Creativity is not for special days and not for a select few. It is for presenting and practising vocabulary, presenting and practising grammar, improving pronunciation, developing speaking, writing, listening and reading. Small changes introduced step-by-step at different levels of teaching can gradually lead to a richer and more motivational, more creative learning environment for the learners and a more fulfilling, more rewarding teaching experience for the teachers. You will see how can the idea be used in different ways.
1. Students talk about themselves. They are asked to share facts about themselves, their feelings, ideas, opinions, etc. 2. Students talk as someone else. They act and speak in a role. They receive some information about a situation, a problem, the character they are, etc. and they pretend to be that person in the given situation.3. Students talk about someone or something else. They talk about a situation/story they are not part of. Three Categories of Speaking Activities
Teaching vocabulary, we help our students to connect the form of a word with its meaning. Students can get to the meaning if they see or hear the word and they have the meaning in mind when they say it or write it. When we present vocabulary, we provide the form, spoken and/or written, and give some guide to the meaning through a context, images, objects, mime, sounds and verbal clues or by creating a situation in which the meaning is clarified. It is often called creativity, as the teachers try to find ways to clarify meaning without using the mother tongue, but the students can do some more creative work.
Cross sense is a modern technology for learning with the help of visualization. It is a puzzle of the new generation which combines some intellectual tasks, the aim of which is to create the chain of associations with the help of pictures (and not only). The central card/picture #5 –is the topic of “cross sense”.