Investigating Aesthetic Awareness And Creative Writing Through Integrating Visual Arts Into Language Learning Materials

Housen (2002)) explores how using Visual Thinking Strategies builds creative thinking skills that carry over into other contexts and content areas beyond the initial premise of developing aesthetic awareness. Aesthetic education according to Greene (2001) is a process of empowering diverse persons to engage reflectively and with a degree of passion with particular works of art. Creative writing is one of the most personal subject in EFL context. However, applying the principles of Visual Thinking Strategies to promote the creativity in language learning materials has received little attention in EFL context. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to include components of Visual Thinking Strategies suggested by Housen (2002) along with text-driven task-based approach proposed by Tomlinson (2018) to observe the effects on promoting creative writing among Iranian EFL learners. To this aim, 30 homogeneous EFL learners were chosen and divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group benefitted from the newly developed language learning materials, while the control group was exposed to their conventional methods. The results indicated that including Visual Thinking Strategies in language learning materials fosters creativity in writing and aesthetic awareness among Iranian EFL learners. With respect to aesthetic awareness, the findings indicated that the four subscales of Utopian thinking of art, Insights into awareness, Philosophy of thinking and Aesthetic pleasantness were greater in experimental group after the completion of the instructional intervention. This research has many implications regarding integrating authentic visual arts into language learning materials to foster learners’ creativity, aesthetic awareness, appreciating the value of art, and explores how using visual arts meet the call for differentiated instruction to address the needs of diverse learners.