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A CREATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING. A WAY
TO RECOGNISE, ENCOURAGE AND APPRECIATE STUDENTS'
CONTRIBUTIONS TO LANGUAGE CLASSES
Sultonova Gulsara,
the english teacher of Vobkent district Polytechnicum №1
Abstract: This article explores the Creative Approach to Language Teaching
(CALT), a methodology developed and successfully implemented at Masaryk
University Language Centre. The approach recognizes students’ existing
knowledge and diverse skills, encouraging their active contributions to language
learning. By emphasizing creativity as an innate skill, it engages learners in real-
life communication scenarios, fostering problem-solving, collaboration, and self-
expression. The article also discusses the advantages of student-generated sources,
highlighting how students can select learning materials, improve autonomy, and
enhance critical thinking skills. This approach redefines the teacher’s role as a
facilitator rather than a provider of knowledge, creating a dynamic and interactive
learning environment.
Key Words:Creative Approach to Language Teaching (CALT), student-
generated materials, problem-solving in language learning, creativity in ELT,
collaborative learning, real-life communication, autonomous learning.
In this extract, Libor Stepanek presents 'The creative approach to language
teaching', which has been developed, tested and successfully implemented at
Masaryk University Language Centre.
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Here is the fourth extract from the latest British Council publication
'
Creativity in the English Language classroom
' edited by Alan Maley and Nik
Peachey. In this chapter, Libor Stepanek presents an approach which has been
developed, tested and successfully implemented at Masaryk University Language
Centre.
'The approach is primarily used by university teachers but it could also be used by
teachers and teacher trainers in all types of schools for all levels of language
learners. Its main aim is to invite teachers to recognise and value the existing
knowledge and the diverse skills language learners bring with them, and to
encourage learners’ contributions to language classes.
Theoretical background
Creativity is a complex field studied and discussed from many different
perspectives. This is one of the reasons why there is no generally accepted
definition and we always have to be aware of the point of view we take in defining
creativity. The Creative Approach to Language Teaching is an approach that
presents creativity as one of our many innate skills, a talent that every person, and
every language learner has. This approach focuses on the idea that we all can enjoy
the potential to be creative under certain conditions; that we all abound with many
different forms and levels of creativity and that it is the teacher’s task to stimulate
the creative potential in students.
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Language teachers have three advantages that can help stimulate creativity in
students.
First, language is creative in its very nature. We can express or communicate
one idea in many different ways. Furthermore, every expressed or communicated
idea can provoke many different reactions. Every single sentence, phrase or word
we say or write is created in a unique moment of communication and can be re-
created, re-formulated, paraphrased or changed according to the goals of the
speaker or writer.
Second, language classes are not limited by any specialised subject or
knowledge. Language teachers can, therefore, build their lessons on topics related
to sport, management, law or philosophy and still focus on language. This is why
a community-of-practice setting, where students and teachers share their individual
types of expertise and knowledge, can be more easily established.
And third, language classes can easily engage students in creative situations.
By creative situations we mean close-to-reality situations in which students do not
use well-known and practised steps that can be applied almost automatically in
order to achieve one correct solution to a problem. In creative situations, students
have to produce one or more answers to a series of inter-connected problems. They
do not know what steps can be used to solve a problem, they may not be sure if the
problem has one solution, a wide range of possible solutions or if it has any solution
at all. Students simply do not encounter clear-cut situations that can result only in
“succeed-fail” or “correct-incorrect” solutions, rather they face unclear situations
with unclear and tentative solutions. Sometimes, even the setting of a situation or
instructions can require a certain level of interpretation. Since language usage
represents a form of communication that can be used in almost every situation,
authenticity or reality-close situations can be created more easily than in classes of
chemistry or history, for example.
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To sum up, the Creative Approach to Language Teaching, which is based on
the idea that any student can be creative when they are engaged in creative
situations, shows students the complexity of a language by exposing them to close-
to-real-life situations in a safe, flexible and dynamic environment by means of a
class
of
learners
constituted
as
a
community
of
practice.
…
Student-generated sources
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
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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.'
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References:
1. Stepanek, L. (2020). The Creative Approach to Language Teaching. In A.
Maley & N. Peachey (Eds.), Creativity in the English Language Classroom (4th
ed.). British Council.
2. Maley, A., & Peachey, N. (Eds.). (2020). Creativity in the English
Language Classroom. British Council.
. Richards, J. C. (2013). Creativity in Language Teaching. RELC Journal,
44(2), 175-191.
4. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of
Discovery and Invention. Harper Perennial.
5. Harmer, J. (2015). The Practice of English Language Teaching (5th ed.).
Pearson.
