Paper short abstract:

This study examines how learners' creativity in the form of "language play" relates to their narrative writings. Through analyzing JSL learners' writings, this study also demonstrates the use of their creative writing skills as well as certain characteristics in the construction of their stories.

Paper long abstract:

Creativity has been seen as a peripheral and less important aspect of L2 study, since many influential approaches to L2 teaching contain a belief that learners first need to master the language structure accurately before using the language creatively (V. Cook, 2000). However, in the past few decades, creativity has become one of the concepts that researchers have been investigating to see how it could be fostered in language education (Carter, 1994) as in the theory of "language play" (G. Cook, 1997). Studies show that "language play" can be a marker of language proficiency, that more advanced participants use their L2 linguistic resources in more creative ways (Bell, 2009).

In this study, I examine L2 learners' narrative writings, in which creativity seems the most relevant than in other writing genres; fifty stories of personal experience on the theme "Strange but True Stories" that were written by learners of Japanese in an advanced Japanese composition class at a Japanese university. The goals of this study are to identify 1) what characteristics are seen in learners' writing of personal experiences, and 2) what role creativity plays in these stories. To gain objective insights in answering these questions, the learners' stories were read and evaluated by five native-Japanese speakers.

The data analysis shows some of the characteristic writing devices learners use in their writing of personal experiences. For example, learners often used reported speech for the characters of their stories. It could be said that in this way they used creative writing skills to construct stories on a more personal level for the sake of communication. The analysis also shows that most of the learners' stories had a punch line at the end, but it was always stated from their present situation, or out of the story timeline. Native-Japanese speakers who read the learners' stories had no trouble in getting the point of the stories, since they also tend to include a punch line at the end of a story, but within the storyline. These findings have pedagogical implications for the teaching of L2 writing, especially in conjunction with learners' creativity.