Mr.
Cray Staggs of the US Department of
State, Senior English Language Fellow for Beijing
delivered a lecture on Critical and
Creative Thinking during the Fifth International and Forty-first Annual
ELT@I Conference, organized by the
Department of English, Anna
Adarsh College
The
following are excepts from his lecture:
Critical
and Creative thinking is a necessary skill for everyone. Creative thinking can be seen as creating many possible solutions to a
problem situation. Critical thinking can
be seen as being able to test, assess and evaluate the possible solution. What
is important is to help and
encourage our learners to ask
questions. A healthy skepticism and a
curious mind is essential for learners.
* The critical thinker would be
more interested in focussing on :
clarity vs
unclear
precision vs
imprecision
specific vs vague
Given below are examples
of tasks that involve thinking:
* Conducting a debate about an
issue of special interest ( Analyse /
synthesize)
* Write a biography of a person
you are studying about (Recall knowledge/ Comprehend/ Apply)
* Create a new product, name it
and plan a marketing campaign
(Application / Synthesis)
* Design a questionnaire to gather information ( Application/
Analysis/ Synthesis)
The pedagogical
implication for including Critical and
Creative thinking would be the following :
* We need to have in our
curriculum scope for problem-based tasks and encourage open ended questions
* Teachers should focus on
classroom dynamics
* The classroom tone is also
important
* The kind of questions asked
by the teacher is very important.
Incorporating and ensuring the
teaching of critical thinking skills should be regarded as essential in educational programmes. English and
foreign language courses should advocate classroom design that promotes not
only language skills but also creative and critical thinking skills. For the
EFL educator its application would mean
making learners seek alternatives, make inferences, pose questions and
solve problems.
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