When it comes to creative writing, or writing in general, most teachers complain that it is very difficult to motivate students for activities directed primarily to this skill. Even when students realise they have to write once in a while, the final products are often below some expected standard.
The Internet offers many possibilities for the practice of writing skills. Not all of them may be considered appropriate for the predicted objective and outcome planned either by the syllabus or the particular writing activity. The problem is that even if there are ready-made tools, they either look like Word, or are based on a particular content, which does not fit the content of the class.
A writing tool I find interesting and appropriate for the purpose of pracitising creative writing at tertiary level, is Printing Press. This is a very simple tool and it may be used in various ways as it offers the possibility of creating newspaper articles, flyers, signs, posters and brochures. Each of these forms is supported by a ready-made template and each template offers several different layouts. This would be an excellent tool to use in an ESP context where students could be motivated to produce pieces of creative writing based on the content covered in class.
It is a well-know fact that the content to be covered in an ESP course would never win the most-interesting-thing-to-study award. Be it as it may, the content has to be covered. What is more, the content has to be studied well enough and be produced at a new level so that the teacher has something to evaluate and assess. Teachers involved in ESP know very well how painstaking and frustrating is is when the students a) do not understand the content in the amount expected of them and b) when they do not know how to complete a writing assignment based on that content!
Printing Press seems to offer quite a nice deviation from the routine. For instance, if students are bored with the usual writing tasks in their textbooks, they might, for instance, be motivated to start a quasi-journal of their own, with proofreaders and editors included. One of the options available in Printing Press is the creation of a brochure, which would be quite suitable for the purpose of a brochure or journal format as the several layouts and templates offered in the tool may be used with that end. What is most important is that as long as work is in progress, the brochure (or other type of document) can be saved as a draft and forwarded to different recipients or saved on one's own computer. The separate documents once created can be saved and reentered when needed. Students can work on it in their own time and the teacher may still have insight into their writing and even direct and correct them if necessary. When the final version of the brochure has been completed, it can be emailed to the authors as a Pdf.
Let's take a demanding text covered in a tertiary English for medical purposes course. A text that could occur in a text book might be something like this one - Pulmonary edema. The text covers several different subtopics related to the main topic, diffusion, circulation, compensation and treatment. Each of these subtopics is loaded with information and vocabulary that might prove problematic in an essay. Assuming the teacher wants the students to write a summary of what they have learned from the text, the students could be directed to Printing Press and choose a brochure as their template. If they do so, they will have a front and a back side available to be filled with text and images. The teacher might suggest that each of the predicted columns available on each side of the brochure could be filled with one of the topics from the text and have the students work either in pairs or individually. They could each (or in pairs) be assigned to summarise one of the subtopics mentioned in the text. If there are more students, more different brochures can be created. Once completed, the document can be emailed as a Pdf to all the other students and the teacher.
A follow-up exercise could be peer assessment in the sense that the brochures are shared with other students and groups who may then assume the roles of proofreaders and editors and evaluate each others' writings.
