Poetry Writing for Children

Abstract

This textbook targets a class of seven-year-old Korean EFL students with a mixture of 2-Emerging and 3-Developing levels according to the WIDA scale. They started learning English at the age of five in a private English institute. They have studied English with a native speaker teacher for half the time and a Korean-English speaking teacher for the other half of the time five days a week. Most of the classes in school were taught on the basis of the theme-based approach consequently providing the students with a massive amount of vocabulary related to various topics. All classes were taught in English requiring the students to use at least one or a combination of more than one of the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. As a result, the children were able to develop a balance of all four language skills. However, the curriculum of the school focuses on explicit teaching, accuracy over fluency, and workbooks which have either correct or incorrect answers. Children are given very few chances to express themselves which is a barrier to developing their creativity. Creativity plays an important role in “problem-solving and other cognitive abilities, healthy social and emotional well-being, and scholastic and adult success” (Plucker, Beghetto, & Dow, 2004). Teachers of young children should help students develop their creativity. Furthermore, the accuracy which all the writing classes were focusing on were both boring and burdensome for the young students. The target students need to spend more of their energy to develop their creativity, and reduce anxiety as well as enjoy writing in English.