Charles Hadfield has worked as a teacher and trainer in many countries. With his wife, Jill, he has published many well-known teacher development books, including the Oxford Basics series. He will be hosting a webinar entitled Creativity in the Language Classroom on 28th and 29th August. Find out more and register for Creativity in the Language Classroom.
Creativity is a huge concept, or set of concepts, which obviously stretch out way beyond the classroom walls. In fact, many teachers would say that ‘creativity’ as such has little or no place in the process of language learning: “If we let learners experiment with language, they will make mistakes! And we cannot allow that!”
Well, I disagree, and always have done, from my very first steps as a trainee teacher learning how to teach French, several decades ago, right through to nowadays when I train teachers myself, and help prepare students for such gruelling ordeals as IELTS tests and exams in Academic English.
Creativity is everywhere, but for us teachers it starts inside our learners’ heads, in our classrooms, and that is where we will start in this webinar. I am sure I will send you back to your own classrooms with some usable, enjoyable, novel ideas, which have all been tried and tested in a wide variety of contexts and levels.
My webinar will consist of some introductory remarks, a set of powerpoint slides which I will talk through, interwoven with several hands-on exercises where you will participate, create, and I hope share your work with the other participants. So make sure you have several sheets of paper and a pen handy!
We will do five or six exercises together, and talk through several more once I have introduced my fundamental ideas.
I believe a creative approach to language learning/teaching is important to our learners for three key reasons:
- Psychologically (fostering self-development)
- Pedagogically (helping language development)
- Socially (classroom dynamics)
We will focus on five key areas of teaching:
- Working with beginners
- Genre-based writing
- Vocabulary development
- Grammar development
- ‘Pure’ creativity
While the talk is of a ‘general’ nature, the techniques are adaptable for Academic English and exam preparation classes. And the techniques are adaptable to teaching ‘language’ or ‘languages’, not confined to English.
I look forward to joining you at the end of the month!
Charlie Hadfield
