Ghadah Benitez, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA

Chamcharatsri, B., & Iida, A. (Eds.). (2022). International perspectives on creative writing in second language education: Supporting language learners' proficiency, identity, and creative expression. Routledge.

In this volume edited by Chamcharatsri and Iida (2022), International perspectives on creative writing in second language education: Supporting language learners' proficiency, identity, and creative expression, the authors provide insights into how creative writing can advance a learner’s language proficiency through the expression of emotions and identity when writing autobiographies, scriptwriting, poetry, and narratives. In each chapter, a variety of authors contribute their theoretical, practical, and methodological approaches to how creative writing can advance a learners language proficiency in the context of secondary and post-secondary levels. A total of nine chapters are separated into two parts. Part 1 consists of four chapters from scholars who draw on research that outlines theoretical viewpoints and the potential of promoting language proficiency through creative writing. Part 2 consists of five additional chapters from practitioners who draw on first-hand experience of topics related to the practice of creative writing in English language education.

In Chapter 1, Canagarajah starts by explaining how writing taught in academic settings is focused on structure and form that are tied to higher education and professions. He goes on to argue that creative writing provides spaces and voices to students and explains the significance of how this can transfer to multiple genres and texts across disciplines and social situations. In Chapter 2,Canagarajah views creative writing through the lens of the translanguaging approach and points out that when learning a language, the student brings the whole self, such as their language repertoire, cognition, social and emotional to the learning process. Creative writing becomes the conduit of that expression.

In Chapter 3, Bailey and Bizzarro use a reflective action research approach that investigates how poetry writing can serve as a bridge to academic discourse for English Language Learners. It suggests that engaging students to express their experiences through poetry helps strengthen academic writing. In Chapter 4, Buripakdi and Thongwichit investigate English courses in Thailand and found the focus is on grammar-translation method. This form of teaching takes on the societal reflection of its authoritative structure where the children obey their elders. Students’ perceptions showed they often dread taking writing courses because of the rigorous expectations of accuracy and rules dependent upon native speaking standards.

Part 2 of the volume begins with Chapter 5. In this chapter, Nicholes describes the different values (therapeutic, motivational, language learning) tied to creative writing and how this type of writing is meaningful to students. He shows that fiction writing pedagogy has the power to help a student’s second language where students reconstruct the past as well as create imagined futures for the self. In Chapter 6, Zhao outlines an approach to using screenwriting as a medium for language learning in a Chinese University. The findings describe how those students became aware of character archetypes, social phenomena, created effective phrasing, and finally writing their own scripts integrating their own L1 cultural knowledge.

In Chapter 7, Liao uses a case study of a graduate science student’s use of poetic autoethnography to understand the basics of the research process. This study demonstrated the usefulness of autoethnography to help develop this student’s metalinguistic awareness and motivation. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss assessing creative writing which is an unexplored field in TESOL. In chapter 8, Lida discusses the issues of assessing English poems written by Japanese students. He applied an autoethnography to reflect of those assessments and developed rubrics he has used over the years in his teaching. In Chapter 9, Lam describes a case study which occurs in the context of an L2 writing class in Hong Kong. It provides information on practices and proves to note that E-Portfolios are a trustworthy process in assessing students’ gains through formative feedback and summative assessments.

The authors writing for this collection provide helpful insights for examining how creative writing advances a student’s language proficiency through the expression of emotions and identity development. Each author ties their findings of how creative writing can improve upon academic writing. Practitioners will find helpful resources in this book such as examples of how to implement creative writing practice in the classroom as well as research to aid in professional development. These strengths come with some shortcomings such as, most of the studies done were individual case studies that provide more generalized discussions and results. One aspect that may be missing from this collection is the perspective of students who may provide helpful insights into pedagogical practices in the classroom. Despite this minor criticism, I still highly recommend this book for those who are practitioners in secondary and post-secondary EFL and ESL classrooms. It gives great insights into the benefits of implementing creative writing to help students develop their English skills.