Педагогика/современные методы преподавания

Доцент Белай В.И.

Южно-Российский государственный университет экономики и сервиса

Some Aspects of the Problem of Increasing Personality Creative Thought through Foreign Language Learning

Our task is to study the essence of creativity, the techniques of fostering creative thought and activity and to suggest some ways of increasing the personality creative potential. The increase of creative thought and creative abilities became an inseparable part of vocational training at colleges and universities because it was the creativity of individuals that promoted some of the major scientific and technological advances in the 20-th century. The current situation is characterized by the growth of the section of the global economy the so-called «creative industries» which generate wealth through the creation and exploitation of intellectual property or through provision of creative services. The creative class has become a driver of modern economies and regions with high concentration of creative professionals tend to have a higher level of economic development.

But the transfer of knowledge and experience by traditional (reproductive) methods does not provide the effective increase of student intelligence. The individual should be taught the creativity procedure itself and the ability to generate new and unique ideas, be unafraid to use unorthodox methods and take unorthodox decisions. It is the activity characterized by novelty, stability, difficulty in setting problem and is non-traditional. In order to solve the problem of training the creative professional it is necessary to understand the essence of creativity and define the obligatory components of creative thought.

This problem has been studied from different perspectives but still there is no single definition of creativity and no standardized measurement technique. Foreign and Russian scientists (S.L. Rubinstein, R.A. Nizamov, N.A. Ponomaryov and others) define creativity as the highest form of personality activity, it is creation and discovery of something new, the source of all spiritual and material values demanding special preparation, erudition and mental abilities. M. Henly considers ‘correctness’, ‘novelty’, ‘harmony’ and ‘freedom’ to be the obligatory components of creative thought. She treats ‘freedom’ as ability to get rid of accumulated knowledge if necessary and to look at the problem from a fresh perspective.

Creative thought is closely correlated with creativity and is a mental process involving creative problem solving and the discovery of new ideas or concepts or new associations of the existing (old) ideas or concepts. The products of creative thought must be original and appropriate.

Creativity is also connected with personality traits which form the basis for enhancing creative thought. Psychologists include energy, ingenuity, inventiveness, cognitive abilities, persistence, the ability to see the problem, originality, flexibility of thought, courage, acumen, the ability for decomposition and combination of information and others into the list of creative abilities which can be developed and enhanced both in the course of training at university and learning on the job.

Creative process is impossible without independent transference of knowledge and skills into the new situation, finding out new problems in familiar standard situations, the ability to see the alternative to a given solution and make connections between previously unrelated ideas.

So, the only way to increase student’s creativity is to involve him into creative activity which can originate and enhance when there is a necessity to overcome difficulties using intelligence. These difficulties were called the problem situation which is the core notion in the concept of problem teaching. Without practice in problem solving it is impossible to get the experience in creative activity.

What tasks are called problematic? The methodic of foreign language teaching does not give the exact definition of the problematic task. However, we should say that any task is problematic if it cannot be solved according to the familiar scheme.

Having analyzed the criteria of creative activity we worked out blocks of exercises which were conditionally divided into two groups – semi-creative and creative. Semi-creative exercises include exercises that can provide training skills in:

- word-building and identifying parts of speech;

- grouping words in accordance with definite word-building elements, parts of speech, theme or specialty;

- combining words (verbs with nouns, nouns with adjectives and so on);

- constructing words out of letters. One and the same word can be repeated without limitations.

- choosing synonyms and antonyms to given words;

- constructing sentences out of words.

The first four exercises promote word memorizing due to strong associations between them and provide student’s readiness to use them. The last exercises facilitate increase of ease in setting associative links. They provide readiness of memory for giving out ‘necessary information at necessary moment’, quick thought and to some extent develop language guess that is very important for translating sentences and texts at any stage of learning. Language guess envisages shrewdness, quick thought, ability to compare and analyze signs, subjects, etc. that is personality traits people are born with but which can also be taught by applying some techniques.

Problematic exercises can be used in the process of learning grammar as well.

Creative exercises include tasks in:

- constructing sentences and situations using suggested words and word combinations; retelling the text using key words; constructing the text out of sentences and so on. These rather simple ways of generating thoughts are assessed by their depth and soundness.

- increasing the abilities of anticipation (fantasy, imagination) and critical mind.

Tasks providing creative problem solving are given below.

- Give the assessment of the facts given in the text from the professional point of view and analyze the consequences …

- Imagine that you deliver a report on …

- Name the problems connected with …

- name the possible consequences of some event (described in the text or taking place in real life).

- use the facts given in the text to prove that …

- give your arguments to convince your opponent in advantages of …

Such tasks stimulate student’s intensive mental activity, increase imagination, flexibility of thought, learn to give the critical assessment of the event, fact, life phenomenon and deeply penetrate into the problem. Problematic tasks possess high learning and motivation characteristics. However, they should be used only in those cases when the contents of the texts contain the problems and when they help reach the aim of learning better than by using traditional forms.

We proved experimentally that if in the process of foreign language learning successive transition from semi-creative exercises to creative tasks is provided, the basis for this transition being the sound assimilation of skills envisaged by exercises of the first type, the formation of the skills of creative activity mentioned above is successful.