Students in one of our advanced English classes were allowed to swap English for their own languages – for one lesson only – when they enjoyed a creative writing session, thanks to a project called World Writes.
Mymona Bibi, Workshop Facilitator with World Writes, which is a New Writing North project, came along to one of the Tuesday classes run by Action Foundation.
Mymona handed around inspirational photographs of different parts of the world to spark the students’ imaginations and asked them to consider five questions:
Why are you going to this place?
Who are you going with?
What is your journey like?
What can you see, hear, smell, touch and taste?
The students were encouraged to write in any language except English in order to express themselves more authentically and without fear of judgement or misunderstanding. Then several learners took the brave step of standing up and reading their writing out loud in their chosen language.
Sandia from Hong Kong was the first to present whilst the whole class, most of them non-Mandarin speakers, listened intently. Kirash, a Farsi speaker was also amongst those willing to share their scribblings.
Everyone enjoyed listening to the confidently articulated stories, even if they didn’t understand the words, and their writing was greeted with enthusiastic applause.
There was a sense in which something even more powerful than meaning was being shared. Certainly, there seemed to be a collective appreciation of the richness and varying rhythms of all these different languages from around the world.
Hilary Elder, a volunteer ESOL teacher with Action Foundation, who is herself a writer, joined in the writing task alongside her students, but instead of English, she opted to write in French, to get a feel for how difficult it is to truly express yourself in a language other than your own.
“I chose the easiest language to do for me (apart from English) which is French, but it was really hard because I had forgotten words,” she told her students afterwards.
“I understand now more about how frustrating and difficult it can be for students when I ask them to make language in English. I hope that this experience will help students be more confident, and me to be more understanding.”
Mymona told the class: “Now you are in the UK you are always trying to express something. Hilary asks you to write, and you have to really think.
“I wanted to make this a little bit easier for you, to write in your own language and to build your confidence with writing and expressing yourself. If you practise writing a little bit in your language, then writing becomes easier.”
Hilary added: “To write in your own language reminds you that yes, you can write and perhaps that will give you a bit more courage to write in English too.”
World Writes is a multilingual creative writing group for people aged 16 and above who are non-native English speakers. It is part of New Writing North’s West End Writes programme. Run by Mymona, members are encouraged and supported to think and write creatively, whilst developing their existing English language skills and enjoying multilingualism. English speakers of all levels are encouraged to express themselves in their home languages and to explore the creative possibilities of connecting different native languages and English.
How to join the workshops
If you would like to take part in World Writes, here are the details:
Time and date: 11am-1pm, every Monday during term time
Venue: John Marley Centre, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE15 6TT
Price: Free (support to cover travel expenses is available).
New Writing North is also looking for English Speakers of Other Languages based anywhere in the world for an online multilingual exchange project. The details are here:
Multilingual Creative Exchange project.
Open call: World Writes multilingual creative exchange – New Writing North
