Abstract

Before I set out and look at some theories and practice for introducing creativity into the language classroom, let’s see why it is worth making all this effort.

  • What is creativity?
  • Why is creativity important?
  • Am I ever creative?
  • Are my students creative in my lessons?

There's a reason why teachers should use (more) creativity in their classes. Just close your eyes for a few seconds, bring your students nearer: what do you see? They have very different backgrounds, different learning styles, different learning experiences, different degrees of motivation, different language levels and different intelligences and cognitive styles. Unless we bring imaginative approaches to teaching we will have failed to reach out to the very diverse cognitive and emotional needs of our students.

Introduction

For the purpose of this paper, creative and critical language learners are defined in terms of the learners' cognitive abilities to carry out certain tasks effectively. The creative language learners should be able to combine responses or ideas in novel ways (Smith, Ward and Finke, 1995), and to use elaborate, intricate, and complex stimuli and thinking patterns (Feldman, 1997). A creative teacher knows how to get her students' attention, and also knows how to keep it. A creative teacher knows how to teach and test in ways that are meaningful to the students. A creative teacher will always find ways to make her lessons stick.

What is creativity?

Do you think you are creative? Do you think your students are creative? All of them? Some of them? Do you think you can call yourself lucky if you have one or two creative students in a lifetime? Do you think the younger the students are the more creative they are? Or do you think the opposite is true and that you learn to be creative over the years? How do you know that someone is creative? What do you actually do when you are thinking creatively?

Do you think your colleagues would answer these questions the same way as you do? In my experience, people hold very different views of creativity. Some think they aren’t creative at all and it is only the privileged and artistically talented, who can be considered creative. Others think that to cook a good dinner is already a clear sign of creativity.

In this  article, I do not aim to answer the questions above. What I aim to do is to look at three different theoretical descriptions of creative thinking and explore what language teachers may learn from them. I hope that after reading this article, you will be able to ask many more and much more challenging questions about creativity and its use in the classroom than I did in the first paragraph.

Why is creativity important?
Before we set out and look at some theories and practice for introducing creativity into the language classroom, let’s see why it is worth making all this effort. Why is creativity important in language classrooms?

  • Language use is a creative act: we transform thoughts into language that can be heard or seen. We are capable of producing sentences and even long texts that we have never heard or seen before. By giving learners creative exercises, we get them to practise an important sub-skill of using a language: thinking creatively.
  • Compensation strategies (methods used for making up for lack of language in a communicative situation e.g. miming, drawing, paraphrasing used for getting meaning across) use creative and often imaginative ways of expression. Our learners will need these until they master the language.
  • In my experience, some people cannot learn at all if they are not allowed to be creative. They do not understand the point in doing a language activity for its own sake, for only practising the language without a real content, purpose, outcome or even a product.
  • My experience also taught me that most people become more motivated, inspired or challenged if they can create something of value, if they feel that in some ways what they do and how they do it reflect who they are.
  • Creativity improves self-esteem as learners can look at their own solutions to problems and their own products and see what they are able to achieve.
  • Creative work in the language classroom can lead to genuine communication and co-operation. Learners use the language to do the creative task, so they use it as a tool, in its original function. This prepares learners for using the language instrumentally outside the classroom.
  • Creative tasks enrich classroom work, and they make it more varied and more enjoyable by tapping into individual talents, ideas and thoughts - both the learners’ and the teacher’s.
  • Creative thinking is an important skill in real life. It is part of our survival strategies and it is a force behind personal growth and the development of culture and society.

 Having read this list of why creativity is important in the classroom, you may have been wondering about either or both of these two questions:

  • Am I ever creative?
  • Do I ever get my students to do anything creative in my lessons?

 I’m almost a hundred per cent sure that the answer is ‘yes’ to both of these questions. Let me show you why.

Am I ever creative?
Have you ever found that you wanted to do something but you did not have the right tool / material to do it, and then you found some way of using another object / material and managed somehow? E.g. You opened a bottle or a tin without a bottle or tin opener or substituted an ingredient in a recipe with another ingredient. Have you every changed an activity in your course book or a resource book to match the needs of a particular group you teach? YES? There you go, you are creative!
Are my students creative in my lessons?
Do you ever get your students to speak about, write about, draw about or mime what they think? Do your students say things in the foreign language they never heard or read? Do you ever get them to think about rules, problems and how things and language work instead of just telling them? Do you sometimes give them tasks where there is no one possible answer and the answers will vary from one learner to another? YES? There you go, your students have opportunities to think creatively in your classes already!

There's more: teachers operate in a very unpredictable context, and lesson planning and expertise can only help navigate the uncertainties to some extent. In addition teachers need the willingness to improvise and create lesson plans on the spot that respond to students' needs as they arise.

Having said that, being creative in class is often easier said than done. There isn't an algorithm to make us creative, and what is certain is that creativity needs to be cajoled and nurtured. Probably the best way to invite creativity is to take stock and reflect for a minute on the obstacles and challenges we have to face.

First of all, it may be seen as hard for colleagues who teach to a test or work with an extremely regimented syllabus to do things differently. This is undeniably true most of the time, but experience tells me that this is often something some colleagues say to justify their unwillingness to change. There is also always a way to do things differently in class without upsetting the establishment.

By far the biggest hurdle is working in an environment that doesn't value creative methodology. My advice in this case is to start small, and be extremely patient. Keep telling yourself that all creative individuals have had to face hard challenges, and that sticking to one's gun is a true mark of creative people. Examples abound: Walt Disney, Charlie Parker and many others.

Fear of failure is another problem: what if my students won't like this exercise? This happens quite a lot. Being creative implies getting out of a comfortable cocoon; it's a little like how children learn to ride a bicycle. They'll fall off but they'll get there in the end. Just keep reminding yourself that there's no success like failure (Bob Dylan); fail and aim to fail better each time (Samuel Beckett).

Creativity in language learning and teaching by increasing student interaction

I have noticed in many of the classes I have taught that there can be a tendency for the learners to want to interact with me but less enthusiasm when it comes to interacting with each other. I should emphasize that this reticence only applies to interaction in English but it does seem to apply to groups of all nationalities, ages and levels.

• Why student to student interaction is desirable?

• Problems we face when trying to increase interaction

• How we can promote an increase in student interaction?

• Conclusion

Why student to student interaction is desirable?

• Participation

Most people agree that learning anything involves participation. You can't learn to play a musical instrument without actually picking up the instrument and similarly it is difficult to learn a language without engaging with that language. Given that language primarily exists to facilitate communication, interaction in that language must have an important role to play in developing a learner's ability in that language. In other words, teachers need to promote learner interaction in order to help the learners succeed.

• Maximising practice time

Learners need to practise as much as possible if they are to be successful. Interaction through

pair and group work  maximises the opportunities to practise as more learners speak for more of the time.

• Collaboration

Collaborative  learning, particularly through the use of collaborative tasks, has been shown to

foster language development since learners can see a reason to use language in order to interact.

• Socialisation

Related to the concept of collaboration is that of socialisation. Interaction does not only promote language development but it also fosters the development of social skills (e.g. politeness, respect for others) that people need to operate successfully in any culture.

• Motivation

Motivation is a fundamental aspect of successful learning. Interaction gives learners the

opportunity to use language successfully and to measure their progress which in turn should lead to an increase in motivation.

Problems we face when trying to increase interaction

Interaction seems so desirable and sensible in theory but we all know that actually promoting and increasing it can be an uphill struggle. Let's consider some of the reasons for this.

• Student resistance

It is unfortunately true that some learners are not enthusiastic about pair and group work,

particularly in mono-lingual classes in which it is a little unnatural to communicate to someone who speaks your language in a language you are both less proficient in! I have taught many students who have told me that they don't like pair work because they might learn mistakes from

their partners. There is actually no evidence to support this worry but it is still common.

• Self-consciousness

I have met many learners who become very nervous and embarrassed when asked to speak

English. As a language learner myself, I sympathise.

• Large classes

While theoretically the more students there are in a class the more possibilities for interaction

there should be, this is not the case in practice. The more learners there are, the more difficult

developing interaction can be since there are more people to monitor and, therefore, more

chances of problems. In addition there is, of course, a greater likelihood of excessive noise which can mask bad behaviour and use of L1.

• Mixed abilities

Pairing and grouping students appropriately in classes that have a wide variety of levels (e.g.

secondary schools) is much more difficult than in small classes of a homogenous level.

• Lack of motivation

If learners have no need to interact or don't want to, they probably won't.

 

 

• Insufficient language

Perhaps the most common reason for interaction in English breaking down, or indeed not starting in the first place, is that the students don't have the language they need to interact and, therefore,complete the task successfully.

How we can promote an increase in student interaction

This section will suggest some solutions to the problems outlined above.

• Teaching process language

This is similar to classroom language but refers to the language that students need to interact.

Examples could include: "What do you have for number 2?", "Do you want to start?", and

"Sorry, can you say that again, please?". I introduce and/or revise before starting tasks and leave them on the board so the learners can refer to them while speaking. My learners copy them into the vocabulary record books too, of course.

 

• Pre-teaching task language

I try to analyse tasks before using them in order to predict what language is critical to task

achievement. If I think some of this language may be unfamiliar I pre-teach it before the students do the task. If there is too much language for pre-teaching, I find a more suitable task.

• Providing support

As well as providing language for tasks, where appropriate I try to provide ideas too. These can be brainstormed  before the task and put on the board so that the learners have plenty of things to talk about.

 

• Giving preparation time

I have often found that interaction breaks down because the learners haven't had time to think about what they want to say and how to say it. I plan to give some thinking time before starting a task during which the students can ask me or each other for support.

 

• Providing a supportive atmosphere

I try to raise confidence by giving lots of praise and giving feedback on task achievement as well as language use. When monitoring I try to do so as unobtrusively as possible so the students don't feel that I'm necessarily listening to them personally. On the other hand in feedback I try to make it clear to the class that I have been listening to them and through feedback show them that there is a point to interaction and thereby overcome student resistance.

 

• Varying the interaction and repeating tasks

When teaching large classes I plan to move students around so that they are not always talking to the same partner. A good way to do this I have found is by asking the learners to perform the same task a number of times but each time with a different partner. As well as providing variety of interaction, this approach also maximises practice of the language being worked on.

• Having different levels of task

With mixed ability classes I prepare an easy, medium, and difficult version of the same task so students of different levels can interact together at a level appropriate to the language level. For example, after some listening practice students with different tasks can tell each other what they have found out.

 

• Providing a reason to interact

I use tasks that actively provide the learners with a reason to speak and listen. Information gap activities are a good example of these (and these can be used repetitively if designed carefully)and students generally enjoy doing them. Using project work is another good example of a motivating and collaborative approach that promotes both realistic language use and interaction.

 

Conclusion

Interaction helps learners develop language learning and social skills and so maximising

interaction in the classroom is an important part of the teacher's role. Interaction will not

necessarily happen spontaneously, however, and in my view it has to be considered before

teaching. The approaches suggested above all have this in common - they require forethought and are, therefore, a part of the lesson planning process.

If you wish to be more aware of how creativity works in general and in your classroom so that you can make more informed decisions about using it and how to use it in your classes.

One last word of advice: don't try to do too much too soon. If it is true that students appreciated surprises, it is also true that they don't like to be shocked. So, if you've always used a coursebook, for example, continue to do so, but try to come up with your own ideas to personalise it, see how the students react and think about how to do things better next time.