ESCRIVARTE – From painting to writing: intertwined paths between arts. A creative writing experience in Portuguese Foreign Language

Abstract

According to Corredor Romero (2010), there is a tendency to think that, while learning a foreign language, students are more interested in speaking and understanding what people say than actually in writing. Apparently this is because it is more useful in everyday life. This belief made teachers respond to students’ urge and the idea that speaking was more important than writing came along with it. We decided to introduce some changes to the writing approach in Portuguese Foreign Language in order to fight this tendency. Therefore, we chose to privilege an aesthetic and playful perspective in language use. Our aim was to turn the classroom into a place that could overcome lethargic communication and could also pump out ideas that would benefit the development of both general and particular communicative language competences (Iglesias Casal, 2011). Art was chosen as a bridge for writing and this gave rise to ESCRIVARTE project. New didactic activities, adapted to the specific teaching and learning context of each participant institution, were proposed. The paintings of the Portuguese artist Rui Carruço boosted creative written productions. The relationship established between painting and writing stimulated ideas and emotions that contributed to increase motivation, and the use and acquisition of essential learning strategies for written competence. In this article, we intend to present and describe the project, as well as to share strategies, results, and inherent difficulties in the creative writing process, individual or collaborative writing, implemented in the project framework.