Writing Composition Based on an Existing Literary Work

Ahmet Altan Ekşioğlu

It has been a mystery for most foreign language teachers why their students often confront frustration in attempting to write something logical, worth reading when they are required to produce a story or a descriptive prose of their own after so many years of studying a foreign language.
During my 25 years of teaching career, I have come to the conclusion that the reason for that is the lack of transforming what is learnt in reading classes into composition classes. This is because most foreign language teachers tend to separate the two learning activities from each other ignoring the fact that the passages they have covered in reading classes are good examples to what their students are to write. Therefore, students usually have to endeavour to re-discover words and expressions that can fit the situation or feelings they are trying to describe. However there is no need to re-discover those words, and as a whole, ways of narrating an event or describing something because they are already discovered.
For example, human reaction to fear does not change according to the source of fear. Nor does the expression of reaction to fear. Similarly, in case of hunger or thirst, everyone, more or less, performs the same patterns of behaviour. And reading passages describes thousands of patterns of behaviour to different actions for us to adapt. That’s why, we suggest adapting an existing piece of work to a new version of a similar event or situation.
To be able to write a good story or a novel depends largely on your experience in reading. That is, you "steal" many different ways of expressing a definite thought, or different reactions to different actions. Filtered through a new style and point of view, all these find life in a new and original work of literature. In addition to the fact explained above, we should also keep in mind that the prime task of a foreign language teacher is not to train professional writers but to teach his students some effective ways of using the target language. Because producing "good" stories is not just a matter of education but also a matter of inborn talent.
What I suggest here is to produce not free but half guided composition based on the document students have studied in their English classes. How it can be done is illustrated below.
Let's suppose we have studied "The Parachutist" by D'Arcy Niland for comprehension and interpretation. For composition classes, students should be instructed to imagine a similar situation, a similar conflict and pick up expressions and words from the text as far as possible to use in new stories of their own. They may choose another animal which confronts a similar disheartening difficulty to fight with. The animal may be an eagle, and the cause of its hunger not hurricane but a draught, and the animal may not miserably survive but die as it does in my sample composition in the book (see The Eagle, p. 110). Similarly, The Bees (p.104) is based on the story The Boar Hunt by Jose Vasconcelos.
Following this procedure, students will have no difficulties in maintaining
unity and balance in their composition.


From Success with Composition, Ahmet Altan Ekşioğlu, Meda Yayınları, Istanbul. 1996
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