After reading Margaret Anne Clarke's article...
Do you think that
creativity can be taught?
Yes! And I'm personally pleased
about her argument that Talent and Intelligence are essential elements of the
creative formula but they are not necessarily defining attributes for neither
guarantee the outcome. A focus on the 'self' which leads to resourcefulness and
determination is fascinating as a concept and illuminating at the same time,
especially because of their relationship with mistakes and how they are an intrinsic
part of our development, and of creativity. I sometimes get excited by the
types of mistakes lower level students make in class because of what they
represent and enjoy illustrating to students how they should feel proud of
those mistakes as they prove something is happening internally! They are often
surprised to hear this, but reinvigorated in their spirits.
And, can it be
taught in the language classroom?
Absolutely!
If we do not teach it there where else? As I argued in a post
on Roed (2003) and Worde (2003) on strategies in oral work, I'm a firm believer in
strategy training, not just for oral work but across the board and strive to
give them a place in my teaching as conscious application of a technique becomes
in the long run a skill (unconscious application of it - Oxford 2011:12). In
this light some of the awareness raising strategies I use currently but which I
would also use in regards to creativity are:
* Ensuring students
understand Creativity and what the benefits are for them.
* Stressing the importance
of process rather than product.
* Guaranteeing a stress
and face-value neutral (however possible that may be) atmosphere via the
building of close and strong rapport ties, allowing the students to see me as
one of them in the interactions and not just as the evaluator (by being
creative myself and setting the example, being a model).
* Leading self
reflection on their creativity via quick sessions in their groups and
individually.
As far as 'languaging' is concerned, I think that
although fascinating a concept it is unfortunate that in a foreign language
context, it seems to be confined to the classroom thus offering fewer
opportunities for students to continue languaging outside the classroom. I
believe this is the challenge for the modern EFL teacher - making sure they
continue languaging beyond the walls of the classroom and this can be done
today thanks to technology if used in creative ways so that 'My Questions Always End In Extra
Open Mindedness If Fear Ends Away!' Please read
on to see what I mean.
How can you
apply meaning,
questioning, exploration, experimentation, adaptation, open-mindedness,
insight, fearlessness, innovation, abandonment and enjoyment to
the teaching of creative writing?
First
of all by helping students remember these conditions through mnemonics: My Questions
Always End In Extra Open Mindedness If Fear
Ends Away! Just as I came up with this mnemonic to help myself remember
these conditions which I believe to be important, I would do the same to raise
their level of awareness of these conditions and their importance as a first
step in helping them understand and self assess whether they're being creative.
I
was curious to see what a word cloud of this article would look like and so I
used Tagxedo to crunch the text and this came out:
Creativity, Students, Language, Learning,
Teachers, Teaching, Use and Ways are the biggest words indicating how recurrent
they were in the text and also how important they are when we think about our
teaching contexts.
In
terms of materials development, I fully agree with Clarke that it is the
teacher's responsibility to create them while taking into consideration the
students' input in a course books light approach which integrates technology in
a variety of ways and media.
As for classroom practice, I
really like her idea of a classroom where the teacher takes risks and is also
assessed thus shifting the reproduction paradigm as she says (p7). I believe
this to be practically impossible in the Italian education sector where
teachers are seen as landlords where their poor tenants are nothing more than
plebes at their service and required to do as told. The freedom creativity implies is thankfully not
a mirage in the private sector of those few learning
-aware institutions who care for their students
and their teachers more than for their finances.
References
Clarke, M.A., 2010. Creativity in Modern Foreign Languages
Teaching and Learning, Available at:
http://moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/folder/view.php?id=1376024.
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