The effect of creative writing works on narrative text writing skills and advanced reading awareness

Writing is one of the four basic language skills enabling the individual to express himself/herself. Creative writing, on the other hand, which cares about the writing process, is a writing technique considering the ideas of the individual, develops imagination and motivates the individual to write. When the fact that narrative texts based on narrative fiction require creativity and writing and reading skills involve similar cognitive processes is considered, the problem sentence of the study was determined as follows: At what level does the creative writing studies affect the narrative text writing skill and advanced reading awareness level? The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of creative writing works on narrative text writing skills and advanced reading awareness. The quantitative group of the study consisted of 66 7th Grade students of a secondary school in the city center of Elazig, and 35 of these students constituted the Experiment Group, and 31 constituted the Control Group. The 15 participants in the Experiment Group also constitute the qualitative study group. The "Explanatory Sequential Design", which is one of the mixed research patterns in which quantitative and qualitative methods are combined, was used in the study. In the quantitative dimension, the pretest posttest control group semi-experimental pattern was used. The education based on creative writing studies was given to the students of the experimental group, and the writing education based on the Turkish Teaching Program was given to the control group students. The data on the experimental pattern were obtained with the Narrative Text Writing Skills Assessment Form, the Advanced Reading Awareness Scale, which were developed by the researcher. The qualitative data were collected with the "Semi-Structured Interview Guide on Creative Writing Works", which was developed by the researcher, and which consisted of 7 open-ended questions to support the data that were obtained. The descriptive statistics, Independent Groups t-test, dependent groups t-test, Covariance Analysis (ANCOVA), Two-Way Variance Analysis for Mixed Measurements, Wilcoxon Signed Sequences Test, and Mann-Whitney U-Test were used in the process of analyzing the quantitative data. The qualitative data were analyzed with the Content Analysis. When the quantitative data that were obtained as a result of the study were examined, it was determined that the narrative text writing skills of the Experimental Group students were statistically and significantly higher when compared to the students of the Control Group. Following the implementation, it was determined that the advanced reading awareness levels of the Experimental Group students increased more when compared to the Control Group students; however, this increase was not statistically significant. The Experimental Group students who were interviewed stated their opinions as their narrative text writing skills improved, they were encouraged to write and develop positive attitudes, created reading habits, and preferred event-based books, developed their imaginations, and acquired the power to share and express their opinions. In addition, the qualitative data that were obtained in the present study also show that the creative writing process improved their awareness on writing, narrative text writing, and advanced reading. When the narrative text writing variable is taken into consideration, the qualitative data supports the quantitative findings of the study, and the quantitative results for the advanced reading awareness levels are complementary.