Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives about Teaching Creative Writing at University Level: Case of Third- Year EFL Students at M’sila University

Abstract

This study investigates the teachers and learners’ opinions about teaching creative writing in the department of English at M'sila university , the participants of this study are 60 students randomly selected from third-year level , and 5 teachers of written expression module. To achieve the aims of this descriptive research, a mixed-method was used where data were collected qualitatively through teachers' interview and quantitatively through students ' questionnaire. The findings obtained from the interview indicate that EFL teachers do not integrate creative writing in classroom, although they support the idea of including it in written expression module. Whereas the results from the questionnaire reveal that students face obstacles when writing creatively either linguistically ( organizing ideas , grammar , and choosing vocabularies ) , or psychologically (internal fears when having a writing task). The results of the study show that third-year EFL students' and teachers' perspectives are positive toward teaching creative writing and they believe that it is beneficial for English learning. Based on thiese findings, we recommand teaching creative writing either as a separate or integrated skill to increase learning motivation and develop writing among university EFL students.