Experimenting with language through creative writing tasks

This article reports a small-scale study that explores ways of using creative writing tasks to address learners’ motivational and anxiety challenges in English writing. The study adopts an action research design (Burns, 2010) with cycles of reflection, planning, implementation, evaluative reflection, and analysis. The study was conducted for one semester with 41 students of low intermediate level of English proficiency participating in the research. The data was gathered through the researcher’s classroom observation, learners’ writing products, and lesson plan reflections and evaluations. The result of the study shows that 1) learners are able to produce personal and meaningful short creative texts; 2) creative writing tasks encourage learners to be a self-directed and autonomous English learner; 3) creative writing tasks allow learners to experiment with their current vocabulary knowledge and produce linguistic creativity; and 4) creative writing tasks expand their lexeme and senses knowledge