My bi-lingual 13 year old nephew came around to get some help with English creative writing homework. The task was to produce a piece of writing that evoked strong memories of a place and the first part he was working on was around brainstorming ideas to do with the senses. He basically had to list words and phrases under sound, smell, taste etc.
I got him to put down his pen and sit down for a chat. I engaged him in a discussion around what he actually experienced in Fiji when he was there that he really enjoyed. He immediately launched into a vivid description of a shark diving event underwater in the ocean. He excitedly recalled the events with gestures and descriptions so that it was like watching a mini pantomime.
We then talked about how we could write about the event without writing the word shark, jellyfish and coral. He then came up with wonderful figurative language – “sly as a shadow”, “beady eyes following me” “rough as sandpaper”, blobs of jelly pumping like hearts, underwater flowers that bit my hand, ribbons of red dripped down (blood) and so on. His story started to take shape from “I saw a shark and touched some coral that made my hand bleed” to a vivid mosaic of underwater life that ended in suspense. Of course I was leveraging off his first language (Maori) which is very metaphorical and full of imagery!
It was quite thrilling to see a young learner get so excited about the writing of a story! While I got him to begin taking brief notes of our discussion, he paused and said, “Aunty, creative writing is like art – you just need to write your pictures on paper rather than draw them”. What a neat way to sum up an activity that he initially thought was quite simply going to be “stink”!
