Sônia Zyngier, Anna Chesnokova
Grounded in pedagogical stylistics, Literary Awareness has been systematised and described as an educational programme oriented towards sensitising readers to the emotive potential of verbal art by means of exposing students to what we have called experiential stylistic patterns. Based on this methodology, readers become aware of the linguistic choices responsible for certain effects after they experience the text for themselves. In doing so, the programme stimulates language learning, creative writing and critical thinking by encouraging students to explore their own reactions and substantiate their experience with linguistic evidence. Throughout the years, it has been adapted to a variety of educational and cultural contexts, to various teaching modes (in person or online), and to participants of different ages and levels of English proficiency. Many of these applications have been validated by empirical studies and have shown that the methodology adheres to the three basic principles of stylistics: it is rigorous, replicable, and retrievable. A follow-up from previous works that assess particularly two postgraduate workshops held in Ukraine (2023–2024), this paper innovates in that it focuses on participants’ productions and illustrates how two patterns from each year were presented and how participants created their own texts, thus providing further empirical evidence for the contribution this programme brings to an aesthetic and emotional literary experience, to creative writing, and to critical reading and interpretation.