ENHANCING CREATIVITY IN ESL LEARNERS’ DESCRIPTIVE ESSAYS THROUGH CULTURALLY RELEVANT ELT MATERIALS

Abstract

The present study aimed to examine the effectiveness of culturally relevant ELT materials in enhancing creativity in ESL learners’ descriptive essay writing. Acquiring creativity and descriptive writing competence is indispensable for ESL learners as they help them achieve expressive and content-rich write-ups. The study was conducted at Department of English Linguistics, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, and followed quasi-experimental, single group pre-test and post-test research design. A convenience sample of 30 ESL learners completed a pre-test post-test descriptive writing task. A 7 days long intervention of culturally relevant ELT materials was used to enhance the content development and creativity in the descriptive essays of ESL learners. Core Aligned Creative Writing Rubric was used to evaluate the pre-test and post-test descriptive writing task. A paired sample t-test was applied to compare pre-test and post-test mean scores, revealing a statistically significant improvement in learners’ creative expressions. The results of the study showed that culturally relevant ELT materials serve as an important pedagogical tool to augment creativity and descriptive writing skills of ESL learners. The study recommends integrating localized cultural content into ESL classrooms to bridge linguistic gaps and promote creative language use.