Second Language Expressive Writing in Times of Global Crisis: Poetry as a Humanistic Practice

Meaningful literacy has tremendous yet untapped potential to engage language learners in significant ways. This study explored the EFL students’ poetry writing in terms of gender, poetic features use, degree of emotionality, language learning, and therapeutic effects. During the times of global crisis, the researchers recruited two EFL students who had a meaningful literacy project as a course requirement. After analyzing the two poetic pieces considering linguistic measures, the two participants were interviewed to investigate students’ reported experiences with writing poetry. The analysis revealed that the participants expressed positive attitudes toward poetry writing as it helped them share their inner thoughts and feelings despite sociocultural constraints. It was also found that poetry writing helped the participants improve their target language, feel emotionally relieved, serving as psychological therapy. The study proposed several pedagogical implications related to L2 expressive pedagogy that can be incorporated into second writing education curriculums.