University Creative Writing Classes: How and What For? (Summing up a trans-Atlantic teaching experiment)

Abstract

The concepts of cultural literacy, its present-day content and quality are dramatically changing. Language as a formalized semiotic system and set of norms, and literature as a culturally privileged segment of the national verbal heritage certainly must be known and treated with due reverence. The various forms of oral speech, occasionally of profound intellectual content, breed and multiply within and without the academic milieu and in media outlets, which are acquiring a global scope. Oral speech also deserves attention in the practical form of choice, analysis, interpretation and conscious use. University creative writing classes in the native tongue and foreign languages offer a way to cope with the problem.