Exploring the relationships between person- and product-based creativity and written language task performance

Abstract

The purpose of this classroom based study was to explore the influence of creativity on the written language task performance of EFL students studying at a Macau university. Interest in the influence of creativity on second language learning is increasing. However, there are still a few empirical studies exploring the role of creativity in task performance. There is also a lack of research in general on written tasks compared to spoken tasks. This thesis addressed these areas by exploring the influence of creativity on the performance of written argumentative tasks from a number of different perspectives. This included taking person- and product-based creativity measures, examining the effect of creativity training on the performance of the written tasks, and gauging the influence of pre-writing group discussion on task performance. The research period spanned 14 weeks with a total of 61 participants divided into three different groups. Person-based creativity was measured through a figural creative activity, a verbal creative activity and a self-assessed creativity questionnaire. Six group communicative discussion tasks and six individual written follow-up tasks were carried out across this research period. The individual written follow-up task texts were used to measure product-based creativity through a semantically derived topical structural analysis. In addition, the texts were analyzed in terms of complexity (mean length of clause, sub-clauses per T-unit and words per T-unit), accuracy (rate of error-free T-units), and fluency (words per text). Students also completed a task evaluation questionnaire following each individual written follow-up task. This allowed further analyses to be conducted by distinguishing a high and a low task evaluation subgroup. The final major element of the study was six hours of creativity training. The first research question explored the relationship between person-based creativity and written language task performance. Correlational analyses using scores of self-assessed creativity (n = 56), person-based figural creativity (n = 50), and person-based verbal creativity (n = 50) and measures of the complexity, accuracy and fluency of the written task were carried out. Few significant relationships were found for the whole sample but there was a significant negative relationship between person-based figural creativity scores and both phrasal complexity and words per T-unit complexity. Analyzing only the high evaluation subgroup also indicated significant negative correlations between person-based figural creativity and accuracy scores. The results were interpreted as suggesting that there was a trade-off between generating creative ideas and linguistic accuracy which can be explained in terms of working memory limitations. The second research question explored the relationship between person-based creativity and product-based creativity, and product-based creativity and written language performance. Correlational analyses (n = 61) indicated no clear relationship between either person-based and product-based creativity or between product-based creativity and written language task performance. However, for the high task evaluation subgroup (n = 16) there were a number of significant positive correlations between person-based and product-based creativity. The results indicate the importance of measuring learners’ engagement with a task. The third research question explored the influence of the group communicative discussion tasks on the individual written follow-up tasks. One student group (n = 23) carried out the discussion tasks and another group (n = 14) did not. By and large no group differences in either measures of productbased creativity or of general language production were found. However, there was some evidence of the discussion tasks having a negative impact on product-based creativity. The fourth research question explored the influence of creativity training on the written follow-up tasks. The creativity training group (n = 23) completed the training at the mid-point of the research period while the non-creativity training group (n = 22) carried on as before. The results indicated that overall there was very little influence of the creativity training on product-based creativity or general language production possibly because it was not culturally well-suited to the Chinese students. Theoretical and pedagogical implications are discussed in terms of domain specificity in creativity, working memory limitations during creative thinking language tasks, creative group work and cultural considerations in creativity research.