Reading of short stories as a tool for the development of the writing process

Abstract

My point of departure for this inquiry project was the assumption that my participants, who are at their initial stage of literacy process in English as a Foreign language (EFL), would benefit from reading short stories, in order for them to enhance the writing process. This study describes how second graders read the world by means of using short stories in an EFL classroom at Colegio Mayor de Nuestra Señora Del Rosario-Arrayanes. It is a private school located in Bogotá, Colombia. Children who participated in this research were from seven to eight years old. They provided information through writing samples, conferences and field notes. This information was used to answer my research question. In this research, students show how the use of short stories can be used for connecting and relating the real world they live in, their feelings, past experiences and thoughts with their writing process. Lomax (1983) shows how short stories have the carefully planned intention to catch children s attention and then to take them by the hand and lead them to experience a world which exists only in imagination. In this research, children related not only the reading itself with their imagination, but they also made connections with their real and previous experiences. In fact, reading short stories was a creative and useful implementation of reading for involving children in the writing process. Rosenblatt (1989) considers that intentional reading and writing enable learners to build up their own past experiences. I am convinced that children are more interested in learning something new when they are able to connect their own experiences with the new information.