Paper short abstract:

This paper acts as a report of a Creative Writing Workshop conducted at a university in Italy with five japanese language learners at an intermediate to advanced level, with a particular focus on its effectiveness seen through a language education perspective.

Paper long abstract:

From November to December 2022, a workshop focused on the creation of stories applying one or more methods of expanded transcription, sequential transcription, and revision transcription was conducted at a university in Italy with five japanese language learners at an intermediate to advanced level in four sessions of 90 minutes each. The text used as teaching material was “Shiroi inu” by Atouda Takashi (approximately 2300 words long, low intermediate level).

The workshop was carried out as follows:

First session: reading of “Shiroi inu” and assessment of reading comprehension using the “Story structure review sheet”;

Second session: planning out the story using one or more methods of expanded transcription, sequential transcription, and revision transcription. The "Story structure creation sheet", similar in format to the "Story structure review sheet" was used for planning the story;

Third session: writing the story (min 500 words);

Fourth session: class review and comment of everyone’s stories.

In the workshop, the expanded transcription, the sequential transcription, and the revised transcription were introduced together, and it was left up to the participants to decide which one to use. In addition, we did not correct grammatical errors as the creation of a story and enjoyment of others' stories were prioritized. The extent to which grammatical accuracy is required for conveying stories is an issue for the future.

To verify the effectiveness of the workshop and its methodology, we analyzed the stories written by the learners, their comments on the stories of others, and the post-workshop questionnaire.

The five learners were not all interested in writing stories from the beginning, but they all enjoyed writing them and were motivated to write more by the end of the workshop.

The contents of the stories varied from person to person, and everyone seemed to be able to freely expand their imagination. In addition, the students challenged themselves to use new expressions by utilizing dictionaries and other resources. It was also apparent that the workshop motivated them to read novels and other works of fiction in the future.