Literacy and Literature: Developing Narrative Creative Skills through Creative Writing

Abstract

In the narrative theory Freytag, summing up the Aristotelian theory of typical plot, speaks of a pyramid with these elements: Exposition, Inciting Incident, Rising Action, Climax, the Crisis, the Falling Action, the Resolution and the End. According to this theoretical frame we present “the Narrators”. The purpose of this research was to embrace narrative skills applying the Freytag’s pyramid in the narrative texts. Twenty-four children, aged 8-9 years old, were asked to read 6 texts from their school text book and 1 book and at first to identify these basic structural elements of the plot and secondly to write their own stories, emphasizing the climax of the action in the academic year 2018-2019 at a Greek primary public school in Athens. The significance of this research based on two facts: it is compatible with the philosophy that governs the New Curriculum for the lesson of Literature and secondly the need to describe the dual meaning of the Creative writing as it implies the ability to control and master creative thoughts, converting them into writing, but incorporates, in its broad meaning, and all the various educational practices and techniques aimed at in the acquisition of literary skills. The results from the observation showed that children, to varying degrees, learned to recognize the structure of the text and with critical and creative thinking improved their own writing, giving focus on interesting climaxes of their stories.

Keywords: literacy, creative writing, narrative skills, literature, teaching

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/13-11-02

Publication date: April 30^th 2022