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Hind Alzahrani

Page history last edited by Hind Alzahrani 8 years, 5 months ago

Harris, J. (1971). What Writers Advise on the Teaching of Creative Writing. The English Journal, 60(3), 345-345. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/812939.

 

Summary of the Article

      In his article, “What Writers Advise on the Teaching of Creative Writing”, Harris provides readers with a number of quotes from well known creative writers, which are followed by his further explanation. The provided quotes are targeted to creative writing teachers who may consider some of those quotes are pieces of advice for their teaching. However, before providing those quotes, he indicates that he asked those writers how they would teach creative writing to a high school English class. So as any experienced people would, they replied that the teaching cannot be done. Some of those writers’ arguments are as follows. They argued that creative writing teachers have to teach their students the use of the language with giving an emphasis on grammatical rules that they use in their writing. They also argued that students must get response on their paper form audience not a tired teacher. In addition to that they argued that students should have the same teacher for at least two years in order to improve their creative writing skills. Furthermore, they argued that teachers should assigned writing tasks that ask students to write about topic that are meaningful to them and they are related to their personal life. Also, they claim that students should have the option to select the topic of their writing task.

 

Assessment of the Work

      Harris’s article seems to have three target audiences: creative writing researchers, creative writing teachers, and students who are interested in teaching creative writing. For all audience his attention is clearly focused on giving creative writing teachers some of popular writers’ point of views on teaching creative writing. I think the article is informative and interesting. The language that she uses in her article is clear, and coherent.  However, it not well organized. I do not like the outline that the author uses to develop his paper. He does not use headings to organize his paper, neither does he introduce or conclude his paper. Overall, I like the content of the paper and I got engaged in the writers’ arguments about teaching creative writing.

 

Key Quotation

Harris (1971) said that “I asked them how they would teach creative writing to a high school English class. (And they responded as any experienced and/or insightful person would: the teaching can't be done.)” (p. 345).

 

Annotated by: Hind Alzahrani (2015)

 

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Maginnis, M. (1996). Methods of Teaching Creative Writing in High School: A Review of Recent Literature.

 

Summary of the Article 

          In his article, “Methods of Teaching Creative Writing in High School: A Review of Recent Literature”, Maginnis provides readers with an overview about the content and research methodology of twenty-five articles dedicated to creative writing written since 1988. He organized the presentation of these twenty-five article in five different themes. They are 1) definitions of creativity; (2) theoretical aspects of teaching creative writing; (3) specific teaching methods; (4) journal writing to discuss literature; and (5) how to plan a visiting author's program. He indicates that Eighteen of the articles were located in journals and seven articles were found in ERIC Document Reproduction Service. The article examines the existing qualitative research on impacts of preconceptions which an individual brings to creative writing as an author or as an audience, dichotomy between objectivity and subjectivity, methods of tempering the barometer of judgment to impact creative writing in positive ways, and some practical methods to teaching creative writing in the classroom.

 

Assessment of the Work 

     Maginnis’s article seems to have three target audiences: creative writing researchers, creative writing teachers, and students who are interested in teaching creative writing. For all audience his attention is clearly focused on providing creative writing teachers an overview about the existing qualitative research arguments and philosophy. I think the article is interesting and well organized in terms of using the subheadings and the sections. However, he does not give enough information about the article that he reviewed. He just provides readers with brief and short description about the studies that he surveyed. I was looking for more informative and explicit information about the methods that can creative writing teachers use to enrich their creative writing classes.

  

Key Quotation  

“Marlow Ediger (1992) contends in "The Pupil and Poetry" that students are able to improve their vocabulary development by developing an appreciation for poetry. He notes that an understanding of poetry develops in pace with progress in other school subjects.” Said Maginns (1996). 

 

Annotated by: Hind Alzahrani (2015)

 

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