Abstract

The purpose of this article is to consider the responses of Taiwanese night-school undergraduates to an assignment of Children’s Poem Writing (CPW), whilst taking into account the assignment’s effects upon creativity, imagination and the students’ understanding of children’s poems in English. The research question is: How did the night-school students relate the CPW assignment to learning about children’s poetry and the development of their own creativity and imagination? The sources of data included teaching materials (e.g., a textbook and sample children’s poems), a 6-point-scaled evaluation questionnaire with a box for free comments, the instructor’s journals, the students’ children’s poems, and the students’ final papers. The results of the study indicated that the night-school Taiwanese undergraduates tended to believe the CPW assignment helped them learn about children’s poetry (M= 5.23) and develop their creativity (M= 4.91) and imagination (M= 5.14), which were supported by the qualitative data. In the current paper, several children’s poems created by the participating students are shown for evidence and discussion. It is hoped that the findings of this study may prompt interested teachers to incorporate such a CPW into their own classes and entice interested researchers to conduct similar or further studies to contribute to the fields of course assignment and critical literacy.