Alleviating Multilingual Learners’ Writing Anxiety Through the Creative Nonfiction Literacy Narrative and AI Use

Authors

• Thomas Maldonado, University of Texas at El PasoFollow

Publication Date

4-10-2026

Comments

Presented at the 25th Annual Border Learning Conference at the El Paso Community College Administrative Services Center

Abstract

It is typical for First Year Composition (FYC) instructors to begin their courses with a literacy narrative assignment. There are a number of reasons for this. First, a literacy narrative allows students to write about themselves without worrying about diving into deep research to defend a position or to elaborate on an argument. Another reason, literacy narratives offer students the opportunity to reflect on their personal learning journey and write intimately about how they have developed as writers. In most cases, it is fairly easy for some native English speakers to accomplish this assignment. However, multilingual learners find the literacy narrative overwhelming and challenging; they simply do not know how or where to start the writing task due to writing anxiety that causes them to doubt their ability to be creative.    This proposed session consists of a presentation chronicling my creation of what I call the creative nonfiction literacy narrative. Included is the use of generative AI in the FYC classroom coupled with creative writing; the nuanced differences between a creative nonfiction literacy narrative with a traditional literacy narrative; and some anonymous student questionnaire results about their AI and creative writing experiences in an FYC context. This presentation is based off of an article that was published this year in The National Teaching and Learning Forum for their Fall edition.    This topic is a subtopic connected to my dissertation in progress exploring the overall experiences of first-year multilingual composition students with using generative artificial intelligence to help them brainstorm and write creative nonfiction literacy narratives throughout the last few years beginning at the local community college and university I taught at in Minnesota to the time I began teaching RWS 1301 at UTEP as a part of my PhD teaching assistantship.