Creativity in English language teaching

Abstract

We need another book because questions about creative language teaching are re-ignited by every teacher in every classroom in every country. Each time a language teacher enters a class, a silent experiment in hope and creativity is taking place: hope that the lesson will make a difference to at least one of its learners in some way; creativity in that teachers strive to give the lesson something of their own that goes beyond imitation or compliance. The teachers who describe their last lesson with a sparkle in their eye, rarely describe the joys of “doing what they are told” by the course book or the test paper. Instead they describe a sense of doing something of worth, and making a difference to their learners. This is why we will never run out of the need for teachers to tell us their stories about what they did, why, and how they know it worked. The more specific and concrete we are with our stories of classrooms, the more it seems to tap into common and universal professional questions. This is one of the interesting mysteries of sharing professional stories. Compare, for example, a “broad brush” manifesto telling us that teaching a song works better than drilling a grammar point; and then, a teacher’s diary account of a grammar lesson which “bombed”, and was saved by turning it into a songwriting lesson in which each group planned, wrote and performed a rap chant. The teacher’s narrative takes us on a journey of discovery, ignites empathy, offers a strategy for turning disaster into opportunity. From it, multiple generative principles can be gleaned: meeting learners halfway, working with their interests and going beyond them, taking the creative and giving it structure, turning teaching disaster into gold. In contrast, imperatives, and lists of principles, however worthy, simply cannot give us this richness; and they are to be read and taken on trust that somewhere, for some teacher, they worked. This is why we need teachers to tell us their stories, and in discovering what is different about each of them, discover what is the same. [Foreword by Jane Spiro]