This paper describes a creative writing exercise referred as “One-line Provided" and its perceived benefits to English language learners. Students did this exercise as part of a contentbased English class that combined learning about Japanese literature and creative writing, namely haiku composition. Educators have extolled the benefits of creative writing in the classroom for decades. Gardner (1983) and Armstrong (1994) both praise the use of creative writing as a regular class activity that can and should be performed in all classes, regardless of subject content, for the benefit of students' overall individual learning experience. In recent years, foreign language education programs and applied linguistics programs throughout the world have been (re-) examimng the effects of creative writing activities with respect to L2 learning environments (Zhao, 2011 ). Such programs and researchers credit creative-writing with allowing L2 learners to find their own voice, display their own autonomy as learners, and become more active in producing language. With the goal of teaching English through creative writing, the author began teaching a university seminar course titled "journey to the Interior" to English language students. Throughout the semester, students read the master haiku-poet Matsuo Basho’s Oku no hosomichi in English translation.The book is a work of pre-modem Japanese prose travelwriting interspersed with haiku. Aside from the assigned reading and discussions about various aspects of the book, students also performed a series of poetry writing exercises using English, and gradually began to compose their own English haiku. The following is a description of a writing exercise called “One-line Provided" that the students performed, followed by examples of students’original writing resultiong from this exercise.
Ben Grafström (Tue,) studied this question.