Essential or Optional? Effects of Creative Writing on Expository Skills and Attitude in Middle School Students
Faculty Mentor(s)
Dr. Brian Stipp
Project Type
Honors Program project
Scholarship Domain(s)
Scholarship of Discovery, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Presentation Type
Presentation
Abstract
Presentation Location: Warming House, Olivet Nazarene University
Abstract
Creative writing's effectiveness has not been clearly established through research, especially in regards to expository writing skills. However, other benefits of creative writing have been shown such as emotional benefits and general writing improvement. This study was conducted with two groups of middle school students. One group received ten creative writing interventions over a month and the other group continued with normal instruction. The goal was to discover if these interventions would improve students' expository writing skills as well as their attitude towards and confidence in writing. Surprisingly, while the experimental group did not improve significantly in either area, the control group did. However, breaking down the essay scores into categories shows that the results could have been affected by the rubric that was used. Overall, the study showed that more research is necessary in order to determine what type of creative writing intervention is most effective.
Permission Type
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Essential or Optional? Effects of Creative Writing on Expository Skills and Attitude in Middle School Students
Other
Presentation Location: Warming House, Olivet Nazarene University
Abstract
Creative writing's effectiveness has not been clearly established through research, especially in regards to expository writing skills. However, other benefits of creative writing have been shown such as emotional benefits and general writing improvement. This study was conducted with two groups of middle school students. One group received ten creative writing interventions over a month and the other group continued with normal instruction. The goal was to discover if these interventions would improve students' expository writing skills as well as their attitude towards and confidence in writing. Surprisingly, while the experimental group did not improve significantly in either area, the control group did. However, breaking down the essay scores into categories shows that the results could have been affected by the rubric that was used. Overall, the study showed that more research is necessary in order to determine what type of creative writing intervention is most effective.