Appendices#B6D3

246 Pages·2014·4.17 MB·English

by  Pieter Oberholzer

APPENDICES

An Alternative Academic Creative Writing Pedagogy?
The Research and Development of Theorised Teaching Principles
and Processes for a B.A. Honours Degree in Creative Writing and
an M.A. Degree in the Teaching of Creative Writing

Pieter Oberholzer
0218420H
APPENDICES

Page

Appendix 1: Handbook Fiction Examples – Full Texts 1
Appendix 2: Handbook Fiction Examples – Excerpts 2
Appendix 3: Handbook Fiction Examples – References 3
Appendix 4: Quantitative Questionnaire 4
Appendix 5: Email Communication Extract 6
Appendix 6: Workshop Research Consent Form 7
Appendix 7: Student Profiles – Phase 1 2005 8
Appendix 8: Student Profiles – Group 1 Phase 1 2006 11
Appendix 9: Student Profiles – Group 2 Phase 1 2006 14
Appendix 10: Student Profiles – Phase 1 2007 17
Appendix 11: Student Workshop Attendance – 2005 to 2008 20
Appendix 12: Phase 1 Workshops 2005
Structure, Content and Teaching Materials 22
Appendix 13: Phase 1 Workshops 2007
Structure, Content and Teaching Materials 92
Appendix 14: Phase 2, Workshops 2007
Structure, Content and Teaching Materials 102
Appendix 15: Phase 2 Workshops 2008
Structure, Content and Teaching Materials 105
Appendix 16: Short Story Research Readings 145
Appendix 17: Writer Experiences 154
Appendix 18: Examples of Student Writing Responses 171
Appendix 19: Selected Sentences with Soul 190
Appendix 20: Selected Student Short Stories 198
Appendix 21: Student Writer and Writing Categories 238
Appendix 22: Student Text Feedback Examples 241
Appendix 1: Handbook Fiction Examples – Full Texts
Restricted to Short stories

149 Example short story texts

15 Janet Burroway Imaginative Writing

Specialist short story essay/anthologies account for ... The Art of the Short Story 64, On Writing Short Stories 18, 82 short story samples. Writing Fiction
Janet Burroway 27, Narrative Design Madison Smartt Bell 12 all contemporary American short story writers, Robert de Maria The College Handbook of
Creative Writing, 12 mixture contemporary American, traditional short story authors.

Most Popular Authors
Raymond Carver, 3 texts, five examples, 4 handbooks, “Cathedral” 3 exposures.
Anton Chekhov, 4 texts, five examples, 4 handbooks, “The Lady with the Pet Dog” 2 exposures.
Flannery O'Connor, 3 texts, 4 examples, 3 handbooks, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” 2 exposures.
Eudora Welty, 3 texts, 4 examples, 3 handbooks, “Why I Live at the PO” 2 exposures.
Guy de Maupassant, 3 examples, 3 handbooks, “The Necklace” 2 exposures.
William Faulkner, 3 examples, 2 handbooks, “A Rose for Emily” 2 exposures.
Katherine Mansfield, 3 examples, 2 handbooks, “Miss Brill” 2 exposures.
Joyce Carol Oates, 3 examples, 3 handbooks, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” 2 exposures.

Following authors have their texts used as examples twice:
Margaret Atwood, “Happy Endings”
James Baldwin – “Sonny’s Blues”
Charles Baxter – “Gryphon” and “Snow”
Kate Chopin, “The Storm” and “The Story of an Hour”
John Cheever, “The Swimmer”
Louise Erdrich – “Sister Godzilla” and “Saint Marie”
Nadine Gordimer “The Diamond Mine” and “A Company of Laughing Faces”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Birthmark” and “Young Goodman Brown”
Ha Jin “In the Kindergarten” and “Saboteur”
D.H. Lawrence, “The Rocking-Horse Winner” and “Odour of Chrysanthemums”
Tim O'Brien – “The Things They Carried”
Robert Olen Butler – “Hotel Tourine” and “Missing”
Edgar Allan Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”
James Joyce, “Araby” and “The Dead”

Contemporary American Authors – 58
American Authors Earlier Periods – 17
Academic degreed and or teaching – 37
Iowa Writers’ Workshop Graduates – 8
Pulitzer Award Winners – 8
National Book Award Winners – 4
Nobel Prize for Literature – 7

Non-American Authors – 20
English Authors – 4
Russian Authors – 3
French Authors – 3
1 each German, Canadian, New Zealander, Nigerian, Swedish, Argentinian, Colombian, Japanese, Irish, and South African
1
Appendix 2: Handbook Fiction Examples – Excerpts
10 Handbooks

481 Excerpt Examples

Most Popular Authors of Excerpt Examples
Raymond Carver, 23 excerpts, from 3 texts, in 4 handbooks, 20 excerpts from “Cathedral.”
Ernest Hemingway, 14 excerpts, from 10 texts, in 8 handbooks, 4 excerpts from “Hills Like White Elephants.”
Flannery O'Connor, 10 excerpts, from 6 texts, in 5 handbooks, 4 excerpts from “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”
James Joyce, 8 excerpts, from 4 texts, in 5 handbooks, 4 excerpts from Ulysses.
Charles Dickens, 8 excerpts, from 8 texts, in 4 handbooks.
Anton Chekov, 8 excerpts, from 5 texts, in 3 handbooks, 4 excerpts from “The Lady with the Dog.”
Margaret Atwood, 7 excerpts, from 7 texts, in 4 handbooks.
William Faulkner, 7 excerpts, from 5 texts, in 5 handbooks, 3 excerpts from “A Rose for Emily.”
John Cheever, 5 excerpts, from 5 texts, in 3 handbooks.
Stephen Crane, 5 excerpts, from 3 texts, in 1 handbook, 3 excerpts from “The Blue Hotel.”
Toni Morrison, 5 excerpts, from 4 texts, in 3 handbooks, 2 excerpts from Beloved.
Mark Twain, 5 excerpts, from 4 texts, in 4 handbooks, 3 excerpts from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Leo Tolstoy, 5 excerpts, from 4 texts, in 3 handbooks, 2 excerpts from The Death of Ivan Illich.

Following authors have had excerpts from their texts used 4 times in 3 or more different handbooks with most used text in brackets:
Edgar Allan Poe (“The Fall of the House of Usher”); Joyce Carol Oates (“Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”); Tim O'Brien (“The Things
They Carried”); Lorrie Moore (“People Like That Are the Only People Here”); Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One Hundred Years Of Solitude); Barbara
Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible); Charles Baxter (“Gryphon”); Mary Gaitskill (“The Girl on the Plane”); F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby); John
Updike.

Contemporary American Authors – 127
American Authors Earlier Periods – 17
Academic degreed and or teaching – 89
Iowa Writers’ Workshop Graduates – 19
Pulitzer Award Winners – 8
National Book Award Winners – 8
Nobel Prize for Literature – 10
Non-American Authors – 73
English Authors – 31
Russian Authors – 7
German Authors – 5
French Authors – 4
Irish Authors – 3
Japanese Authors – 3
Scottish Authors – 3
Canadian Authors – 2
Australian Authors – 2
Spanish Authors – 2
1 each: Colombian, Czechoslovakian, New Zealander, Danish, Greek, Italian, Polish, South African, Egyptian and Indian.
2
Appendix 3: Handbook Fiction Examples – References
References

618
16 handbooks

[16] Charles Dickens – David Copperfield (5), Bleak House (4), A Tale of Two Cities (2), A Christmas Carol (2), Great Expectations (1) Nicolas Nickleby (1)
and Our Mutual Friend (1).
(8 Handbooks)
[14] James Joyce – Ulysses (8), Portraits of the Artist as a Young Man (2), “The Dead” (2) and Finnegan’s Wake (2).
(7 Handbooks)
[14] Leo Tolstoy – Anne Karenina (5), “The Death of Ivan Illich” (3), War and Peace (2), Resurrection (2), Childhood (2)
(6 Handbooks)
[12] William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury (4), Absalom, Absalom! (4), “A Rose for Emily” (1), Requiem for a Nun (1), As I Lay DyingI (1) and Go
Down (1).
(10 Handbooks)
[12] Henry James – The Wings of the Dove (3), The Portrait of a Lady (2), The Turn of the Screw (2), Roderick Hudson (1), Daisy Miller (1), The Spoils of
Poynton (1), The Princess Casamassima (1) and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1).
(6 Handbooks)
[12] Franz Kafka – Metamorphosis (8), Amerika (1), “A Country Doctor” (1), “A Crossbreed” (1) and “A Judgment” (1).
(9 Handbooks)
[11] Ernest Hemingway – “Hills Like White Elephants” (3), For Whom The Bell Tolls (2) The Sun Also Arises (1), In Our Time (1), A Movable Feast (1), The
Old Man and the Sea (1), “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” (1) and “Clean, Well-Lighted Place” (1).
(9 Handbooks)
[11] Virginia Woolf – Mrs Dalloway (4), To the Lighthouse (2), “Kew Gardens” (2), A Room of One's Own (1), The Waves (1) and The Voyage Out (1).
(4 Handbooks)
[9] Margaret Atwood – Bodily Harm (2), Cat’s Eye (2), Alias Grace (1), Life Before Man (1), Surfacing (1), The Handmaid's Tale (1) and Murder In The Dark
(1).
(3 Handbooks)
[6] Anton Chekhov – “The Lady with the Dog” (4), “In the Ravine” (1) and “Ward Six” (1).
(4 Handbooks)
[6] Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness (4), The Nigger of the Narcissus (1) and Lord Jim (1).
(3 Handbooks)
[6] Fyodor Dostoyevski – Crime and Punishment (3), Notes From Underground (2) and The Brothers Karamazov (1).
(3 Handbooks)
[5] John Fowles – The French Lieutenant’s Woman (4) and The Magus (1).
(4 Handbooks)
[5] D. H. Lawrence The Fox (2), Sons and Lovers (1), The Rainbow (1) and “The Blind Man” (1).
(4 Handbooks)
[5] Herman Melville – Moby Dick (4) and The Confidence Man (1).
(5 Handbooks)
[5] Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita (5).
(5 Handbooks)
[5] Edgar Allan Poe – The Raven (1), “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1), “Ligeia” (1) and “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1).
(4 Handbooks)
[5] Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice (3), Sense and Sensibility (1) and Persuasion (1).
(2 Handbooks)

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Appendix 4: Quantitative Questionnaire

The Design and Development of an Undergraduate Creative Writing Programme
Research Questionnaire

Surname: ____________________________ First name(s): ____________________________________________

Student No: ____________________ Telephone No: _____________________ Cellphone No:______________________

Email Address: _______________________________

Field of Study (eg Psychology, Journalism, Dramatic Art): ______________________________________________________

Is English your first language? Yes No

Answer each of the following questions by putting a tick () in the ONE box,
which most accurately reflects your answer.

1. Based on your writing experiences during your final school year, how would you describe your
Creative Writing learning experience?

very negative negative average positive very positive

2. Based on your writing experiences during your final year at school, how would you rate your
level of interest in Creative Writing on a scale from 1 to 5 if 1 represents No Interest and 5
Very Interested?

No interest Very interested

1 2 3 4 5

3. Is Creative Writing an activity you have pursued for personal enjoyment, in your ‘free time’,
outside of the school’s formal requirements?

No Yes

4. If the University were to offer a Creative Writing module at undergraduate level, how would you
rate your level of interest in enrolling for that Creative Writing module, on a scale of 1 to 5 if 1
represents No Interest and 5 Very Interested?

No interest Very interested

1 2 3 4 5

5. If the University were to offer Creative Writing as a Major subject at undergraduate level, how
would you rate your level of interest in enrolling for that three-year Creative Writing
programme, on a scale of 1 to 5 if 1 represents No Interest and 5 Very Interested?

No interest Very interested

1 2 3 4 5
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6. If selected, would you be interested in participating in a series of extra-curricular creative
writing workshops during 2006?

No Undecided Yes

Consent Form

Project Title: The Design and Development of an Undergraduate
Creative Writing Programme.
Student: Pieter Oberholzer (0218420H).
Contact Details: 0829021825 [email protected]
Supervisor: Dr Pamela Nichols
Contact Details: 7174136 [email protected]
Degree: PhD
Research Sample: First-year English Literature students.
Purpose of the Study: The quantitative research component of the project is
aimed at identifying and tracking the level of student
interest in Creative Writing and selecting students to
participate in the second phase of the study (Creative
Writing Workshops) with the objective of identifying
student experiences of the teaching and learning of
Creative Writing, which will influence the design and
development of the undergraduate creative writing
modules and programme.
Benefits of the Study: The benefits of this study relate to the identification of
student Creative Writing needs and experiences as a
vital component of the design and development of
Creative Writing modules and/or courses.
Confidentiality: Although the information contained in the completed
questionnaire will be used in the PhD Thesis, the
identity of the student respondent will remain strictly
confidential between the student respondent and the
researcher.

Consent

1. Your completion of this research questionnaire and your participation in this research

study is voluntary and you have the right to decline to participate at any time.

2. By signing in the space provided below you confirm your willingness to participate in
the study.

Full Names __________________________________ Student No. ______________

Signature____________________________________ Date ____________________

3. You are entitled to a copy of this signed consent form and, on request, one will be
provided to you.
5
Appendix 5: Email Communication Extract

I offer these creative writing workshops as a part of the research for my PhD
Thesis, which is aimed at developing an undergraduate creative writing
programme. You have already received a copy of the agenda items discussed at
the meetings in November as well as a summary of the proposed format and
content of the workshops for this year. It may prove to be a worthwhile and
rewarding programme for you and the other students, who have a desire to write
and improve their writing and your participation is certainly of fundamental
importance to my creative writing research.

The workshops will run for two hours, ideally from 2 pm to 4 pm. So as not to
interfere with your academic work, there will only be 10 workshop sessions
spread throughout the year, commencing next quarter and ending in October.
These workshops will not fall in exam preparation, exam writing, study break
or vacation times and there are at least two weeks between each session, with
up to 6 weeks between sessions during the holiday times.

Once you have had the time to assess all these workshop details, I would
appreciate it if you would let me know whether you intend to participate or
not. If you are keen to take part, let me know which afternoons you have
available for attending the workshops. Once I receive details of your
availability, I will put the groups together and advise you as to the make up
of your group and on which dates the workshops will take place.
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Appendix 6: Workshop Research Consent Form

Consent Form

Project Title: The Research, Design and Development of an
Undergraduate Creative Writing Programme and a
Postgraduate Creative Writing-Teaching Course.
Student: Pieter Oberholzer (0218420H).
Contact Details: 0829021825 [email protected]
Supervisor: Dr Pamela Nichols
Contact Details: 7174136 [email protected]
Degree: PhD thesis.
Research Sample: Second, third and Honours-year students participating
in the extra-curricular Creative Writing Workshops.
Purpose of the Study: The PhD thesis is aimed at providing undergraduate
creative writing modules and a programme based on
a practical, teaching and learning foundation.
Benefits of the Study: The benefits of this study relate to the identification
of the practical processes and pedagogies necessary
for the design and development of creative writing
modules, which will enhance the teaching and learning
of creative writing amongst undergraduate students and
graduate students who wish to teach creative writing.
Confidentiality: Although the students’ responses to the workshop
processes and activities will be transcribed,
interpreted and evaluated and will be used in the thesis,
the identity of the student respondent will remain
strictly confidential between the student respondent
and the researcher.

Consent

4. Your participation in the extra-curricular creative writing workshops is voluntary
and you have the right to decline to participate at any time.
5. By signing in the space provided below you confirm your willingness to participate
in the workshops and agree to your responses to the processes forming a part of
the thesis study.

Full Names __________________________________ Student No. ______________

Signature ___________________________________ Date ____________________

6. You are entitled to a copy of this signed consent form and, on request, one will be
provided to you.

7
Appendix 7: Student Profiles – Phase 1 2005

Benjamin

Benjamin is a qualified technician in the computer industry, who, having worked in his native Dublin for
a number of years, decided, once he turned 30 years of age that he wanted to study in a different field and
experience new horizons. He travelled to Johannesburg and is studying English Literature and History as
his major subjects, while spending his spare time exploring South Africa and teaching matric students at a
school in Soweto as a way of contributing socially to his host society.

Benjamin remembers himself as isolated during his childhood, while at school and describes how he
would “write stories as a way of passing the time.” More recently, however, his writing has been confined
to diary pieces and social commentary, because he has struggled to identify topics that he feels committed
to writing about.

His favourite authors are Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Nick Hornby. His heroes are the writers
Roy and Terry Fisher, his role model is his father and his current locational inspirations Dublin and
specifically Johannesburg, with its “contrasts and contradictions,” which Benjamin finds irritating and
frustrating, as well as fascinating.

Despite appearing to be a regular, committed diary and journal writer, Benjamin provided no journal
entries during his participation in the workshop process. He also did not continue into the second
workshop phase in 2006 due to academic work commitments and his determination to continue to
contribute in some way and add social value during his stay in Johannesburg.

Kathryn

Kathryn is an English Literature and Media Studies major, who seems intent on entering the world of
journalism, but she is still unsure of what she really wants to do with her life. She is in her early twenties
and her desire to write and become a writer stems from her love of reading, the praise she received from
teachers for her imaginative writing and the encouragement she received from her father.

Kathryn’s home life was a disrupted one and she makes use of extensive diary-writing as an outlet for her
tensions and frustrations. She describes her role models as being “strong and independent woman” and
the writers she admires are Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath and Anne-Marie McDonald, whose book, Fall
on Your Knees inspired her to be a writer more than any other book she has read.

In terms of her writing surroundings, Kathryn prefers to write in solitude, whether outside or inside, her
location must be secluded and ultimately she must be isolated. Most of her writing is done at night, when
everyone else is asleep.

Kathryn entered the workshop process with an ongoing, frustrating dialogue with herself about her own
writing. This frustration stems from a persistent striving for perfection:

I distance myself from my work, because I’m afraid of what other
people might think.
I have all these ideas for writing, they just won’t sit on the page.
I want everything to be perfect. It’s so tempting just to tear the
page up.

Kathryn admits that she likes stories that “pull your heart out of your chest while it’s still beating,” and
that she enjoys reading “spontaneous and honest writing,” but that her writing is exactly the opposite.

During the workshop process Kathryn began to see her own writing as more of a place for self-expression
than exposure. For her it was a “break-through moment” when she realised that all her frustration
stemmed from her perfectionism and her own excessive criticism of her work.

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