Creativity Tests and Tasks
Introduction
Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to attend the Psychology of Language Learning Conference in Madrid. One of the talks I went to was a workshop by Ashleigh Pipes (University of Tennessee, USA): ‘Embracing Creativity as an Individual Difference in SLA’. She presented interesting evidence that successful second language acquisition is linked to creativity, and related skills such as divergent thinking and problem solving. Therefore, as language teachers, we should be giving creativity as much attention as we do other individual differences such as motivation or aptitude.
Not only is this an interesting area for research, but it lends itself easily to classroom activities. Ashleigh tried a couple of these, taken from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, with us in the workshop. I’ve since tried them out with students and they meet the following criteria:
- materials-light (or free!)
- easy and simple to set up
- fun for students (they get to analyse themselves)
- generate lots of discussion
In the next couple of posts, I’ll be sharing a couple of ideas taken from this workshop. These may not be new – but worth revisiting! There are classroom resource books to help develop creativity, e.g. The Creative Teacher’s Compendium (Marsh, A. & Clare, A, Pavilion ELT, 2021). If you are interested in looking into the background and research in this area in more depth, I would recommend Ashleigh’s book: Researching Creativity in Second Language Acquisition (Routledge, 2023)
Summary
These activities are designed to be done individually, and then act as a spingboard to classroom discussion.
How creative are you? – learners do one of the tasks from the Torrance Test to find out their own level of creativity and then discuss the results.
The Paper Clip Test – a classic test of creativty, that needs no prep or materials! Students have to think of as many different uses for a paper clip as they can! Simple but generates lots of (sometimes heated) discussion.
Materials
A pdf with teacher’s instructions and key for each of these activities can be downloaded. There is a downloadable handout for ‘How creative are you?’. The ‘Paper Clip Test’ is materials free!
Hope you – and your students – enjoy them and let me know how it goes!
EFL Takeaways 