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Creative thinking techniques play a crucial role in teaching English, as they enhance students' engagement and promote deeper understanding of the language. In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability to think creatively is vital not only for language acquisition but also for effective communication. By incorporating creative thinking techniques into English instruction, educators can foster an environment that encourages exploration, innovation, and critical thinking among students. This introduction will explore various creative thinking techniques that can be effectively utilized in teaching English, highlighting their benefits and practical applications.
One prominent technique is brainstorming, which encourages students to generate ideas freely without the fear of criticism. This technique can be applied to various aspects of language learning, such as vocabulary expansion, creative writing, and even grammar exercises. By allowing students to express their thoughts openly, teachers can tap into their creativity and help them develop unique perspectives on language use. Furthermore, brainstorming sessions can lead to collaborative learning, where students build on each other's ideas, enhancing their communication skills and fostering a sense of community in the classroom.
Another effective creative thinking technique is role-playing, which immerses students in real-life scenarios that require the use of English. This method not only helps students practice their language skills in context but also encourages them to think on their feet and adapt their language use to different situations. Role-playing can be particularly beneficial in teaching conversational skills, as it allows students to experiment with various tones, styles, and registers. By stepping into different characters, students can explore diverse viewpoints and cultural nuances, enriching their understanding of the language and its applications.
Storytelling is yet another powerful technique that can ignite students' imagination and enhance their language skills. By encouraging students to create and share their own stories, teachers can help them develop narrative skills while also practicing vocabulary and grammar in a meaningful context. Storytelling fosters creativity and allows students to connect emotionally with the language, making it more memorable and impactful. Additionally, this technique can be adapted to different proficiency levels, ensuring that all students can participate and benefit from the experience.
Finally, integrating technology into creative thinking techniques can further enhance English language teaching. Digital tools such as blogs, podcasts, and interactive platforms provide students with opportunities to express their creativity and collaborate with peers beyond the classroom. These technologies can facilitate project-based learning, where students work together to produce original content, thereby reinforcing their language skills in a dynamic and engaging way. By embracing creative thinking techniques in conjunction with technology, educators can create a rich and stimulating learning environment that prepares students for the challenges of the modern world.
Why is Creativity Important What Does It Contribute?
Why is Creativity Important What Does It Contribute?
Creativity engages the mind.
Creativity frees the mind in a way that enables a person to absorb knowledge more easily. It makes processing learning more efficient
Creativity enables alternative ways of thinking.
It unblocks old patterns or habits of thinking. It allows for non-linear thinking.
Creativity enables empathy.
Creativity connects us to ourselves.
It opens our hearts and doors to our mind. It brings us to hidden parts of ourselves. It allows recognition of uniqueness and identity. It can help draw out what is already there within – hidden talents and inner capacities can emerge. It connects us with our passions.
Creative participation nurtures a sense of togetherness.
It brings people together and can nurture skills in teamwork and cooperation.
Creativity challenges.
Creativity can connect reflection with action.
Creativity builds intercultural connections.
It connects us to different cultures and sub-cultures.
Creativity nurtures confidence.
Creativity builds confidence. When they are confident, young people are less easily influenced by others
Creativity instills curiosity.
It encourages questions.
Creative expression gives a voice.
It can help capture ideas, thoughts and visions about the world. Young people can
advocate for themselves and for others.
Creativity is participatory and interactive.
When engaging with creativity, young people are not passively listening/absorbing, but are exploring, discovering and communicating. It can support young people to be more active and present as members of society.
Creativity stimulates and motivates.
Creativity brings us beyond words.
It allows exploration and communication beyond the limitation of words.
Creativity is fun and joyful and surprising.
Creativity keeps the mind active.
Creativity engages different learning styles.
Creative methods enable engagement through a variety of learning styles. Everyone learns and engages differently.
Creativity allows us to view and solve problems more openly and with innovation.
Creativity opens the mind.
A society that has lost touch with its creative side is an imprisoned society, in that generations of people may be closed minded. It broadens our perspectives and can help us overcome prejudices.
Creativity inspires collective thinking.
Creativity nurtures ideas.
Creativity supports resilience.
You can access the two publications developed during the week together at
Creativity. Resilience and Global Citizenship, Explorations, Reflections and Recommendations.
Creativity Resilience and Global Citizenship- Toolkit
If you are interested in these themes and topics there are several ways you can get involved in the Creativity and Change programme.
-An Accredited Level 8 special purpose award that involved 16 days of experiential learning workshops
-Link in with our one day training programme that take place around the country.
-Look out for new editions of our international creative youth worker training programmes
-Access our resources on our website
Here is the final extract from the latest British Council publication 'Creativity in the English Language classroom' edited by Alan Maley and Nik Peachey. In this chapter, Marisa Constantinides presents activities to develop teachers' creative thinking skills.
'Creative thinking skills training: The basis of the practical ideas in this article
It has been suggested that creativity or, as it is also termed, divergent production (Guilford,1967), is not a single unifying ability; it is viewed as a composite of intellectual abilities. Guilford further suggests that divergent production facilitates problem-solving, something which language teachers are faced with on a daily basis in their classes - and that we know enough about the creative process to be able to train individuals. Here are the four main characteristics of the creative process that he describes (op. cit.):
Producing lots of ideas (fluency)
Producing ideas of various types (flexibility)
Building on and embellishing existing ideas (elaboration)
Producing clever and original ideas (originality).
These abilities enable the individual to produce not only a multiplicity of answers as solutions to the same problem or tasks, but answers that are also varied; some may even be original.
Benefits to the teacher
Divergent production, then, seems to respond positively to some of the issues mentioned earlier:
Materials can be put to new use in more effective and stimulating ways.
Materials and lesson design becomes easier and more varied as the teachers can come up with more than one solution to the problem of what to include at each stage.
It is easier for teachers to see new ways of changing existing material, to fit in with their aims, learners and teaching context.
Teachers produce more ideas, and some of them can also be quite original ones.
Teachers are no longer ‘slaves’ to one or another method but may be better able to evaluate, select and be eclectic in a principled way.
The role of the trainer and/or the institution
Helping teachers to develop their ability to think creatively, including creative thinking skills training, is not going to be enough, and the effects of this training may not be sustainable unless there is a positive culture encouraging and facilitating as well as demonstrating creativity.
Trainers need to model creative behaviours themselves by using a variety of ways of handling course input, from training games to loop input – an idea suggested by Woodward (1991) – not in a relentless pursuit of fun and games but in accordance with the topic and focus of each session.
In addition, work on team-building, generating trust amongst trainees, is essential from day one and needs to be followed through systematically, either through activities such as those suggested by Hadfield (1992), or through social activities in a school setting or a self-help group.
Creativity needs to be inspired by inspired leadership that nurtures and appreciates teachers who make the effort to be creative.
Practical suggestions and activities
Problem solving activities
These are activities that again may focus on your teaching situation, e.g. your beginning students are very reluctant to use English in class. Suggest a number of different solutions to the problem of persuading them to use English in class.
Desert island
Trainees are given a list of teaching supplies and a desert island brief and are asked to decide which 8 (or other suitable number) essentials they would take with them if they had to teach a class at a specified level of instruction with no other supplies or facilities.
Putting creativity to work
As previously suggested, the activities are listed under one heading but some do more than just one thing. Overall, I consider these activities as practice opportunities focusing both on the content and on the cognitive mind-set. However, trainees need to apply the skill to their designated planning, design and teaching tasks, and this is where, ultimately, these practice opportunities are leading: to enable teachers in training (and at work) to create more, better and with more ease.
Ideas suggested by colleagues
In my survey, I asked colleagues to describe some activities which they include in their sessions and which they believe develop creativity in their trainee teachers. Their suggestions, which follow, fall mostly under the umbrella of holistic practice that must also be included in any attempts to work with thinking skills development.
Here are some of their ideas:
Visualisations and metaphors
Many trainers like to use this technique, e.g. draw an image representing your course-book; choose a metaphor for a lesson (e.g. a play, a concert, etc.); draw an image to show how you visualise teaching.
Imagine you have no course-book for your next lesson
Some colleagues have also reported abandoning course-books altogether for the duration of their training programmes and report positively on the benefits to their trainees (See also Tomlinson, in this volume).
Materials treasure hunts via Google
This idea may not in itself be creative, but it chimes with the concept of curating content before producing one’s own.
Group projects
These may involve planning a series of lessons or a set of materials.
Sessions in which these ideas are typically used are assisted lesson preparation, materials evaluation and adaptation, materials design based on authentic documents and introducing educational technology into the curriculum.'
Extract from chapter 12, 'Creating creative teachers' by Marisa Constantinides in 'Creativity in the English language classroom'.
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Teachers often believe it is their duty to choose texts and activities for students and are sometimes surprised when students are not satisfied with their choice. In order to minimise the danger of spending too much time on preparing materials our students do not find engaging, we can use strategies of the negotiated syllabus method and ask them to find useful materials and decide which activities they would like to try on their own. This activity can improve students’ autonomy and cater for individual learning styles.
We can show the principles through the example of reading skills. We can ask students to:
Explore their fields of interest and find texts they consider both interesting and of high quality.
Send samples of such texts to the course online space.
Read the text samples before the following session.
At this point, we can choose to take control and decide what activities we are going to do, based on the collected texts. In other words, we have saved our time when looking for texts that could be interesting for the group, and our task then is to find the appropriate sections of the collected samples that can suit our teaching purposes best. Alternatively, we can ask students to identify problematic issues or issues ‘of interest’ and follow their particular needs. In order to help them identify issues, we may proceed in different ways and ask them to:
Compare their own texts with those of their classmates and see what differences or similarities they find.
Choose one text and paraphrase it in their own words.
Identify the main ideas in each text.
Identify the author’s position.
Discuss their Internet search strategies.
Vote for the most interesting text, the least understandable text, a text with the highest level of past tense use, with widest range of vocabulary, or any other feature the class would like to focus on.
This style of work offers several advantages for both teachers and students. Teachers do not have to look for the ‘best’ material that would suit a particular group. Instead they obtain a database of texts from their students. Teachers can also move away from their traditional positions of providers of ‘one ultimate truth’ and can become facilitators of complex processes that form part of language learning. Students, on the other hand, are more actively engaged in the search for the texts; they have to create their own criteria for quality, and they practise reading and critical thinking individually and intensively outside of the class. Each student also works in their own area of interest, so they can develop both their language and non-language related skills at the same time. What is more, students are engaged in situations with unclear solutions: they do not know whether they can find a suitable text; they have to form their opinions, make decisions, present their results to classmates and be ready to respond to their reactions.'
Extract from chapter 10, 'Creative approach to language teaching: A way to recognise, encourage and appreciate students' contributions to language classes' by Libor Stepanek in 'Creativity in the English language classroom'.
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