Topic: Creativity in Language Teaching
Date & Time: Friday, 25 October 2013 at 1 - 3 p.m.
Venue: B101
Guest Speaker: Dr. Rodney H. Jones

Abstract

Lately there has been a lot of interest in the notion of ‘creativity’ in all walks of life from education to business. Governments, corporations and universities all focus on how they can help people to be more ‘creative’ and more ‘innovative’. ‘Creativity’ has also become a popular ‘buzzword’ in language teaching. Teachers are told to make their lessons more ‘creative’, and tasks are designed to supposedly instill in students develop ‘creative and critical thinking skills’. There is, however, very little understanding about what actually constitutes creativity in foreign language teaching and learning, how it can be identified, evaluated and successfully integrated into the curriculum. What is ‘creativity’? Is ‘creativity’ really beneficial for language learning? How can we judge whether or not teachers or students are sufficiently ‘creative’? This lecture attempts to answer these questions by approaching creativity from a discourse analytical perspective, focusing less on the psychological dimension of creativity and more on its linguistic and interactional dimensions. It will explore how everyday language use demands a certain amount of creativity, using examples from both face to face and computer mediated interactions. It also gives advice on how instructional activities can be designed to help students develop the kind of creativity they need to be successful learners and users of a language.

About the speaker

Dr. Rodney Jones is Acting Head of the Department of English of City University of Hong Kong. His research interests include creativity, discourse analysis and computer mediated communication. His books include Discourse and Creativity (Pearson, 2012), Discourse Analysis: A resource book for students (Routledge, 2012), and Understanding Digital Literacies: A practical introduction (Routledge, 2012).