Zsófia Széll is a language teacher and PhD student at the Department of English Language Pedagogy, Eötvös Loránd University. Her primary research interest is creativity in English teaching and English teacher training. Email: zsofi.szell@gmail.com

 

Introduction

Vocabulary learning is an extensively researched area in applied linguistics research. Both the nature of vocabulary learning as mental process and learning strategies have been a focus of interest in the profession for some time. Creativity in English language teaching (ELT) is similar in a sense that it is gaining more and more focus; however, this is a rather new highlight in ELT research. The connection between creativity and vocabulary learning strategies has not yet been explored in the field which merits discussion. From a theoretical point of view, some more complex vocabulary learning strategies and creative tasks have certain elements in common.

Studying how this connection manifests in practice will help understanding the nature of this connection and possibly provide practical conclusions that can be used by teachers to improve the effectiveness of vocabulary learning and to foster creativity. As this area mostly entails uncharted waters in applied linguistics and ELT research, initial investigation is best done through a case study. While setting the theoretical background I attempted to define vocabulary knowledge and to discuss types of vocabulary learning strategies as well as to provide a definition of creativity in ELT. After this, I explored the potential connection between vocabulary learning and creativity through a couple of specific examples in research.

 

Defining vocabulary knowledge

Possessing an adequate range of vocabulary is a prerequisite to being able to use a foreign language effectively. Moreover, EFL learners’ vocabulary knowledge has been found to closely related to general language proficiency (Qian & Lin, 2020). In order to understand an unsimplified text, the reader needs to know 5-8000 word families (a word family is a group of words that stem from the same root, such as pretend, pretender, pretentious) (Ur, 2012). However, as proficiency develops, the breadth of vocabulary known by the speaker also increases.

What vocabulary knowledge actually means requires some explanation. There are several ways to look at vocabulary knowledge, one of these is to see it as receptive (passive) or productive (active). The former simply denotes recognition of word, while the latter means the ability to actually use the word correctly. (Nation, 2001).

Breadth and depth are the traditional types of vocabulary knowledge differentiated by Anderson and Freebody (1981). Breadth is the number of vocabulary items known, depth refers to different aspects of knowledge such as collocation or multiple different meanings, which is more than simple form-meaning connection. In order to examine vocabulary knowledge, focusing on breadth alone is insufficient as this describes only one aspect of vocabulary knowledge and thus provides a limited evaluation (Webb, 2020). This traditional view is expanded can be expanded by two more factors: automaticity of use and appropriateness in use (Gu, 2020).

One way to look at how learners actually learn vocabulary is the incidental/intentional distinction. Incidental learning happens unconsciously through repeated encounters with vocabulary items while intentional learning progresses through tasks and activities designed to help learners consciously learn new vocabulary items. Ideally, these two aspects exist parallel to each other (Webb, 2020). One way to help learners focus on intentional vocabulary learning is through the use of learning strategies.

 

Learning strategies

Generally speaking, language learning strategies are ‘the particular approaches or techniques that learners employ to try to learn an L2’ (Ellis, 1997, pp. 76-77). A traditional division of learning strategies is the cognitive (strategies used to change manipulate information in the mind), metacognitive (strategies in connection with planning the learning process), and social/affective (strategies based on interaction with other people) division (Ellis, 1997). According to Ellis (1997), a range of research has been done on strategy training, especially vocabulary learning strategy training, which generally indicate a beneficial effect on students’ performance. Gu (2020) also notes that strategy training has been generally proven to improve effectiveness of vocabulary learning and to increase vocabulary size.

A great number of different vocabulary learning strategies are described in the literature. Oxford and Crookall (1990) differentiate between decontextualizing, semi-contextualizing, and fully contextualizing techniques. Decontextualizing techniques remove the vocabulary items from their context, such as word lists, flashcards, and dictionary use. Semi-contextualizing techniques like word grouping, word association, or the keyword technique allow only limited context. Fully contextualizing techniques use natural communicative context and are simply defined as practice in the four skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Another important issue noted by the authors is that even though skill practice is often considered the “the very pinnacle of L2 vocabulary learning techniques” (Oxford & Crookall, 1990, p. 22), practice alone is not enough to achieve vocabulary development, as the learner’s interest and the use of learning techniques is also necessary.

 

Defining creativity

Creativity is known to be difficult to define. Many authors note that creativity is slippery and elusive in nature, something that causes serious difficulties in creating a suitable, all-encompassing definition (Pugliese, 2010; Ryhammer and Brolin, 1999). The description of different views and models of creativity will not be pursued here because of length constraints, but a detailed overview of theories of creativity can be found in Kaufman and Sternberg (2010). This study will use the two-way model of creativity developed by Széll (2021) specifically for the context of EFL teaching and which is described below.

As detailed in Széll (2021), creativity is a complex phenomenon: certain conditions enable creativity to arise in a sufficient task which leads to tangible or intangible results. These results then have a reactive effect on the conditions of creativity.

• Conditions: These conditions enable creativity to arise.
  • Knwledge: Language knowledge for students, methodological knowledge for teachers
  • Creativity-relevant mental skills: analgous with Amabile’s (1983) creativity relevant skills category – a way of thinking, a cognitive style that may be improved by practice and experience. This is also parallel with the views of creativity that consider it to be a kind thinking: more specifically, divergent thinking (Guilford, 1950, 1958) that can be measured using standardized creativity tests.
  • Mtivation: whether intrinsic or extrinsic, motivation is necessary in order to successfully execute a task. Even though Amabile (1983) claims that extrinsic motivation and rewards can be detrimental to creativity, I partially disagree with this stand. Artists in history have displayed outstanding creativity for rewards, and students in English classrooms around the world have shown outstanding creativity in writing stories simply because they intended to pass a language exam.
  • Cntext: context includes several factors such as a supportive and non-judgemental environment consisting of good group dynamics, accepting and encouraging participants (mostly students and teachers but also parents), an appreciative culture that encourages creativity both formally (educational policy) and informally (a value appreciated by society). Other contextual factors include the physical environment, conducive beliefs, and time and space for creativity in the teaching process.
• Task: if the necessary conditions are met, creativity will arise in a task that allows for it. The task needs to be a type that allows for creativity, one that allows for more than one good solution yet established adequate creative limits (Tin, 2013). Open-endedness is another common feature of creative tasks. This means that they have more than one good solution and provide opportunities to generate new ideas (Lee, 2013). Playfulness and collaboration are also listed in some of the literature as characteristics of creative tasks (Lee, 2013; Tin, 2016).
• Results: The results that arise are not to be confused with the classic discussion of the creative product – the results may be tangible, e.g. the poem written in English by students, or intangible: the learning process they undergo while trying to write a poem.
• Reactive effect: These results have a reactive effect on the conditions, for example, if students write the poem, their motivation can increase due to having enjoyed the task, group cohesion could improve which will result in a better context for creativity, and through practice they will improve both in English language knowledge and in creativity relevant mental skills.

Figure 1. The two-way model of creativity

 

 

Source: Széll (2021)

Because of the two-way nature of the model, it logically follows that in order to enhance creativity, one might intervene in any part of the model and see positive changes. The model shows the possible areas where improvements could lead to fostering creativity.

 

The connection between creativity and vocabulary learning

Oxford and Crookall (1990) claimed that the learners’ interest and the use of personalised vocabulary learning techniques is necessary for successful learning. Creative tasks improve creativity conditions through arousing interest by reactive effect as shown in the two-way model of creativity. The question that arises here is whether tasks aimed at vocabulary learning can be creative. It is obvious that there is not much creativity in the mechanical memorisation of word lists; however, semi-contextualizing and fully contextualizing tasks do allow for the necessary open-endedness while still setting sufficient creative limits.

Let us look at this in more detail through two examples: a semi-contextualised learning strategy called the keyword technique as described in Tölgyesi (2014) and a contextualised learning strategy, the writing of fanfiction in blog format - a kind of creative writing investigated by Sauro and Sundmark (2016). Tölgyesi (2014) describes the keyword technique as an associative process in which the learner connects the new vocabulary item to a phonetically similar item in their L1 and combines the two meanings in an image that is somehow shocking, funny, or surprising. Clearly, this task forces learners to use the mental processes outlined earlier in the two-way model. It also allows a degree of freedom in choosing the association while establishing clear limits as the new vocabulary item that needs to be learnt is fixed and given. Playfulness and emotional involvement appear as part of this technique.

Sauro and Sundmark (2016) studied creative writing in the tertiary context in their unique study which focused on the use of writing fan fiction based on Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Their participants were English teacher trainees who had to participate in a collaborative blog-based fanfiction project where they had to impersonate certain characters from The Hobbit. This task definitely exhibits all characteristics of a creative task: it provided clear limits as the character the participants had to impersonate was set for them, it allowed a degree of freedom in the way participants described the characters’ feelings and experiences, it brought a sense of playfulness in bringing such an unusual twist to an English class, and it also utilized collaboration.

The researchers intended to find out whether using fanfiction can be beneficial for improvement in both literary and general language skills. They found that students considered the task engaging, and there were improvements in both creative writing skills and general English skills. Most importantly for this investigation, they found that the task greatly enhanced participants’ vocabulary learning. The researchers found that “mimicking the language of The Hobbit required them to understand and use words that were more old-fashioned or formal than they were accustomed to using” (Sauro & Sundmark, 2016, p. 7) and that “imitating the writing style of Tolkien allowed them to expand their vocabulary particularly with respect to adjectives and adverbs, which they observed to be characteristic of Tolkien’s writing” (Sauro & Sundmark, 2016, p. 7).

As seen through these examples, creative tasks and complex vocabulary learning strategies can indeed have common features. Obviously, not all learners would be excited either by a chance to participate in the writing of fanfiction or by the option to use other vocabulary learning strategies that are more complex than memorising paired lists. However, based on the nature of these tasks, it seems logical that creative people would naturally gravitate towards tasks and opportunities that allow them to use and express their creativity; these tasks would arouse interest, foster motivation, and help them achieve greater vocabulary learning success. From the EFL teacher’s point of view, it is a priority to find ways to motivate learners, to tailor tasks and activities to individual needs and preferences. To help EFL teachers achieve this, it is necessary to understand creativity as a factor and its potential connection to vocabulary learning strategies and tasks aimed at helping intentional vocabulary learning. As a first step in the direction of exploring this connection, this research endeavour examines the case of a highly successful language learner who engages in creative writing as a learning strategy to better understand what strategies this successful learner of English uses to learn vocabulary and these strategies’ connection to creativity as well as to explore and understand the role of creativity in the participant’s language and more specifically, vocabulary learning. To achieve this, I intended to answer the following research questions:

RQ1 How can the participant’s vocabulary knowledge and creativity be described?

RQ2 What characterizes the vocabulary learning strategies used by the participant?

RQ3 What is the connection between creativity and vocabulary learning in the participant’s case?

 

Research design

This qualitative research endeavour is a case study focusing on the case of a highly successful Hungarian EFL learner who engages in creative writing. The participant in this study is a twenty-year old female first-year university student studying English studies at one of the universities in Hungary, who will be referred to by the pseudonym Linda, who was selected because I personally know her because of having been her teacher.

Data collection consisted of four distinct consecutive steps. First, I asked Linda to send me products of her writing and she sent me four pieces: a poem written for vocabulary learning, two reflective essays written as homework for English classes, and an essay written for a literature class at university. Next, I asked her to fill in a vocabulary breadth test (https://my.vocabularysize.com/). After that, I asked her to do a creativity test standardized on the Hungarian population (Barkóczi & Zétényi, 1981) consisting of four sub-tests: circles, picture completion, unusual uses, remote associations. Finally, she participated in a semi-structured interview that was 60 minutes long and yielded 3800 words of data.

As it was described earlier in the theoretical background, vocabulary knowledge is more complex than a simply number of words known which may be provided by a vocabulary size test and creativity is a complex phenomenon which cannot be simply described by the scores provided by a creativity test (Barkóczi & Zétényi, 1981). Nonetheless, the use of these tools is justified by the need to explore the case in as much detail as possible. Data triangulation is necessary to ensure credibility; the data sources described above were supplemented by my personal observations as someone who have thought Linda. As her teacher, I have a reasonably accurate evaluation of Linda’s language skills in general and her vocabulary knowledge as well as a general picture of her personality, creativity, and motivation and this more subjective observation was compared to the test results.

The tools used in this research endeavour were the vocabulary breadth test at VocabularySize.com (https://my.vocabularysize.com/), the creativity test consisting of four different subtasks in Barkóczi and Zétényi (1981), and an interview guide created by the researcher. The selection, implementation, and evaluation of the creativity test was done with the help of an expert psychologist.

Some ethical issues are relevant regarding this study. The participant was informed about the proposed steps of the research. Even though this person was my student, I made it absolutely clear to place no pressure on her by emphasizing that participation is completely voluntary and non-participation has no consequences at all, and consent and participation may be withdrawn any time throughout the research process. The identity of the participant will be preserved by the use of a pseudonym, Linda. All written and spoken data is stored in a safe place accessible only to the researcher.

As does all research, this study also has its limitations. Researcher bias is an aspect that cannot be neglected as I was the EFL teacher of Linda. While acknowledging that all observations and opinions I formed during this process are necessarily subjective, data triangulation helped offset this difficulty. Personal observations were supplemented by other, more objective data sources such as the creativity test, the vocabulary size test, and the tangible creative products written by the participant.

Another limitation of the study is created by certain characteristics of the aforementioned creativity test, standardized by Barkóczi & Zétényi (1981). The test was standardised 40 years ago, in the same country but in a completely different economic and cultural context. In such a long period of time, cultural changes could possibly have changed the way people think and associate and in order to provide a more relevant basis of comparison, the test should be standardised again. To offset this limitation, scores were compared to Albert (2008) who studied first-year English studies majors. As this is a relatively recent study and Linda is also a first-year English studies student, this comparison is perhaps more informative.

 

Results and discussion

Linda is a twenty-year old university student studying English studies. She first encountered English at the age of four in the form of colouring books and soon decided to learn the language of her own accord. She started English classes at school at the age of seven. She did not receive any formal instruction outside school, but she did use the language more and more. She started reading in English in sixth grade and has been reading in English since. She also started watching films and writing in English in different genres. For school, writing meant assignments in English classes and outside school this constituted writing film reviews, a hobby which she described as connecting films and creative writing, as “in some films nothing really happens on screen, it’s hidden, which is very hard to rationally explain, creative writing is writing narratives, emotions, intuitions, impressions for these, to display these creatively and thus reflect on these films” (Linda).

Another important aspect of her profile as a language learner is her high level of internal motivation, which I was easily able to see during the process of teaching her and which she also described during the interview. A key element of this motivation seems to be self-sufficiency, as she described herself as someone who started to read and learn a language of her own accord at the age of five, and this freedom of decision is still important to her:

When there is something at school that I have to do for a deadline, it is very important to me that I do it with my own methods, I really don’t like it if it’s given, if it’s fixed what lines I can or have to follow to do something. (Linda)

Her degree of internal motivation was also evident from the way she described the language itself. She described “the wonder, the many combinational possibilities, and the beauty” of the language that can truly be appreciated once the learner reaches a reasonable level of proficiency and is able to use most grammar freely. She emphasized this beauty through the example of vocabulary, the fact that “words can have a hundred different shade of meanings”.

Finally, after having described her language learner profile in general to provide the background for the results, answering RQ1 became possible. Linda achieved scores on the creativity test that were higher than the average of the national standard as described by Barkóczi and Zétényi (1981, p. 32). Her scores were also higher in two of the subtests than the average measured by Albert (2008, p. 104) on a population consisting of first-year English studies majors. The vocabulary breadth test result was 19600 word families which is comparable to native speaker proficiency. This is in line with my personal impressions about Linda as her teacher: I came to know her as hardworking, talented, and proficient to a degree that is unusual with her age and background. In my lessons she was often the first to answer questions, offer a range of new ideas, and the one to know all the items in a vocabulary revision activity. Overall, I had the personal impression of her being creative well above the average and possessing an outstanding breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge, which is in line with what the test scores suggest.

 

Self-expression and vocabulary learning through creative writing

Another data source which corroborates the results discussed in the previous section is the actual pieces of writing provided by Linda. These pieces were written during the past five years, one of them about five years ago, two pieces about three years ago, and the fourth one during the past six months. Looking at these pieces we see products remarkable at her age. The oldest one of these, a poem, was written five years ago with the explicit primary purpose of vocabulary learning. It bears no title and was inspired by Shakespeare. This work displays a general high level of proficiency and an effortless ease of vocabulary use. This short excerpt of the poem, five out of 59 lines, illustrates this well.

You can scoff at me all you want

and bristle with frenzied fury at my heedless command,

throw a tantrum if you will, submerge me in your caustic talk, 

right here at my doorstep you may as well try to wrest the power from my grasp,

but your lackluster jostle of you ungrateful people, will nonetheless end in capital collapse (Linda, Poem with no title)

Writing this poem was actually not a compulsory school task. She was instructed to write an example sentence with new vocabulary items; a task that she deemed “incredibly boring” and decided to try and fit all of them into one coherent piece.

The second piece of writing was a reflective essay written as a reaction to one of Edgar Allan Poe’s works during her secondary school studies. The title of the piece was fixed by her teacher leaving the students the freedom to actually decide on the themes to connect to the title. According to Linda, the most important thing she learnt from this piece was to better express a certain mood through writing, even if the reader has never read the original work, as demonstrated by the short excerpt below.

The stages of his struggle are clear and incisive; in the beginning hope still sparkling brightly, the light gradually becoming weaker and weaker, and in the end completely dimming out. I think the character always knew deep in his subconscious that there was no escape, for his tormentors carefully monitored every move of his, and were devising more cruel ways to end his life… (Linda, The Struggle of Man)

The third piece of writing was a reflective piece to a Sherlock Holmes story read earlier by the class. This task was also free in the respect that there were no fixed themes or aspects to explore nor even a title provided by their teacher. In this piece, Linda wanted to explore what the villain of the story might have thought and felt by placing herself in his shoes through a fictional narrative. The use of humour is very strongly present in this piece, indeed, Linda claimed that today she would not write something so “bluntly comic” but it served her purpose well at that time. What she meant by this is perhaps best illustrated by her description of a simple ambush and the knocking out of the accomplice as a dramatic event. The successful use of humour in this instance could not have been achieved without the conscious use of vocabulary items such as foreboding, ominous, or fellow-in-crime, which evidences not only breadth but depth of vocabulary knowledge.

Both I and my trusted accomplice felt a grave foreboding as we were heading into the cellar for the final time on the ominous day. I shall never forget the look on Mr. Holmes’ face when he ambushed us – how he swung that cane, and rendered my fellow-in-crime unconscious. You would undoubtedly think it had been a most theatrical scene; the clash of two geniuses… and you would be right. It had been most dramatic. (Linda, An Account of the Robbery)

The last piece of writing was written in the past six months as an assignment for a literature class at university, a three-page essay written about William Faulkner’s A Rose for Emily for which she had to choose from a number of critical essays written about this work. While the focus of this piece of writing was obviously not language proficiency development, it does however evidence improvement in proficiency compared to her older products: her writing has become more natural and occasional errors, especially in punctuation have virtually disappeared, while her evident fondness of using advanced vocabulary items to highlight and underline her message remained unchanged:

While all the aforementioned facets of phenomenology are present in Faulkner’s short story, it is another aspect which renders „A Rose for Emily” such an intrusive, disturbing experience and an aesthetic masterpiece: it is the ever-shifting, deliberately unbalanced device of illusion-making and illusion-shattering. (Linda, The Phenomenological Approach in „A Rose for Emily”: The Creating and Shattering of Illusions)

After taking all her work and how she commented on them into consideration, the bottom line is that Linda obviously feels a joy by expressing her thoughts, voice, and mood through language as strongly as possible. This started at school for her when she had to “write summaries, shorter stories about what we read […] I liked it very much that I have to rephrase and summarize the story with my own words”.  She also has a realistic view of herself as a language learner as she says that she is a “hard-working and conscientious language learner”, who is aware of the fact that her vocabulary is well above average: “I like to think that I have a wide range of vocabulary in different contexts; legal, historical, everyday, and I try to improve it every day, I think my vocabulary is good…”. When asked about how her vocabulary developed into what it is today, it turned out that apart from school, the biggest influence in this regard in Linda’s life was reading. She described improvement of both vocabulary depth and breadth in detail:

The more different texts I encountered in genre, age, and context, so not only literature but scientific texts and critiques and news… I would say the multifaceted nature of these texts and that I submerged into certain elements of them. It was both a widening and a deepening. Reading is really it for me, I discovered its different aspects by myself, and I really like doing that, when I really get into something and I try to widen and deepen what I know by teaching myself. (Linda)

Her consciousness about how vocabulary knowledge works was further highlighted when we discussed her vocabulary learning habits. As a beginner learner, she simply memorised words and their meanings; however, after the achievement of a basic level of proficiency, her teacher soon switched the class to learning based on the use of synonyms, so her vocabulary notes consisted of two-three synonyms for each new vocabulary item. She seems to have stopped conscious memorization after that, and described the mental process of learning words in the following way:

I meet them in more and more different contexts […] usually when I meet a new word I already have some kind of idea like whether the meaning is positive or negative or what context it belongs to… I might have met it already, when I see a new word and don’t know its meaning, it’s never completely black, I can always place it somewhere to an extent […] If we take a word like nefarious, I know what that means, but if I didn’t, I would still know by some association or earlier encounter that the meaning is rather negative. Hidden associations in the back of my brain emerge when I meet these words, and when I check their meaning I can remember them easily. (Linda)

When asked about the connection of creative writing to language learning and vocabulary learning more specifically, Linda claimed that the only piece of writing she ever wrote with the primary purpose of vocabulary learning was the poem discussed earlier. However, she did underline the fact that vocabulary expansion was “always there, even if not a primary aim”. She also thinks creative writing is a tool that could be used for vocabulary expansion for everyone, regardless of proficiency level. She expressed surprise at how effective writing the poem actually was for memorizing vocabulary, as the rhythm of the lines “got completely stuck” in her head.

All in all, to answer RQ2, these findings can be summarized in the following way. In the past, Linda started learning vocabulary by using simple mechanic or decontextualizing strategies (rote learning), but with time these strategies became more complex. She started using what Oxford and Crookall (1990) would call a semi-contextualising strategy, learning with synonyms. Finally, she moved on to fully contextualizing techniques which use natural context, i.e. reading, watching films, and engaging in creative writing. This progress proceeded parallel to her general improvement in language proficiency.

 

Creativity in general, creativity in language and vocabulary learning

In line with my expectations and what the literature suggests, Linda struggled to define creativity in general or specifically in the context of language learning. She sees creativity as having different types like social, problem-solving, or artistic and as something that typically has a product or result. These associations are not surprising and are generally in line with how different theories approach creativity.

When asked if these different types have anything in common, two thought emerged repeatedly during our discussion. One was a need for openness: “It is important to be open to accepting and evaluating new views, and to fit them into your own thinking and thought processes… I think this is a basic criterion”. The other element that we discussed in some length is that creativity is a way of thinking. She describes her own way of thinking as both analytical and creative at the same time:

My brain works in a way that it can never stop, it keeps thinking and analysing, when I’m with people or friends I keep analysing them as well […] I think this is a kind of creativity as well as my views are constantly being shaped, I let in new things, reach some kind of conclusion, than, say, question the whole thing because I get to know something completely contradictory, this is a creative thinking and reflective process. (Linda)

This creative thinking was also mentioned when we discussed who creative writing is suitable for as a way to learning vocabulary. Linda described openness and the ability to think creatively as prerequisites to successful creative writing, as opposed to closed-mindedness and a mechanic following of set formulas. She illustrated this through the example of the way her classmate wrote reflective essays in literature classes.

She had a sheet with 30-40 questions, like what does this or that symbolize? As she was writing the analysis, she kept ticking questions […] but she did not adjust what she had to say to the poem as she really only wrote a sentence about all the aspects instead of deciding, say, that imagery is really important and building the piece around it. […] She prefers this way of thinking, she has a formula which works all the time and she will get the points. So maybe this method [creative writing] would not work for her as is not flexible, she doesn’t allow deviation from her own formula. She colours inside the lines… (Linda)

To answer RQ3, these findings require some consideration. The fact that Linda considers creativity to primarily consist of openness and a way of thinking is a key element here. She is obviously attracted to tasks and activities both at school and as a hobby that allow the use of such thinking and require a degree of flexibility. Her natural disposition towards these properties make complex creative tasks such as writing film reviews or poems exceptionally good all-purpose tools in her case both for general proficiency development and more specifically for improving vocabulary knowledge.

 

Conclusion

Through the analysis of different data sources, the profile of a highly successful language learner emerged who is both talented and motivated and possess a range of vocabulary that is well beyond the average. Additionally, Linda also displays high levels of creativity whether we consider creativity as simply divergent thinking like Guilford (1950) or whether as a more complex construct like the two-way model of creativity. This affinity towards creativity obviously attracted her to outlets of creativity; tasks and opportunities where she could utilize her skills in this regard. Now, at the age of 20, these influences culminated in her intention of picking creative writing as her minor at university.

One interesting finding of this study is how exceptional creativity seemed to find its own outlet even when the task provided did not allow for it – the creation of the unnamed poem is a clear example of this. While writing example sentences with words does not necessarily seem a very creative task, the boredom proved sufficient pressure for Linda to freely reinterpret the task into something more to her taste. Indeed, I have seen something similar happen in my professional practice with another student, whose task was to record his answers to a number of given questions in the topic of the environment – not a very interesting task to many – and to my surprise I received a song with guitar accompaniment that still perfectly fulfilled the requirements of the original task. The internal pressure to do something enjoyable while still fulfilling the requirements seems to have provided sufficient creative limits (Tin, 2013) for creativity to emerge.

Another important finding is how creative writing as a task seems to have contributed to Linda’s vocabulary development and what this ultimately tells us about the characteristics of tasks in a more general sense. Linda’s development can of course be attributed to several factors. Clearly, interest and motivation are important elements here. As any basic methodology book would say, motivation is a crucial factor of success in language learning. This importance seems to hold true for creativity as well. If we accept that creativity is more than divergent thinking, as described in the two-way model of creativity discussed earlier, motivation is exceptionally important for creativity to emerge. Turning a boring task into one that allows for enjoyment and creativity will increase motivation and allow creativity and enjoyment to emerge. These results will then reactively affect the whole process, creating a positive feedback loop that will benefit the learner. It seems that turning the task into one that allows for creativity is the key part here – sometimes it will be done by the learners themselves, as seen through the example of Linda and her poem. More often, however, it will and should be done by the teacher in order to allow all learners to benefit from such opportunities.

 

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Webb, S. (2020). Introduction. In S. Webb (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of vocabulary studies (pp. 1–12). Routledge.

 

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