Dublin Core
Title
Encouraging Students’ Creativity through Literature in EFL Classes
Abstract
Over the years, it has been stated that creativity focuses on how we think and our strong desire to achieve something new or different. It is very important for language as well because the main purpose of language is to conduct the messages during communication. Individuals may wish to transfer their messages through different tools, which they would find out through creation. Therefore, encouraging creativity should be a purpose of language teachers as creative communication is both needed and crucial. Use of literature is an effective way of encouraging creativity in language classes. A creative context implies an environment of possibility which offers choices and encourages students to play with ideas and words and find innovative ways forward. Teachers want to include form, function and rules of language in those by helping students explore these in meaningful contexts. In this sense, literature is of the greatest help as it provides ways to achieve that. This paper aims to study the ways to exploit literary texts in order to have students discover language patterns with form and function; as well as the ways to foster students’ creativity through the use of literature. For this purpose, regular language and reading lessons were held with an EFL class of 21 students. The attitudes of the students and the classroom teacher have been identified through interviews and questionnaires. In addition, the academic performances of the students have been evaluated at the beginning and the end of the research process. As a result, it has been seen that both students and the teacher had positive attitudes towards the use of literature in language classes and the academic performances have increased. In conclusion, this study can help creativity through the use of literary texts be placed in teaching foreign language as a new trend.
Keywords
Conference or Workshop Item
PeerReviewed
PeerReviewed
Date
2012
Extent
989