Creative Learning Through Practical Application: Starting from Literature

Students of foreign language courses are focused on acquiring knowledge, skills and experience to develop four aspects of language mastery: understanding, reading, writing and speaking a foreign language. Higher education institutions usually combine foreign language with literature courses which introduce learners to the wealth of literary works written in or translated into the particular language they are learning. Learners get familiarized with the social, cultural, historical or political contexts in which the works have been created, published or received. Through analyses of such works written in a foreign language students apply their linguistic knowledge as well as critical thinking and demonstrate their understanding and appreciation of literature. Educators can take another pathway to assist their students to come to deeper understanding of the works they are studying. They can encourage students to apply the knowledge based on lectures and analyses of literary works into creating something new, or to focus on the performance of the works studied. This paper will present several such activities in which students of English Language and Literature courses held at International University of Sarajevo demonstrated their abilities to apply the knowledge they gained in class and used their creativity to produce something new. The following activities will be described: A Picture Book Project, The Poetry Lab, The Reading Theatre and The Creative Writing Workshops. The final results of these projects, the students’ and the instructor’s evaluation and suggestions for other activities will conclude this presentation.
Keywords: A Picture Book Project, The Poetry Lab, The Reading Theatre, The Creative Writing Workshops