Abstract:

Modern life demands originality in all possible ways, from being creative in a job interview to expressing yourself in projects. However, students spend most of their study time engaged in formal activities, training critical thinking, reasoning, explaining, and other logical activities which require an application of regulated principles. ESL students experience these same problems as well as studying a foreign language, which they must perform successfully. Despite strong intellectual abilities to develop their language skills, ESL students struggle when encountering creative assignments, such as creative writing, expanding new ideas, making reports based on their own studies, etc. The question is where educators could find an opportunity to improve ESL students’ creative abilities without adding more subjects to the curriculum. It is achievable when creative challenges are inserted into a regular class time. In this paper, different principles and strategies of how to develop creative skills in the ESL classroom are considered. The author considers a number of resources with great potential for creative tasks, such as paintings, museum resources, fiction, modern media, products of visual culture, and the dialogue of cultures are natural ways to enhance students’ creativity. The research activities of applying these resources involve ESL students who study English for academic and specific purposes at university level. A creative component approach (CCA) proposed in the paper incorporated into the curriculum helps the students feel more comfortable in dealing with different language assignments. The CCA includes a variety of imaginative tasks that could be useful in modern classrooms, e.g. “crazy” writing, describing personal experience, generating questions, etc. Although this approach uses well-known tasks, being intentionally and persistently used, it enhances students’ self-awareness of being able to produce something original and unique in English. The CCA expands the boundaries of academic assessment and critical evaluation.

Keywords:

Creativity, ESL classroom, modern curriculum, creative skills, fine arts, educational resources, foreign language teaching.