, served as a single entity for exploration into the phenomenon of using concrete materials as triggers to inspire creative writing. Analyses of data collected through interviews with the English teacher, focus group discussion with Grade 6 students, observations and collaborative action plan show that concrete materials do have the potential to motivate, inspire and provide raw material to activate the imagination and thus facilitate story writing. The study also finds out certain conditions which play a significant role in the process such as relaxation for the use of students’ native language to compensate for their lack of proficiency in English, treating grammatical and other linguistic errors as learning steps, teacher’s scaffolding assistance and existence of student-centred teaching.

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