This article aims to highlight and defend the benefits of creative writing assessment in higher education language modules. While the latter traditionally prefer essay-like assignments over creative ones, creative writing allows learners to develop a great variety of academic and personal skills, such as intercultural awareness, cooperation, problem-solving, engagement with literary texts and self-expression. Specifically, this article analyses a written assignment that was given in a post-A-level French module at a British University based on the French playwright Jean Tardieu’s short comedy Un geste pour un autre. Learners received the beginning of this absurdist play and needed to complete it, while also incorporating three lines from the original play into their texts. The task invited them to demonstrate their understanding of theatrical conventions, engagement with the original extract, ability to write a coherent text, language skills (grammar, syntax, vocabulary, register), linguistic innovation, imagination and problem-solving. In addition to exploring the strategies used by learners to cope with the task, this paper highlights the challenges encountered by evaluators to mark creative writing assignments, notably the lack of suitable assessment criteria in their institutions. It also examines students’ reception to such an unusual language assignment and offers some suggestions about how to better implement creative activities in the language curriculum.
Citation
Crahay, G. (2024). The benefits and challenges of creative writing assessment in French: Un geste pour un autre by Jean Tardieu. Enhancing Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 1, 5-20. https://doi.org/10.62512/etlhe.3
Journal Article Type
Article
Acceptance Date
Jan 29, 2024
Online Publication Date
Feb 29, 2024
Publication Date
Apr 22, 2024
Deposit Date
Apr 22, 2024
Publicly Available Date
Apr 22, 2024
Journal
Enhancing Teaching and Learning in Higher Education
