Abstract:

The article gives an insight into the peculiarities of building the creative writing competence through the National English Language Contest in Russia. The research findings are based on a prolific experience of the authors in coaching the National English Language contestants at Kazan Federal University and the Republican Olympic Centre for Gifted/ Talented Students, Kazan, Russian Federation.

The article summarizes the concept of ‘creative writing’, its objectives, role and significance in the foreign language study as well as the requirements for the Writing Model of the National English Language Contest and its assessment criteria. The research data collected with the help of traditional research methods of literature review, observation, product analysis and questionnaire allow the authors to come to a number of conclusions. The most valuable of them is that building the creative writing competence promotes the multi-sided development of the students’ personalities, background knowledge, abilities to evaluate, reflect and express their opinion alongside improving their language skills in all kinds of activities. Learning to write creatively enriches vocabulary and grammar skills as well as style and register. It allows students to successfully complete the traditional writing tasks: homework/ essay assignments; writing assessments; short and long answer questions; presentations; standardized exam practice (NRE, IELTS, FCE, CAE) as well as to deal with advanced forms of written communication required for the National English Language Contest: informal and formal letters of different types, reports, reviews, stories, notes, articles.

Based on the extensive long-term experience of the authors the creative writing competence is built by adopting Innovative Mind-sets via offering students real-life opportunities to practice writing in English, «FUN» but challenging activities and contests (essays, posters, round-tables, showcases). The authors reveal that among others the most efficient forms of promoting creative writing and building the writing competence are blogging, picture-, meme-, photo-, famous quote- and comic- based writing tasks provided the teachers determine the right choice of the writing topics.

The authors’ views are supported unreservedly by the results of the students’ opinion survey on popularity and efficiency of different creative writing forms and technologies to build the advanced writing competence and improve their competitive ability for National English Language Contest, as referred to in the article.

Keywords:

Student, Linguistics, foreign language, creative writing, competence, Russia.