Creative thinking in teaching foreign languages

The article is devoted to the issue of creative thinking in foreign language teaching. Considered the issue if interaction of creative and critical thinking. Discussed some methods of formation of creative thinking, suggested by psychologists and methodologists and also presented examples of using these methods in teaching foreign languages.

I keep six honest serving men They taught me all I knew:

Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who

Rudyard Kipling (from «Just So Stories)

Modern education — is one of the most important means of solving problems, of not only society, but also individuals. In any state the nature of the system of education is determined by socio-economic and political systems, as well as historical, cultural and national characteristics of the country. Taking into account the ideas of the great teachers, the wishes of parents and students a choice of methods and means of training depends on the needs of society.

When a society was in need of collectors, hunters and fishermen (in ancient times), there existed a primitive pedagogy (teaching) route, which produced gatherers, fishermen and hunters with a simple example («Do as I do! Follow me!»). That was enough to raise (brought up) gatherers, fishermen, hunters, and even soldiers.

When a society was in need of orators and philosophers, there appeared a pedagogy (studios of ancient Greece), focused on the education of the orator or philosopher in the classes of rhetoric in public discourse (and when Socrates introduced a new methodology, now known as the Socratic method, he was sentenced to death.) When society was in need of more artisan in this society there appeared technical schools (workshops) and, accordingly, pedagogy for teaching technical skills and experience.

When society needed more educated engineers and doctors, there appeared pedagogy of learning (schools, colleges, universities). When in the last century it was found that the existing methods of teaching and problem solving are not sufficient to meet the needs of society, there were schools for creative thinking, creative school education, and creative approach to problem solving [1].

Nowadays, when education is changing due to changes in the demands of society, the learning process in higher education focuses mainly on the development of the kind of thinking that develops skills of analysis, i.e. — teaching students how to understand the requirements, follow or create a logical argument, to find out answer, eliminate incorrect paths and focus on the right. Thus to develop critical thinking. However, to meet the needs of the community in the creative specialists began to develop different kind of thinking, aimed at the study of ideas, opportunities, looking for many right answers, not just one — creative thinking. Both of these types of thinking are essential to successful study and work, but the latter is not very well developed, studied, and therefore, in most cases, ignored in higher education. The main distinguishing features of these two types of thinking proposed by Robert Haris [2]. Data are presented in the table below:

In any action to deal with any mental problems are very important both kinds of thinking. First of all, any problem should be analyzed and this is a generation of possible solutions, then it is necessary to select and implement the best solution, and, finally, to evaluate the effectiveness of solutions. This process shows the alternation between the two kinds of thinking, critical and creative. In practice, both types of thinking and working together are not truly independent of each other.

So, what is creativity? To address this question it is necessary to understand the concepts, creative, creativity, thinking and understanding the brink of data fusion concepts.

Creativity — the process of activity, creating a qualitatively new material and spiritual values, or a result of the new subjective. Creativity (from the English. Create — create, Eng. Creative — creative, creative) creative ability of the individual, characterized by a willingness to create a fundamentally new ideas that deviate from traditional patterns of thought and received a part of a talent as an independent factor, and the ability solve problems that arise in static systems. According to Abraham Maslow — a creative focus, innate characteristic of all but lose most under the influence of Thinking — is higher cognitive processes, activities to transform reality, creating a new, change existing condition.

Hence we conclude that creative or creative thinking — is the creative ability of the individual towards the transformation of reality, creation and implementation of new ideas.

The man in today raises a lot of needs and challenges, which makes a variety of mental problems. This is related to a number of different classifications of thinking proposed by psychologists, philosophers and educators.

At the moment, there are numerous techniques for creative thinking, but complete classification does not exist so far. Learning foreign languages is an excellent area for the formation and development of the foundations of creative thinking. As you know neotryven language of culture and language teaching means teaching culture, a process inseparably linked with creative thinking on the part of the teacher, and on the part of students. Creative thinking is necessary first of all the teacher to create an atmosphere in the classroom sending country-specific target language, as well as to send a new linguistic material through the lens of culture, as well as to maintain the motivation of students to educate themselves in this area of knowledge, as the means to teach the language to teach to live and think in that language. Students creative thinking is necessary to complete perception of culture, and the culture of the country to skip the target  language through the prism of its usual perception of the world, as well as the utterance pragmatic tasks related to the culture and way of life and a foreign language.

With one of the simplest method of developing creative thinking we face every day in every situation when we face any problem. Let’s name it «Ask questions» or «Idea Generators». This method can be used in different activities in class beginning from just asking questions and also after giving to the students some problem solving task. There are only six questions that one student can ask another or teacher may ask student:

Teacher may also draw a mind map of the problem with these six words as nodes on the map as presented on the scheme: 

Also using this method can be organized role playing activities, story telling activities or it can be as worming up before beginning new theme or project etc.

An example of methods of forming creative thinking can be a well-known to teachers of English language — Brainstorm (brainstorming), which is based on the principle of dilution to the time of the two phases of the creative act: the generation of ideas and their critical evaluation. Usually the thought process they are so fused that most emerging ideas swept aside by the individual immediately, even before he has time to find them embedded in the rational [3]. Options for using this technique in the learning process can be many, so for example, when students offered some problematic topic for discussion or text for further discussion and the students in pairs or groups to present their solution to the problem and then analyzing these decisions come to the same uniform. Also to this method include a description of student pictures, or transfer of associative units for some concepts.

Another technique that has found a place in the teaching of foreign languages and a number of other humanities — is synectics. She identifies two processes that can be used in the work, such as:

1. turning unfamiliar to a familiar
2. turning familiar to unfamiliar

With the first stage, which is very important, we are familiar better. When we are faced with a new challenge, we, first of all, try to understand it, to study, to correlate with the known and the situation we experience [4].

But the creative process is not less important is the second process, which we used to work a lot less. The transformation of the familiar in the unfamiliar — is a coup, a distortion, a change of perspective on everyday things, events. And considering how well-known the unknown is the basis of creativity and it is on this aspect focuses synectics. This technique is valuable in the development of oral and written language, as motivates students to think about the usual things, but from unusual angles, such as assignment to write a letter on behalf of myself neighbor, relative, or an enemy in a foreign language in the student generate many ideas to express which it will use a foreign language, but with an excellent proficiency in a language of thought may be from the outset in a foreign language [5].

Early in the 1980s Dr. de Bono invented the Six Thinking Hats method. The method is a framework for thinking and can incorporate lateral thinking. Valuable judgmental thinking has its place in the system but is not allowed to dominate as in normal thinking. Dr. de Bono organized a network of authorized trainers to introduce the Six Thinking Hats. Advanced Practical Thinking (APTT), of Des Moines, Iowa USA, licenses the training in all parts of the world except Canada (and now, Europe). APTT organizes the trainers and supplies the only training materials written and authorized by Dr. de Bono.

Organizations such as Prudential Insurance, IBM, Federal Express, British Airways, Polaroid, Pepsico, DuPont, and Nippon Telephone and Telegraph, possibly the world's largest company, use Six Thinking Hats. The six hats represent six modes of thinking and are directions to think rather than labels for thinking.

That is, the hats are used proactively rather than reactively.

The method promotes fuller input from more people. In de Bono's words it «separates ego from performance». Everyone is able to contribute to the exploration without denting egos as they are just using the yellow hat or whatever hat. The six hats system encourages performance rather than ego defense. People can contribute under any hat even though they initially support the opposite view.

The key point is that a hat is a direction to think rather than a label for thinking. The key theoretical reasons to use the Six Thinking Hats are to:

• encourage Parallel Thinking
• encourage full-spectrum thinking
• separate ego from performance

The published book Six Thinking Hats (de Bono, 1985) is readily available and explains the system, although there have been some additions and changes to the execution of the method.

There are six metaphorical hats and the thinker can put on or take off one of these hats to indicate the type of thinking being used. This putting on and taking off is essential. The hats must never be used to categorize individuals, even though their behavior may seem to invite this. When done in group, everybody wear the same hat at the same time.

1. White Hat thinking

This covers facts, figures, information needs and gaps. «I think we need some white hat thinking at this point...» means Let's drop the arguments and proposals, and look at the data base.»

2. Red Hat thinking

This covers intuition, feelings and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any ned to justify it. «Putting on my red hat, I think this is a terrible proposal.» Ususally feelings and intuition can only be introduced into a discussion if they are supported by logic. Usually the feeling is genuine but the logic is spurious.The red hat gives full permission to a thinker to put forward his or her feelings on the subject at the moment.

3. Black Hat thinking

This is the hat of judgment and caution. It is a most valuable hat. It is not in any sense an inferior or negative hat. The rior or negative hat. The black hat is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts, the available experience, the system in use, or the policy that is being followed. The black hat must always be logical.

4. Yellow Hat thinking

This is the logical positive. Why something will work and why it will offer benefits. It can be used in looking forward to the results of some proposed action, but can also be used to find something of value in what has already happened.

5. Green Hat thinking

This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, what is interesting, provocations and changes.

6. Blue Hat thinking

This is the overview or process control hat. It looks not at the subject itself but at the 'thinking' about the subject. «Putting on my blue hat, I feel we should do some more green hat thinking at this point.» In technical terms, the blue hat is concerned with meta-cognition [6].

A great contribution to the development and coverage of this topic was made by Edward de Bono, who in his writings detailed the topic of lateral thinking. In his concept, Edward de Bono was trying to find a new lateral thinking as a separate type of thinking that is different from the vertical and horizontal logic of fantasy thinking. The new thinking, which was scheduled to describe de Bono, had the effect of creating something new out of what is already known. In other words, lateral thinking was the idea of the famous (or multiple ideas) to create a completely new concept...

Lateral (Latin lateralis — side, from latus — side) — means «side» or «biased.» Thus, lateral   thinking this mindset shifted (redirect) on traditional

How thinking can shift or redirect? Edward de Bono has been allocated several stages of lateral thinking:

1. The choice of To create something new must-select areas of creativity, some already known idea, a concept, a thing, etc., from which we will draw on. Without this starting point, it is simply impossible to move on. The better the focus, the easier it will be to create something new.
2. Generating lateral Essentially creating the gap in the current focus is the main stage of lateral thinking. From a logical idea, formulated in the first stage, it is important to make certain shift in violation of the logic of this idea (substitution, inversion, union, amplification, deletion, reorganization).
3. After the second step was to break the pattern and get the changes (probably absurd) the judgment we need in a new judgment to find something logical. It is at this stage the real creativity, and an opportunity to get something new [4].

Thus, passing three stages of lateral thinking process (focus — break — search links), you can create one of a host of new ideas.

This technique is common for the development of lateral thinking, creative thinking as a subspecies. A striking example of this method is that a small game that can be done in class with the students to develop skills in speaking. Students are offered two groups of cards: the first consists of those items, and the  second is the individual words, phrases or sentences, for example 

The task of the student is while speaking on the topic from 1 set of cards, to hide the sentence from the 2 set of cards. And other students must guess what sentence was hidden. That is, to break the logic of old standards and with the second group of cards to rebuild his story. From this example also demonstrates the relationship of critical thinking and creativity.

As devision of lateral thinking method can be defined «random-word method» as a powerful lateralthinking technique that is very easy to use. It is by far the simplest of all creative techniques and is widely used by people who need to create new ideas (for example, for new products).

Chance events allow us to enter the existing patterns of our thinking at a different point. The associations of a word applied to the new out of context situation generates new connections in our mind, often producing an instant Eureka effect, insight or intuition.

It is said that Newton got the idea of gravity when he was hit on the head with an apple while sitting under an apple tree. It is not necessary to sit under trees and wait for an apple to fall — we can get up and shake the tree. We can produce our own chance events.

Random inputs can be words or images. Some techniques for getting random words (and the words should be nouns) are:

• Have a bag full of thousands of words written on small pieces of paper, cardboard, poker chips, Close your eyes, put in your hand and pull out a word.
• Open the dictionary (or newspaper) at a random page and choose a
• Use a computer program to give you a random word. I have a Hypercard program suitable for Apple Macintosh which uses this list of words (236 of them!)
• Make up your own list of 60 words. Look at your watch and take note of the seconds. Use this number to get the

It is important to use the first word students find. Once student has chosen the word, list its attributions or associations with the word. Then apply each of the items on their list and see how it applies to the problem at hand.

One more good method is to make random picture cards by cutting out pictures from the various pieces of advertising material and magazines that appear in my letter box. A card can be picked at random and used as the random word. Choosing pictures without text allows more right-brain approach. Cards include pictures of felt pens, furniture, kitchen items, art works, people, buildings, scenes and abstract designs according to the teaching topic. The cards can be shuffled and a card chosen at random [5].

How does it work? Because the brain is a self-organising system, and very good at making connections almost any random word will stimulate ideas on the subject. Students follow the associations and functions of the stimulus word, as well as using aspects of the word as a metaphor.

Using the methods described in the paper, and using the skills and capabilities of their creative thinking you can improve students' motivation to learn foreign languages, to improve the mastery of the material, giving interdisciplinary knowledge, and develop skills in creative thinking in students. 

References

1. http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Креативная_педагогика
2. Robert Harris. Introduction to Creative Thinking. — London, Open University Press 2012. — 256
3. Allakhverdyan A.G., Moshkova G.Yu. et al. Science psychology. Ucheb. posobie. — M.: Mosk. psihologo-soc. in-te: Flinta, 1998. — 312
4. De Bono, Edward (1985). Six Thinking Hats: An Essential Approach to Business Management. Little, Brown, & Company, 2004. — 328
5. Kamal S.Birdi, No idea? Evaluating the effectiveness of creativity training, Journal of European Industrial Training, — № — 2005. — Vol. 29. — Р. 102–111.
6. De Bono. Six Thinking Hats. — Official training materials — Thinking Systems, 2008. — 298