Educational Research (ISSN: 2141-5161) Vol. 2(11) pp. 1667-1675 November 2011
Available online@ http://www.interesjournals.org/ER
Copyright © 2011 International Research Journals
Full Length Research paper
Impacts of new teaching methods to promote selfexpressive writing for elementary school students: A
case study on the impacts of before-writing activities
Ji Won Lee
Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies, KOREA Seocho-4-dong 1685-3, Acrovista #A-1505, Seoul, South Korea.
E-mail: ginny624@gmail.com; Tel. 82-2-594-0418.
Accepted 04 November, 2011
Writing education in elementary schools in Korea tends to emphasize the use of literary devices and
figurative languages, while depriving children of the chance to freely express themselves. As a solution
to this problem, this study presents ‘self-expressive writing,’ a form of writing that aims at expressing
oneself focusing on the experiences and thoughts within one’s life. As a volunteer at Sae-soop
Children’s Center, located in an underprivileged town in Seoul, I taught sixteen elementary students
how to write poems and short essays, resulting in 174 pieces of work. This study compares the student
writings from the first and second period with those from the third period, the only period that focused
on self-expressive writing. During the third period, I implemented five classroom activities—redefining a
‘good’ writing, reading peers’ writings, ‘new experience,’ ‘re-experiencing,’ and ‘unraveling thoughts’—
before students began writing. The last three activities were creatively designed to help students vividly
remember their past experiences or elicit innermost thoughts. The result shows that before applying
these activities as in the first and second period, writings were limited in topics, lacked completeness,
and contained vague expressions. In comparison, the student writings during the third period were
much more candid, unique, and specific. This study contains detailed analysis of the effects of these
five before-writing activities.
Keywords: Self-expressive writing, elementary school, writing education, before-writing activity, free expression,
classroom activities.
INTRODUCTION
Britton, et al (1975) distinguishes three functions of
writing; (Recited from H. Lee’s A Study on the Content of
Expressive Writing Education, page 9-16. The author
cited ‘The development of writing abilities’ by Britton,
Burgess, Martin, MeLeod, and Rosen (1975). Although
the original work uses the term “expressive writing,” this
paper will use the term “self-expressive writing,” with no
difference in meaning, just to clarify what the term
implies.) the first is 'transactional writing,' which presents
information or persuades others, and the second is
'poetic writing,' which emphasizes the structure,
composition, rhyme, and rhythm of the language, itself.
These two forms of writing are easily found in today's
established education curriculum in Korea. The third
function, 'self-expressive writing,’ comes in between
those two, and H. Lee (2009) defined it as a form of
writing that 'focuses on self-understanding by expressing
the subject’s life, and the experiences, feelings, and
thoughts that exist within that life.' O-duk Lee, an
influential writing educator in Korea, observed that one of
the objectives of teaching how to write is to let students
"write freely about whatever they want to say" (Lee, 2009).
He said self-expression can make both the body and
mind of a child healthy, and that writing is one of the best
means of self-expression. In a way, it is obvious that a
child's writing should reflect his of her life, thoughts,
interests and feelings.
However, in elementary schools today in Korea, the
focus of writing education is not on the child doing the
writing, but rather on the end-product. Also, the topic of
1668 Educ. Res.
writing is often chosen by the instructor instead of the
child. When evaluating the written work, the emphasis is
placed on how literary the work is, or even how much the
work is similar to a standard, model response. Therefore,
instead of expressing themselves freely and plainly,
children are forced to write in a way that conforms to the
standards of the evaluator, such as having peculiar
sentence structure, using expressions commonly found in
poems for children, and having moral lessons or
epiphanies. In such circumstances, self-expressive
writing can serve as a great tool for children to freely
express themselves, as the writer becomes the sole
focus of the activity.
Rader (2011) suggests ways for teachers to improve
students’ self-concept by giving positive feedback and
praises. However, self-expressive writing is different from
self-concept oriented teaching in that it tries to induce
self-esteem not through external feedback but through an
internal discovery of the value of one’s life. There are
some studies on self-expressive writing, but they tended
to have applied self-expressive writing as something
close to 'a psychological therapy,' rather than using it
from the perspective of education. Thus, it is difficult to
find specific cases where self-expressive writing is used
as a form of education, at least in Korea. As such, this
study builds on my own experience as an instructor, and
aims to apply several forms of self-expressive writing and
evaluate their effects on students’ writing.
Specifically, this study focuses on the activities taking
place 'before' writing, not on the entire process of writing.
This is because the activities before writing determine
whether the children want to write, have topics to write
about, or are ready to write well. Especially for selfexpressive writing, the child must be able to recognize
what his or her interests are, or what he or she thinks the
most about. It is even more important that the child vividly
revives his or her experiences, thoughts, and feelings. In
fact, E. Lee (2003) pointed out that in order to deal with
the gap between the time of children's experience and
the time of writing, "there must be various methods to aid
recollection of memories before writing." (Eun Young LEE.
A Study on the Expressional Writer Oriented Writing
Education, 2003, page 44).
So this study aims to answer the two following
questions. First, what activities must take place before
writing in order to foster effective self-expressive writing
in classes for elementary students? Second, what are the
effects on the students' interest toward writing and the
quality of their works as they participate in self-expressive
writing activities? In order to answer these questions, I
analyzed 174 pieces of poems and short essays written
by sixteen students at Sae-soop local children center in
Shilim, Seoul, where I taught writing during three vacation
periods.
In sum, the objective of the study is first to define the
meaning of self-expressive writing and evaluate its
effects based on the observations made while teaching
writing to elementary school students, and second, to
emphasize the importance of several 'pre-writing
classroom activities' which I have designed for myself in
making self-expressive writing effective and to investigate
the effects of each of these activities.
In what follows, section 2 provides a brief discussion of
the literature, and section 3 discusses the research
methodologies. Section 4 is the main section presenting
the results of the analysis of the effects of various prewriting activities. Section 5 concludes the paper with
summary and concluding remarks.
The Literature
In Korea, there has not been much research on the
education of self-expressive writing. Until this point,
studies on self-expressive writing have focused on using
it for psychological therapy, and the research from an
educational perspective on self-expressive writing is in its
early stages (Yeo, 2010). There are a few studies
including the following three.
H. Lee (2009) clearly defined the concept of 'expressive
writing,' and presented ways to develop educational
contents based on this definition. She especially
emphasized that expressive writing has an aspect of
narrative education as it allows the writer to reflect on and
reconstruct his or her own life, and she further argued
that the writer can re-understand and rediscover him or
herself through this process. However, she failed to
mention specific ways to teach expressive writing, or the
genres of writing that are applicable to it.
Yeo (2010) followed the steps of Oh (2009) to present
specific plans for instruction using expressive writing. He
conducted his research by teaching 31 high school
students, and his study shows that expressive writing
induces positive changes to students' writing ability,
motivation, and attitude. However, the education
programs developed by Yeo overemphasize 'selfreflection,' thus deviating from the original meaning of
expressive writing. The topics that he used for writing
activities such as 'things I like,' 'self-interview,' or 'stream
of consciousness writing' requires abstract thinking rather
than recollection of concrete experience. In other words,
there is a lack of emphasis on extracting specific
experiences from the writer's life.
Although E. Lee (2003) did not use the term 'expressive
writing' in her research, she based her research on a
nearly equivalent concept of 'writing focused on the
subject of expression.' She focused mainly on diary-style
writing of high school students and highlighted the
meaning of self-expression based on personal
experience. Especially, she explained 'observation,'
'recollection,' and 'maintaining distance' as the principals
of generating contents for such writing, and presented
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Table 1. Statistics on subjects by time period of research
period 1 (Jan-Feb 2010)
period 2 (Jul-Aug 2010)
period 3 (Jan-Feb 2011)
Grade 1-3
grade 4-6
Grade 1-3
grade 4-6
Grade 1-3
grade 4-6
7 students
5 students
9 students
4 students
7 students
3 students
Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female Male Female
3
4
3
2
3
6
3
1
3
4
2
1
Table 2: Contents and characteristics of classes by period>
period
Number
of classes
1
13
2
6
3
10
Contents of classes
Characteristics
Various forms of writing (diary-style, fictional story,
news article, poem). Mainly used games creatively
designed to help students think of topics
Appreciating and writing poems.
First listening to a children's poem written by an
adult or a poem written by a similarly-aged peer
and then writing one on a similar topic.
Focused mostly on activities that induce creative
expression rather than writing on personal life and
experience
Activities to vividly recollect personal experiences
and feelings, followed by prose or poem writing.
what must be done before writing to result in a vivid piece
of writing based on experience. This bares relevance to
the topic of this study, 'pre-writing activities.' Yet, the
study by E. Lee neither presented specific education
programs nor discussed the effects of such education.
To summarize, there were very few studies that
presented realistic and specific methods for instruction.
Thus, this study aims to present specific methods for
instruction and analyze their effectiveness.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Subjects and time period of research
The subjects of study were 2nd to 6th grade elementary
school students of local children center in Shilim, Seoul
(as of 2011). Although most of the students consistently
participated in the writing program, because the classes
were conducted over three vacation periods, the students
that participated in the program were not all the same
throughout the three periods. The table 1 above
summarizes the information of participating students.
Instead of examining how each student changed as a
result of self-expressive writing, this study aims to look at
the effects of each class. So not having the same exact
group of students participating in each class does not
have material impact on the study. Also, when there is a
need to analyze how an individual student changed, this
study will use data collected from the students who
Had irregular attendance by students and had only
short time period.
Instructor chose the topic for poems.
Students were instructed to write about topics directly
related to their lives, on their own. Activities before
writing were designed to revive students' memories.
consistently participated in all three periods.
How the Experimental Teaching was Conducted in
Class
Classes were held over three time periods, and they were
structured as follows. There were no textbooks, and the
students simply followed along as I ran the class. The
students were also encouraged to finish their writing in
class, rather than by homework. A variety of cases on
teaching writing (refer to references) were modified and
used for classes, and I developed several new activities
as well.
As seen in table 2 above, how much each class
focused on self-expressive writing was different for each
period. Students in period one and two were instructed to
write on topics assigned by the instructor, instead of
focusing on the experiences and interests of the students
themselves. Systematic self-expressive writing instruction
took place mainly in period three. All the pre-writing
activities employed during this period were designed to
lead the students to effective writing by inducing them to
recollect their vivid experiences, thoughts and feelings.
The instructor only gave overall directions for choosing
topics, and the students themselves found what to write
about within their own lives. So by effectively comparing
and analyzing the contents and results of classes from
period one and two with those of class from period
three, this study will be able to arrive at a meaningful
1670 Educ. Res.
conclusion.
Data collection and method of analysis
1) Class observation log: After each class, I kept a log
detailing the class's atmosphere, students' responses,
and the effects of the class. This log was used to discern
the effectiveness of each class.
2) Products of students: The written works of students in
each class were compared with each other to discern the
effects and influences of each classroom activity.
3) Method of analysis: Instead of analyzing all the classes
from period one through three, this study will only analyze
the chosen works of students from classes that had
meaningful products. The analysis of each student's
written work will focus on the work's contents, structure,
composition, linkage with pre-writing activities, and how
much the student enjoyed those activities.
thoughts without developing them further. The activity of
truth-telling failed to motivate students to write thoroughly
and vividly.
Second, the contents of students' works were limited as
the instructor chose the topics for writing. Except for the
last five days of classes on diary-style and poetry writing,
the students were instructed to write about topics chosen
by the instructor, such as ‘a shameful experience,'
'thoughts after peeing a garlic in class,' 'if I were an
outcast,' or 'what happened at school.' O. Lee argued that
when guiding children to look for topics, they should be
instructed to "find what they want to say the most, what
they want to write the most about, and what they can
write with confidence." (Lee, O-duk. Writing Education for
Cultivating a Rich Life, page 71). Choosing specific
topics for students had the effect of limiting the contents
of their works before they even thought about what they
really wanted to write about.
2) Analysis of students’ writings
RESULTS
This section will first analyze the results of classes from
period one through three in order to compare periods one
and two, which did not entail self-expressive writing, with
period three which included lessons on self-expressive
writing. The results of this comparison will be compiled to
consider and examine the meaning and effectiveness of
self-expressive writing instruction.
Analysis of writings from period one
1) Limitations in the range of the topics of the
writings
In classes of period one, students received overall
lessons on fictional story, expository writing, poetry,
diary-style writing (where students write narratives based
on what happened), and many other forms of writing. In
order to arouse interest from participating students, the
classes utilized games widely known among elementary
students, such as the guessing game or the truth-telling
game where the chosen person has to tell a truth about a
difficult-to-tell subject. However, despite the level of fun,
the classes had limitations from an educational
perspective.
First, the activities conducted before writing could only
induce the students to simply list the answers to the
posed questions, instead of helping them revive their past
experiences. For example, when the class played the
truth-telling game on the topic of ‘a shameful experience,’
the students were able to think of few shameful moments
from the past. But when they were instructed to write a
prose based on those thoughts, they simply listed their
As a result of classes as described in 1) above, several
characteristics were found in the students' writings. First,
the students more often simply answered the given
question, as opposed to completing a piece of work. The
following are examples of students' writings from a class
on past shameful experience.
"I was ashamed because I forgot my line in a
Christmas Carol drama acting rehearsal. But I don't think
people noticed it." (Female, 4th grade)
"1. I spontaneously farted while watching the television.
2. I farted while having a meal and eating Kimchi.
3. I farted during an exam." (Male, 3rd grade)
Similar results came out from classes where students
had to explain their habits.
"I have several habits such as going up against my
brother, speaking like a baby, kicking off my covers while
sleeping, going up against parents, and writing
effortlessly." (female, 4th grade)
"I bite my fingernails. I peel off my lips because there
are peels even when I apply a lip-gloss. During classes, I
study with one hand while biting the nails on the
other."(male, 5th grade).
Second, there were multiple works of writing
merely based on facts without expressing the writer's
feelings or thoughts. For example, when instructed to
write a poem about what they saw and felt in a
playground, many students simply wrote what they saw
without mentioning their feelings, or wrote about generic
feelings that anyone can feel.
"It is refreshing to be on a swing / When I'm on a swing
/ There's a rush of cool breeze / It is refreshing to be on a
swing" ('Playing on a Swing,' male, 2nd grade). “There is
a pumping-seesaw in a playground, /There is a
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wheezing-swing in a playground, /There is a swash-slide
in a playground, /There is a circling-wheel of fortune,
/There is a ‘Yo-heave-ho’-overhead ladder in a
playground, /There is a giddy bean tree in a playground,
/Wow! Children are having such fun at a playground! /A
playground, where you are attracted, if you had already
played once there. /Let’s quit for today, and play again
next time…” ‘(‘What are at Playgrounds?' female, 5th
grade)
Or, as examples below, some students first simply wrote
what they experienced, and later added on simple
impressions at the end after the instructor encouraged
them to write their feelings in detail.
"I told my friend I'm not drinking milk because my
stomach hurts, but he told me to drink it anyway. So we
fought. I felt bad. My feelings were that I wanted to hit my
friend." (Male, 2nd grade)
"I took exams at school. The subjects were language and
math. They were easy. I was happy because I found out
that I got perfect scores on both exams. I felt like I was
flying." (Female, 3rd grade)
Analysis of the writings from period two
During classes from period two which lasted for six days,
either the instructor read to the class or the class read
together two to six children's poems on a topic that was
announced at the beginning of the class. Also, the
students were taken outside to write during the second
and fifth classes. We will analyze the classes from period
two focusing on these two facts.
1) The limitation of reading the children's verse as a
pre-writing activity
First, reading a children's verse or poem (written by adult
poets) when teaching how to write is a common activity in
Korean classes, and current elementary school
curriculum have students learn poetry by listening to
children's verse or poems written by established
poets.( For example, Looking at unit 8 of the Korean
nd
writing textbook for the first semester of 2 grade
(Korean Writing 2-1) and at the first and third sections of
Korean speaking, listening, writing textbooks of the first
semester of 5th grade (Korean Speaking, Listening,
Writing 5-1), we can see that they only allow students to
write a poem by making some changes to or copying the
existing poem in the textbook.)
H. C. Lee, who
conducted research built on the ideas of O. Lee, said that
"poems for children tend to be less interesting and
moving than the poems vividly written by children about
their lives." In fact, when classes were run based on
children poems, the students' poems characteristically
used expressions that greatly resembled established
children poems, instead of being truthful and creative.
The following is a poem titled 'Just' by a Korean poet
named Moon, Sam-suk, and we read it out loud during
class.
"Mom, / why do you like me? / -Just....
Then why do you like your mom? / -just..."
And the following poem ‘No' was written during the same
class period by a girl in the third grade.
“Do you want to play with me? / No // Do you want to
study with me? / No. // If you want to play with me, cry /
No // If you want to study with me, cry / No."
There is another example. The following is 'Blue Ocean,'
a well known children's poem by the poet Park, kyungjong.
“If you dip your hands into the green saltwater
If you dip your hands into the green saltwater,
they will be dyed sky-blue, and
become pretty green hands.
If you dip your feet into the green rapids in a river,
the wave will stroke your feet gently.
the wave will stroke your feet gently.”
Techniques like repetition of a whole sentence or phrase
are widely used in a children’s song. Next poem is ‘Rain’
written by a girl in the first grade. This poem shows a very
similar pattern of repetition (In Korean, the poems ‘Blue
Ocean’ and ‘Rain’ sound more similar than the Englishtranslated versions. For example, both poems use end
rhymes by ending every last word of a sentence with the
sound ‘yo,’ which is a common way of ending a sentence
in colloquial Korean).
“The sun does not come up today /It is a rainy day /It is
raining today /It is a rainy day /Earthworms are coming
out /It is a rainy day /Today, I am wearing rainy boots / It
is a rainy day.”
As seen from the two examples above, listening to
children's poems limits the students to write in a way that
resembles the children's poems' structure and overall
feeling. Such form of writing falls under 'poetic writing'
that I covered in the introduction. This is because such
writing focuses more on the rhythm and rhyme of
language itself than on freely expressing the writer's life
and experience. Such writing activities hinder free selfexpression because they limit each student's unique
expression and honest impression.
2) The limitations and effects of 'new experience'
activity
This section will analyze the effects of going outside and
writing a poem about what the students saw and felt,
which took place during the 2nd and 5th class of period
two. To be precise, this activity does not make the
students write about their daily lives, but instead makes
them write about an experience artificially created during
classes. Nonetheless, because this activity allows the
1672 Educ. Res.
students to choose their own topics and write their
thoughts and feelings about them, it arguably falls under
the category of 'self-expressive writing.' We will call such
activity 'new experience' activity, by which students go
through new experiences that induce them to write works
of self-expression. Several notable characteristics were
found in the works of students written after 'new
experience' activities.
First, many of the writings were about the nature,
although the topic for writing was not limited to objects
form nature. Of the 27 pieces written during the second
and fifth classes, 19 of them were on objects of nature
such as dewdrops, trees, cicadas, and rain. Although it
was much easier to spot cars, shops, and people since
the students made their observations in front of a
playground in an apartment complex, the students chose
to write their poems about nature. This seems to be
because the poems that the students are usually
exposed to are written about nature, and especially
because textbooks often use objects of nature in poems
or metaphors. Regarding this matter, O. Lee said that "in
general, textbooks have a certain disposition. In other
words, most of the poems are about appreciating the
sceneries of nature (Lee, O-duk. Writing Education for
Cultivating a Rich Life, page 78)." Such disposition is
not really fitting to modern day students that mostly live in
cities; it means that they are somehow forced to extract
their feelings by observing nature, which they usually are
not interested in.
However, the 'new experience' activity had the effects of
inducing the students to use expressions they would not
have been able to think of in class, by making them
observe and feel certain objects in detail. For example,
there were several poems that vividly expressed the
writer's feelings by personifying the object of observation:
“After raining, / the leaves are covered with water /If you
touch the leaf, it lets the water flow down /Pine needles
may be a hog /No matter how I touch it /It won’t let the
water go out.” (‘After raining’, female, 1st grade)
“On the leaves of grass /beads of dewdrops /stand up //
Grass gets thirsty, /and it beckons /dewdrops to come
//Dewdrops form on the blades of grass as though it has
been waiting for that.” (‘Dewdrops’, female, 1st grade)
“Morning passes by, /Relaxing for a while, people come
and play on a swing /I thought it could take a rest, but
/People come back to play on it again /A swing cannot
have a break time…” (‘Swing’, female, 3rd grade)
Therefore, using the 'new experience' activity to teach
writing has the effect of inducing creative thoughts and
expressions, although we must be careful not to limit the
students as they think about their topics.
Analysis of the writings from period three
In period three classes, writing instructions began to
really focus on 'self-expressive writing.' The classes did
not have any 'new experience' activity as in period two,
and there were a total of four pre-writing activities used to
induce self-expressive writing. This section will analyze
each activity's effects and limitations.
1) Effects of the activity of 'what is good writing?'
In the 'what is good writing?' activity, students compare
two works written by peers and evaluate which is a better
work of writing. Of the 13 classes conducted during
period three, the first was about learning what constitutes
a good prose, while the sixth was about learning what
constitutes a good poem.
To learn about the standards of a good prose, I
instructed the students to compare a male 4th grader's
‘Let's Love the Nature!' and a 5th grader's ‘True
Protection of Nature,' both of which were introduced in
the book of K. Lee (Introduced in Lee, Ga-ryeong’s
Writing Instruction That Revives a Dull Writing 1, pages
132 and 144, respectively). The former is rather a didactic
piece, very similar to the writing in ethics textbook in
Korea, advocating three things that must be done to
protect nature. The latter is an honest account of the
author's experience seeing adults who only argue that
nature must be protected but do not practice what they
say. So the former work does not include the students'
own ideas while what he writes is all morally correct. In
contrast, the latter work contains the students' own
thoughts though it may criticize adults.
Although the instructor emphasized repeatedly before
reading the two works that ' a good writing is an honest
writing,' half of the students thought the former was better.
This showed how distorted students' views toward writing
were. O Lee said children need freedom of expression
(Lee, O-duk. How to Teach Writing, page 24). However,
the current education on writing limits freedom of
expression by indirectly forcing students be 'nice and
kind,' living up to the expectations of adults, and
especially teachers. Therefore, by learning in class the
standards of good writing, the students need to be told
that a good work of writing contains honest thoughts of
the writer, even if that means criticizing adults or saying
something that may sound out-of-place. So this activity
serves the important role of challenging students'
preconceptions toward writing, and laying the foundation
for students to freely express themselves.
2) The effects of reading the works of peers
The activity that both O. Lee (2009) and H. Lee (2010)
suggested to motivate students to write was the activity of
exposing them to the written works of their peers. This
activity stands in contrast to the activity of reading
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children's poem, mentioned in period 2. The objective of
this activity is to have the students read the works by
their peers instead of those written by adults, so that they
will think they can write as well as their peers.
During classes, I read one to three pieces that were
introduced by H. Lee (2010) as models of good writing.
Although the classes from period three did not have
entertaining activities to arouse students, the overall
length and number of students' works increased during
the period, and it seems this activity was part of the
cause.
3) The Effects of the activity of 'unraveling thoughts’
The activities under the category of 'unraveling thoughts'
first lead the students to unravel various thoughts
regarding a general topic before writing, and then instruct
them to write about a specific one of their choice. These
activities help students figurate their ideas that may be
too abstract to think of even though they are a part of
their daily lives. The fundamental principle behind these
activities is similar to the activity of ‘brainstorming,’ which
Yusuf (2011) suggested as an effective pre-reading
activity, in that both allows learners considerable freedom
to bring their own prior knowledge and opinions. Yet the
activity of ‘unraveling thoughts’ utilizes more tangible
media, specifically explained below, to help students
concretize their thoughts.
The first specific activity in this category was the activity
of 'completing the family window,' which was conducted
on the sixth day. In this activity, the students first cut a
piece of white paper into four parts to resemble a window
that opens outward, and on the outside of the window,
the students write down the names of their family
members on each of the four sides. Then, inside the
window the students draw pictures that capture the
characteristics of each family member and write a short
description of those characteristics on the inner sides of
the four window parts. The students showed very active
participation in this activity, and they wrote specific
characteristics such as 'likes money,' 'hairs are thin as
mine,' and 'breaks the phone when very angry.' This
class in the end was effective; the students wrote
complete and honest poems as they were instructed to
freely write about one member of their family.
“When I disrupt my dad, he gets angry, and /he gets
home late, but I cannot. /He gets angry enough to break
his cell phone. /I think he is the strongest one in my
family.” (‘Anger,‘ male, 5th grade)
“I hate my mom. /Knowing that I do not like her kissing
me, /she kisses me even more often. /She gives all my
brothers pocket money, but /not to me. /Because /She
tries to kiss me. /When she kisses me, I vomit…/ and
then I cry, vomit, and cry again. /My mom is spiteful.” (‘A
th
spiteful mom,’ female, 4 grade)
The second activity was the 'complaint cell-phone
message' activity. In this activity, the students used six
cell-phone shaped papers to write text messages
expressing their discontents or requests. After completing
their text messages, they were then instructed to pick one
of the six and write one complete letter about their
discontents and requests. Although this activity was
designed to induce students to bring out regrets and
dissatisfactions about others that they could not easily tell,
the students tended to think lightly of such objective.
Some common messages used often were along the
lines of 'Let’s play more fun games in class' to the
instructor, or 'stop losing your temper' to their brothers or
sisters.
On the other hand, there were some students who
wrote earnest letters, such as asking a brother not to hit
his younger sister, or asking a friend who no longer
comes to the children center to come back. It is important
to encourage students to think deeply about their
thoughts in their daily lives in a serious atmosphere.
The third activity is ‘filling out brain structures for
worries.’ In this activity, students fill out a diagram of brain
structures with their current worries or troubles, a big
brain structure corresponding to a big worry. One
noticeable effect of this activity was that some students
who first said they did not have any worries eventually
wrote down their worries frankly. Thus, this activity helped
students know better about themselves by making them
realize what kind of concerns they had in their daily lives.
When writing, I asked students to choose their biggest
worry among those written down and then write a poem
about that specific topic. Many students wrote honestly
about their concerns, which may not seem that serious in
the view of adults.
“I /have /something I think about all day long. /I
rehearsed for a concert for 50 minutes, but /I am afraid /I
cannot not play well /on the concert. /However much I
practice /I make a mistake again and again, / I even ask
my hand, “Are you really my hand?” /But it does not say
anything /It does not even do at all what I ask it to do /It
does not play an important role at all /Practiced, but /I
make a mistake over and over /Even though I practiced
with a grand piano 10 times, /I make a mistake again /I
really do not want to do a concert.” (‘The piano concert,’
nd
female, 2 grade).
Even though the student who wrote the poem above
usually likes being praised by adults, she expressed her
feelings very honestly in this poem, by saying that she
does not want to do the concert because of her mistakes,
instead of a moral answer that she would keep trying her
best.
4) The Effects of the activity of ‘Re-experiencing’
‘Re-experiencing’ refers to a category of classroom
1674 Educ. Res.
activities that help students vividly recollect their past
experiences by posing again the gestures or facial
expressions they made then.
The first activity under ‘re-experiencing’ is the ‘Stopscene’ activity. This is a form of a play introduced in
‘Opening Language Class with an Educational Play
(‘Opening Language Class with an Educational Play’
defines ‘Stop scene’ as ‘a method of expressing a still
moment using the body with no movement.’ (National
Association of Elementary Korean Language Education,
page 20)).’ The instructor let students pick one
experience they want to write about and capture three
scenes that revealed well the process of the experience.
Then the students expressed each scene with their
bodies, without speaking or moving. Also the instructor
interviewed the students at the second stop-scene,
asking them what they are doing and how they are
feeling.
This activity indeed helped students vividly remember
their experience, but it was not effective in producing a
smooth writing afterwards. For example, some students
simply explained each scene in separate, unnatural
sentences as such: “The first scene is…, The second
scene is….” Thus, this activity was effective in arousing
students’ interests, but did not lead to a good writing.
The second activity of ‘re-experiencing’ is ‘making
faces.’ In this activity, students make facial expressions of
their happiest, saddest, or angriest moments. Since there
was no limit on the kind of emotion they could express,
students could write various amusing poems as the
following.
“I get some pocket money from my uncle without telling
my mother. /I feel like I am accused of stealing. /But this
money I get secretly /makes my heart beat fast. /I wish I
could feel this again.” (A male, 6th grade)
“I get some pocket money and go to a PC room. /
There I met my friend Han-Gil. /He went to a PC room as
well, but he told on me to our taekwondo master. /On my
forehead rises anger. /My anger bursts to the point I want
th
to hit him bad.” (A male, 6 grade).
The last activity of ‘Re-experiencing’ is ‘Writing a
conversation (The concept of writing down a conversation
was brought from Lee, Ho-cheol’s discussion of ‘vividly
reviving by writing something exactly as you heard.’ (A
Living Writing, 2010, page 133)) through puppet play”
(‘Opening Language Class with an Educational Play’
defines ‘puppet show’ as ‘a form of drama art in which
puppets or dolls instead of people appear on stage and
act.’ (National Association of Elementary Korean
Language Education, page 42)). This is an activity where
students do an impromptu puppet play, reproducing a
part of a conversation they have heard or been involved
in, in order to translate that conversation into a piece of
writing. Even though the writing was restricted to a form
of conversation, students creatively thought of various
topics like conversation during a soccer game, with his
mother when getting pocket money to go to a PC room,
and when her friend was late because of herself. The
writings themselves were also very vivid that readers
could easily imagine the situations.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS
By analyzing the results of three periods of classes, this
paper has investigated which classroom activities and to
what extent they induced effective self-expressive writing
in revealing students’ unique thoughts and feelings. The
main findings of this study can be summarized as follows.
During period 1, students showed a tendency of simply
answering to the question or writing mere facts without
their own impressions. During period 2, listening to
children’s poems written by adults limited the topics and
expressions of the students’ works. Yet the ‘new
experience’ activity induced creative expressions by
making students experience something new instantly
while they are writing.
Four activities were conducted before actual writing
during period 3. The activity ‘what is a good writing?’
helped students break their stereotypes about a ‘good
writing’ and reestablished the standard of a good writing
as an honest and vivid writing. The activity of reading
peers’ writings gave students the motivation to write well,
and consequently improved the length and content of
their work.
The activity ‘unraveling thoughts’ improved the
completeness of the students’ writings and helped
students recall their inner thoughts and concerns that
they did not realize they had. The last activity, ‘reexperiencing,’ helped students vividly remember their
past experiences, but did not necessarily result in a
smooth writing.
A comparison of the three different periods of classes
revealed that student works written during period 3 were
not only more complete but also more frank and unique.
In addition, those were written based on students’
specific experiences and impressions, rather than
abstract thoughts. This leaves many implications for
today’s writing education in Korea focused on techniques
and figures of speech. Writing instructions should no
longer require from students writings that are similar to
those of adults, or only ‘morally correct’ writings. Students
are better to be encouraged to write freely about topics of
their own choice, at least in writing classes. Only then
they would be able to freely express themselves through
the medium of writing.
The limitations of this study are as follows. First,
because the case was on sixteen students educated in a
special environment of children’s center, there may be
some limits to how much the result can be generalized.
Second, since the writing classes were divided into three
discontinuous periods (Jan-Feb 2010, July-Aug 2010,
Lee 1675
and Jan-Feb 2011), any changes happened to the
students in between the periods may have acted as
external factors.
I hope that this research will provide the start for
developments of a more effective teaching method for
self-expressive writing, and that those will ultimately be
applied in more educational fields. Today many students,
especially those in Korea, do not have the chance to
express themselves as much as they want because of
their excessive pressure on tests and other school
requirements. Through self-expressive writing they would
be better able to experience a more pleasing writing.
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