Community Talk

Writing is a key to career success, a way to develop creativity and also verbal expression, which makes a person remarkable and communication exciting. On the other hand writing is hard work, which only the patient and persistent can succeed in. And this is the reason, why so many people  fight shy of writing and end up believing that it is not their cup of tea.

However, if people see that their efforts are not going to be wasted, that they are pushing hard to make something big happen, they become motivated, overcome the initial difficulties and produce something to be proud of. 

The books you can see in the picture are the product of 28 bilingual children from the U.S., the U.K. and Belarus, young learners of English from ICAN Club, who composed their stories in two languages: English and Russian. In the process of editing the overseas children were helping each other to polish their stories and the languages in Skype. Later the stories were illustrated by children in the Start Art Studio, which gave the book its unique look. 

The children were writing their stories in their second language, which made the tasks still more challenging. Needless to say that between the first draft and the final versions of the stories there were hours and hours of discussions, editing, fine-tuning descriptions and the logic of action, working on grammar and choice of words. 

As a result, we can see that the stories published in the books are genuine, with unexpected twists of the plot and with a message to the world. And the language used by the 8-13 year-olds is far from being monotonous. Actually, this project has proven that learners of a foreign language do not need to wait for years before starting using their new language to create something meaningful and beautiful. 

The greatest achievement is not the book as such, but the fact that the participants learned how to approach creative writing tasks, succeeded in making their stories publishable, built up their confidence as writers and users of their second language. As Nataliya Didenko, Project Coordinator, wrote in the address to the reader, "The greatest achievement is the fact that we are willing to continue writing: to look for the best wording, to perfect the form -  in short, to create!"

We invite you to read our stories. You can use them in class with young learners and teenagers for reading and discussion. The book is available here. We hope that you will find them inspirational and the thought "If they can do that - what stops me from doing that?" will motivate you to join our writing community here, where you can publish free of charge, and then share your posts in all social networks. Welcome!