Engaging Learners with Literacy Through a Creative Writing Programme in Rural South Africa

Abstract

Since 2008, the South African Department of Education has put greateremphasis on literacy as part of the ‘Foundations for Learning’ campaign,encouraging children to read authentic texts and engage in the writingprocess. This study interrogates the implementation of a creative writingprogramme in a rural South African primary school. Situated in theframework of action research, this project examines the work of Grade 5 and6 students both quantitatively and qualitatively in order to determine theimpact of the project on student writing. It was found that the programmeimproved student writing, especially in the areas of creativity, developingtext, and writing a cohesive text, and fostered a culture of writing. Theprogramme was not effective in improving grammar, vocabulary, spelling,and punctuation and did not meet the needs of struggling writers. Itwas found that when learners have the opportunity to write, they utilizetheir background knowledge from other texts and media as well as theirexperiences, to create texts that are expressive and follow the conventionsof various genres.
Keywords: Literacy, creative writing programme, rural south Africanprimary school.