Education Sciences / 5. Modern Methods of Teaching

Ivanchenko T.U.

South-Russia State University of Economics and Services, Russia

A ROLE OF CREATIVITY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES TEACHING AND LEARNING

The world we live in is changing dramatically and to develop students’ unique creativities is an important and worthwhile educational goal. Specialists of tomorrow will need more than professional skills. Due to the development of technologies, means of communication and telecommunication the world has become more common place. In the context of international cooperation it is equally important to have not only professional knowledge but certain features necessary for good running the cooperation and develop thanks to it. The meaning of creativity for the development of educational system, cross-cultural communication and personal skills is of great importance.

Higher education must help students to develop their potential as fully as possible within the learning context and prepare them for a life time of learning, problem working, changing and coping with change, encourage students to plan for, manage and reflect on their own learning and development, then help students to understand the role of creativity in their learning and their experiences of learning.

Learning is not isolated from context like a subject, a problem, an opportunity. It isn’t isolated from motivation as well: need, desire, interest or compulsion. Context also stimulates the need for creativity and shapes the form that creativity takes. Personal choice is also important: we can choose to be or not to be creative [1].

As known, creative process contains a set of interconnected activities, experiences and relationships:

1) thinking ahead and planning what to do – analyzing tasks, identifying goals, creating strategies to achieve; 2) doing things in line with planned intentions but being responsible to the effects of actions and changing plans if appropriate;

3) thinking about what was done and what was achieved in order to learn (reflecting, reviewing and evaluating; making sense of experience);

4) self-observing and recording - thoughts, ideas, experiences, actions and their effects, experiences to develop a record of learning;

5) participating in activities (thinking about identity and integrity) ;

6) communicating constantly (developing communicative abilities).

We consider creativity to be an integral part of foreign languages. Fluency in foreign languages is also equally significant as the knowledge of special subject areas. A language has the scope for an enormous number of combinations and options. Although governed by rules, it offers immense scope for originality. Languages have enormous potential to be creative ones. They are used to create works of art, and for cross-cultural communication. Learning a language may be a creative work because languages are so various and complex, and each person needs to use and combine elements of knowledge in new ways often and often. The discipline of Foreign Languages carries these associations, and uses them, without necessarily truly promoting creativity. Language study also tends to creativity as it can be seen to cover other disciplines with endless range for doing so in new ways.

Work in the target language can encompass an enormous variety of fields - all that human beings communicate about. This gives vast scope for creative responses and explorations [2].

Language teaching is very open and flexible area where creative activities can be easily included in both the teaching activities and in the language curriculum. It has different ingredients to be combined differently in order to create something one can manage to. Thus, creativity lies in the ability to construct meaningful language from the building-blocks which are available and to express ideas using the resources available; though the resources can be adapted and the language learner can often be in control of resources. In another way, creativity also means the scope to play with language and ideas for their own sake. We think process of interaction with the world begins when we put the languages we are learning into action. It is what happens when we begin to play, perform and live in languages as part of an expression of a fuller dimension of life than that demanded by limits of curriculum.

Creative user of a foreign language is a person who is engaged in the world-in-action, who moves in the world in a way that allows the risk of stepping out of one’s habitual ways of speaking and attempt to develop different, more relational ways of interacting with the people and phenomena that one encounters in everyday life.

Creativity and reproduction are face to face on the line of communication perspective. “Reproduction embodies the traditional paradigm of education, privileging transmission and a conformist, passive reproduction of stereotyped forms” [2].

Intercultural communicator and language user rely on creativity as a necessary condition for foreign language learning. In our opinion, the use of any language is creative itself. Thinking, re-enacting the speech, thought and lexis of another foreign culture inspires creativity. Creativity is a part of translation strategies in oral communication (e.g. to paraphrase when we don't know the exact word), and in written communication. An appreciation of creativity is also fostered through the cultural aspects of foreign languages learning, when students are naturally exposed to a certain range of creative forms (literature, art, film, songs etc.) either because these are used as texts for language study or because they are part of separate lessons that help students acquire an understanding of the culture related to the language.

We believe that the teacher should be responsible for the selection, organization and exploration of the materials which are brought to class. Materials should be meaningful, provocative, allow for the active, critical exploration of students and teacher.

REFERENCE

1. Norman Jackson. Developing and Valuing Students’ Creativity; a New Role for Personal Development Planning? http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/creativity.htm.

2. Margaret Anne Clarke. Creativity in Modern Foreign Languages Teaching and Learning. International and European Studies Division, School of Languages and Area Studies University of Portsmouth.

сomplexworld.pbworks.com/f/Creativity_Working_Paper_Modern+Languages.doc