The Impact of a Traditional Culture Seminar on the Output of College Students' Chinese Creative Writing

For a long time, traditional culture has been regarded as one of the sources of the inspiration, method and language of Chinese writing. In this article, we studied the medium- and long-term impact of a traditional Chinese culture seminar attended by college students on the output of creative writing. The seminar included traditional Chinese philosophy, history, literature, art, etc. It spanned three years (22 months) and held lectures lasting for approximately two hours once a week. The subjects of the prospective cohort study included 130 first-year college students who participated in the seminar and 130 controls. From September 2016 to June 2018, 72 lectures were held. We measured the creative writing output from the first lecture (September 2016) to December 2021 (64 months in total), including novels, essays, poems, and plays. Two indicators, the total number of words (TNW) and the quality of yield (QY), were evaluated by a 15-member panel. Although the TNW and QY of the participants and their controls were similar before the seminar, we found that the participants have higher TNW and QY than the controls after participating in the seminar. The difference in TNW became significant after month 51 (p<0.05), and the difference in QY became significant after month 46 (p<0.05). After these dates, the differences stabilized. In addition, text analysis indicates that by month 64, traditional cultural elements in the works of the participating group had a higher frequency (p<0.001). The research shows that the traditional culture seminar not only enhanced the yield of college students' creative writing but also improved the quality of their work. The traditional cultural elements enriched the works of the seminar participants.