Creative Writing Workshop by Ms Nurleena Hassan

Reported by ELC

      The Creative Writing Competition has been the school’s annual event which promotes creativity and inculcates the love of writing among students. To enable students to recognise the elements needed to produce a piece of creative writing as well as provide an opportunity for them to learn and apply effective creative writing skills, the English Language Centre successfully invited Ms Nurleena Hassan to conduct a creative writing workshop at ELC on 16 April 2016. Ms Nurleena has a Bachelor’s Degree in TESL and is currently pursuing her Master’s in English at OUM. She has vast experience in conducting training courses such as Academic Writing and Professional Writing.

      Ms Nurleena began the workshop by asking the students whether they understood what creative writing was and whether they had written one. She explained that creative writing is primarily built on imagination and it is the fine art of making things up. Poetry, fiction and plays are the examples of creative writing. With the discussion about different genres of movie, Ms Nurleena pointed out that imagination of the writers is the key which determines if a movie is interesting as writing takes place in a movie production.

      Following the brief introduction, Ms Nurleena discussed the elements of creative writing with students, including character, point of view, plot, setting, dialogue, style, theme and motive. Throughout the workshop, students were fully engaged and enlightened by Ms Nurleena’s sense of humour as she knew very well how to attract students’ attention by sharing her real-life experiences. She also commented that nowadays writing posts and statuses on social media sites replace diaries and blogs but it works as people read. Such writing with less than 100 words is seen as flash fiction and it fits the generation today. On the other hand, students were encouraged to build their own styles as they were allowed to write however they wanted in creative writing.

      During the second-half of the session, Ms Nurleena indicated the problems students may encounter in creative writing and suggested the coping strategies. To be a creative writer, students were advised to let go as we live in a structured and systematic society and we tend to be bound by the norm. Thus, the most essential element to improve creative writing skills is to practise. She then listed out the common mistakes that students should avoid, especially plagiarising. Students were also reminded  to develop their vocabulary and avoid using too many adverbs and adjectives. Lastly, Ms Nurleena shared some tips on how to be a creative writer.  

      Before the session ended, students did an activity called Writing Cycles. They were divided into groups to write according to the prompt given. Each student had to write the story within the time allocated and pass the story to the next person in the group to continue the story based on their imagination. With everyone’s ideas put together, students were able to produce a piece of work in a short period of time. After collecting their writing, Ms Nurleena read a few pieces to the participants. Everyone was amazed by how the stories were developed into interesting plots because of the different styles presented by different writers. At the end of the workshop, Ms Nurleena gave her email address to the students and encouraged them to share their writing with her in the future. The students also received a certificate of participation and left the workshop with satisfaction. 

Thai Nien En (S3 Toronto)

       I enjoyed the workshop very much as Ms Nurleena was a very humorous and professional trainer. She changed her tone and created sound effects when talking to us. Other than that, she made me realise that writing could be very interesting and  more creative when written by two people.

Ong Xin Yee (S3 Toronto)

     

       I was very happy to participate in this workshop as Ms Nurleena made the lesson very interesting with her sense of humour. I learned that there is a wide range of approaches in creative writing and it really opened my eye.

Tan Jia An  (J2 Chicago)

       I felt very lucky because I could learn how to write an essay creatively from Ms Nurleena. She was an interesting trainer because she conducted the workshop in a fun way.  Besides, she also encouraged us to read more books such as novels and newspapers so that we can enrich our writing content and improve our writing skills. I hope to have another chance to participate in a similar workshop in the near future. 

Choo Jie Ming (J1 Canberra)

       From the workshop, I learnt a lot of new things about writing. It helps me a lot when I write an essay in the future. I will definitely introduce this workshop to my friends and I would like to attend more workshops next time.