Online Microfiction: Creative Writing and Motivation. A case study of Italian as a foreign language.

Abstract

The writing practice at school is often disliked by students and frequently teachers are faced with the dilemma of how to motivate their students to write. This may reside in the fact that teaching practices do not acknowledge that our writing habits have changed and students, outside of school, are autonomously motivated to engage in a series of online writing activities (i.e., posting on social media, blogging or writing email). In the digital context, creative writing is starting to change too and new genres, such as microfiction, have become popular. Given this, far too little attention has been given to the use and motivational impact of creative writing instructions in Foreign Language Learning that exploit the use of Social Media. Consequently, a case study was carried out in order to analyze the effect a creative writing activity on Facebook has on students in terms of motivation and attitude to practice writing in Italian as a foreign language. The research was conducted in a secondary school in Australia and it lasted three months. The participants were 29 high school students (aged 17-18) of Italian as a Foreign Language. Five creative writing prompts were designed for the study and the students were asked to write 150-word stories called “microfictions”. At the end of the creative writing activity, students reported enjoying writing microfictions on Facebook. Most of all, a key factor from this activity has been having an audience and receiving feedback from their classmates. As a result, students’ confidence and perception of their writing skill after the activity have improved.