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Carola Essay
Carola Essay
STUDENTS.
The role of the EFL teacher in the developing of creativity among their students.
need to develop the ability to successfully sort out new situations that they will face, mainly with
flexibility and creativity. In this unknown setting, education plays a significant role, teaching
students how to develop these skills by choosing the most relevant strategies to do so. This essay
explores the importance of an EFL teacher in the developing of creativity among their students;
the concept of creativity and problem solving is explored; the role of communicative EFL tasks
in creativity is also examined; and finally, some examples from my teaching experience of how
Things are evolving so fast in our XXI century that we cannot imagine how life will be in
five or ten years from now. In this scenario, English teachers are not expected only to teach how
to communicate in the target language, but -as the Ministry of Education states in the English
curriculum- to teach how to appreciate and understand different cultures, how to interact
effectively with the rest of the world, and how to get knowledge through technological devices
and social networks. All of these require creativity and critical thinking. Creativity is defined by
Sternberg and Lubart, 1995 as “the ability to produce work that is novel and adaptive with regard
to task or situational limitations” (as cited in Ghonsooly and Behzad, 2012, p. 161). Furthermore,
there have been some authors like Hommel, Colzato, Fischer, and Christoffels (2011) who
claimed that bilingualism has a positive influence on creativity (as cited in Ghonsooly and
Behzad, 2012, p. 162), what reinforces the importance of improving our teaching strategies
not always clear how learners can be creative within a language learning context, and I have seen
THE ROLE OF THE EFL TEACHER IN THE DEVELOPING OF CREATIVITY AMONG THEIR 3
STUDENTS.
many times how Spanish and English teachers force creativity asking students to present
“creative works”, understanding creativity as embellishing their formats, but without clarifying
what they expect from that. Despite the above mentioned, developing communicative skills
implies developing creativity, mainly through the type of tasks involved in the practice of the
target language. That means that if an English teacher works their strategies to encourage
students to communicate in authentic situations, we will be fostering the use of creativity at the
same time. For example, the use of role playing or writing with a communicative purpose will
make the students to imagine or visualize certain situations in which they have to communicate
an idea in English clearly; presenting frequently used expressions will forced us to take the
students into diverse contexts, customs and cultures in order to fully understand and reproduce
those expressions. At the same time if we want our students to learn more complex
communicative skills such as giving arguments or making formal requests, teachers should
provide controversial topics to debate about it, or global issues that implies sorting out creative
solutions to propose and communicate to the rest of the world. On the other hand, if we are
supposed to teach our students to get new knowledge in our globalized world, we should teach
them how to be critical with what they read and share in social media/network.
creativity in our students, I also believe that as teachers we have the duty to incorporate other
significant strategies to teach our students how to develop their creativity. As it was mentioned
by Puccio and Keller (2007) “creative thinking can be developed, […] people, through practice,
could deliberately improve their creative thinking skills” (p. 281). Considering that creativity is a
process that involves certain steps, and also “that enables individuals to address significant
challenges as they move toward a goal” (Puccio and Keller, p. 296), then it should not be
THE ROLE OF THE EFL TEACHER IN THE DEVELOPING OF CREATIVITY AMONG THEIR 4
STUDENTS.
difficult to incorporate it explicitly in the learning process. One of the skills that authors relate to
creativity is problem solving, which is also a process where, as Puccio and Keller (2007)
describe, involves three main stages: Clarification, which corresponds to becoming aware of a
solving. One of those examples is a subject created in primary in a private school called “Latino
Cordillera”, students there had a subject called “TPP” which is Spanish means “tiempo de
planificación propia”; children here had the chance to plan a personal project during the week to
be done in Fridays. That means that students decided what they want to do (for example, cooking
a cake, making a drawing, making crafts, etc.) and they had to come up with resources that we
will need, time they will use, help if they needed; in this sense, children wrote everything in the
format of a project, with a description, a Gantt chart and possible outcomes. I had the chance to
observe how these children behave years after when they encountered problems, whether they
were predicaments or opportunities, and most of those students were able to tackle different
situations and easily work on possible solutions. Another example of dealing with problem
solving in the classroom is the methodology that teachers are using in my current job, which is
the Project Based Learning. Our students decide what they want to learn, or they are exposed to a
motivating situation which has to solve through learning experiences. Then teachers connect
learning objectives from different subject within “bases curriculares” and come up with a project
together with the students; in order to solve or complete the project, students become aware of
what the need and how to do it, they also have to communicate the result of their project to the
most suitable audience. As an English teacher I also have to be creative when deciding which
THE ROLE OF THE EFL TEACHER IN THE DEVELOPING OF CREATIVITY AMONG THEIR 5
STUDENTS.
are going to be the most coherent strategies to foster creativity and critical thinking within the
project-based methodology. Our students are used to take a decision on what topics they would
like to explore in English, and how they think is the best way to learn them, this is definitely a
challenge for less experienced teachers because we have to be flexible and creative enough to
include English learning goals to the students desired topics. Also, we have to encourage
students to solve their ideas through problem solving, collaborative work and communicative
tasks.
Considering that there is a large amount of new information that is revealed every day,
children and young people are not being benefited of learning isolated content any longer.
Learning how to develop high order skills such as creativity and critical thinking becomes more
significant for students of this century. The role of teachers within this novel situation comes to
enhance the possibilities that our students have to learn the above-mentioned skills. At the same
time English teachers have the chance to foster creative and critical thinking among students by
taking informed and ethical decisions regarding how students should learn a new language
properly, and also providing learning experiences in which students are able to take their own
decisions, practice collaboration, and come up with solutions for predicaments and opportunities.
THE ROLE OF THE EFL TEACHER IN THE DEVELOPING OF CREATIVITY AMONG THEIR 6
STUDENTS.
References
Ghonsooly, B., Showqui, S. (2012). The effects of foreign language learning on creativity.
Puccio, G. J., Keller-Mathers, S. (2007). Enhancing thinking and leadership skills through
creative problem solving. In A. G. Tan (Ed.), Creativity: a handbook for teachers (pp.