Paper short abstract:

Sharing one's experiences and thoughts, for self and social awareness are the core of FLE. Creative Writing may be a complementary tool for those who are not always able or willing to engage in self-disclosure. imagination and creativity are essential to agency too, and strongly needed in FLE.

Paper long abstract:

In Japanese classrooms, there are activities that involve sharing one's experiences and thoughts with others, deepening understanding through dialogue, and connecting it to writing.

For example, Kawaguchi's (2011) 'personalised' composition is based on the idea that the essence of language learning is to share what is true and important to oneself and to actively and voluntarily participate in interaction with others.

Hosokawa et al.'s integrated activity-based Japanese language classes are also activities in which students delve into and deepen the 'themes' that are important to them through dialogue, in other words, they deepen their thinking through mutual self-disclosure and self-expression with their dialogue partners, and finally, through preparing logic and writing reports, etc., they aim to become aware of their position and values within society.

Deepening mutual understanding through self-disclosure and engaging in discussions to contemplate one's role in society undoubtedly has a positive impact on Japanese language acquisition and fosters growth as a language user. However, learners may not always be able or willing to engage in self-disclosure. They may possess aspects of themselves that they cannot or do not wish to disclose.

In the integrated activity-based Japanese class conducted by the presenter in the 2022 academic year, there were students who concluded that they could not or did not want to talk about their own themes. In such cases, there is potential for expression through entrusting one's thoughts to narratives, in other words, by depicting a possible world, a desired world, or even an undesired world. While integrated activity-based Japanese classes deepen the themes within oneself alongside others and contemplate the relationship with oneself within the real world, creative writing, which creates stories through imagination, can be said to create a world outside of oneself.

In this presentation, I argue that imagination and creativity are essential elements of human socialization and also lead to agency in society (the ability to set goals, reflect, and take responsible action to bring about change). I assert that they are also demanded in foreign language education.