ASSESSMENT OF CREATIVE WRITING: STUDY CONDUCTED AT SOUTH EAST EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Writing as a productive skill is very important integral part in the language learning process. However, writing is not considered as an easy skill by the students and it is certainly considered a difficult skill to teach by many English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers. ‗Creative writing normally refers to the production of texts which have an aesthetic rather than a purely informative, instrumental or pragmatic purpose‘ (Maley, 2019, p.2).The teaching and evaluation of creativity depend on how teachers understand ‗creativity‘, how creative they are, and the environment that enables to apply creative methods in teaching. Creative writing in ESL classes has started developing lately but only to be incorporated as a supportive skill in teaching writing. Responding to students‘ writing is an important issue to discuss when considering teaching creative writing. Response is a process that includes peer review, peer editing and continuous feedback through the stages of creative writing. By giving a constructive feedback, the teacher understands writer‘s problems and intentions by also making students responsible for finding and analyzing what needs to be improved. Teachers of English need to make judgments and arguing that we cannot evaluate creative writing are an excuse that indicates the students that no piece of work is more creative than any other. For them the problem does not lie on what to ask the students to write about, but the problem is on motivating them to write creative pieces of writing texts. The teachers have to establish standards for evaluating and distinguish between efforts that reproduce sound organization, comprehensible opinion, capability to unite perceptions and persuasive arguments, and those who do not, or do it in a lesser degree. The English teachers have to develop criteria by which they can evaluate the quality of creative writing. The standards and expectations from the ESL students should not be very high, as they are in their native language, because the teachers‘ disappointment is inevitable in that case. May (2017, p.8) points out that ‗the criteria set for evaluating writing depend on the purpose one wants to achieve‘. Since the main purpose of creative writing is to achieve creativity in language, its assessment should focus on such features. Nevertheless, in most of the cases, teachers focus on correctness of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, punctuation and spelling.
This paper aims to investigate the criteria that creativity is measured by the teachers in the Department of English Language and Literature at the South East European University in Tetovo, North Macedonia. It will also examine challenges in designing valid and reliable instruments that will contribute to avoid any kind of subjectivism in evaluating creativity. This research will give insights into some interesting points that need to be taken into account in writing instructions.