LINGUIST List 25.1277
Sat
Mar 15 2014
Review: Applied
Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Argondizzo (ed.)
(2012)
Editor for this issue:
Monica Macaulay <monicalinguistlist.org>
Date: 29-Oct-2013
From: Lei Song
<songlei4380
126.com>
Subject: Creativity and
Innovation in Language Education
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Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/24/24-1355.html
EDITOR: Carmen Argondizzo
TITLE: Creativity and Innovation in Language
Education
SERIES TITLE: Linguistic Insights - Volume
154
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2012
REVIEWER: Lei Song, Nankai University
SUMMARY
As volume 154 of the series ‘Linguistic
Insights: Studies in Language and
Communication’, which favors a
cross-disciplinary approach, this volume
explores the relationship between creativity
and language education under the premise that
the learning process is also a creative one. In
addition to the preface, which sets the scene
for this collection through presenting
reflections of three scholars, this volume
consists of four closely related sections which
explore the concept of creativity from the
perspectives of culture and language use,
language teaching, and business and technology
respectively. Section one investigates the
impact of multicultural and multilingual
contexts on people’s creative language acts
which may in turn become effective sources for
learning cultures and languages. Section two
focuses on the creative use of pedagogical
approaches, teaching tools and learning
resources in various learning contexts. The
development of intercultural communication and
multiple language skills required in academic
and professional settings, the business setting
in particular, is discussed in Section three.
The last section deals with the cultivation of
creativity in language teaching and learning
assisted by technology.
Section 1: Creativity, Cultures and Language
Use
In Chapter 1, “Languages, Cultures and the
Discourse of Advertising”, Régine Laugier
explores characteristics of advertising
discourse that turn it into useful material for
language teaching and learning from both
interlingual and intercultural perspectives.
The invasive nature of advertising as a social
act together with communicative features
manifested in its images and texts makes
advertising discourse a melting pot of
languages and cultures. Having analyzed
characteristics, language facts and
intercultural features of advertising with
reference to its images and wording, two points
are emphasized in this chapter. On the one
hand, the discourse of advertising makes
creative use of linguistic changes to achieve
persuasion and seduction effects. On the other
hand, as a mirror of a specific culture, it
goes beyond simple language skills to
incorporate both social and cultural
factors.
Chapter 2 “Evaluating Creativity and Innovation
in Second Language Teachers’ Discourse” by
Marie J. Myers investigates the impact that
learning from peers has on a French as a second
language teacher preparation course in Canada.
A multimodality approach is adopted to report
results of an experimental project carried out
in 2009. This project with twenty-nine
participants devised two activities, including
a final group synthesis and a message exchange
activity. The results, showing that increased
creativity is one obvious gain of the group
synthesis, together with findings that the
message exchange activity proves to be a good
way to express innovative ideas, indicate that
a new orientation of professionalization,
namely the incorporation of creative
collaborative activities, is paramount in the
teacher training course so as to encompass the
large array of students’ diversified
backgrounds. Additionally, working with peers
can also help students establish strong
connections and enable them to seek peer
support in case of difficulties.
John B. Trumper and Marta Maddalon, in
“Standard and Identity: Two Case Studies,”
conduct a descriptive evaluation of the
creative evolution languages undergo which
mirrors social and cultural situations by
describing two cases -- English and Italian.
Under the pressure of international English in
an increasingly globalized world, languages
suffering from loss of specificity take
different solutions to achieve survival or
revival even though there is no general recipe
for language survival. English and Italian are
discussed in this chapter by taking into
consideration their specific historical and
social circumstances in Britain and Italy.
Britain is characterized by a strong and
long-existing standard which may inhibit
diversity and create an identity crisis. This
identity crisis has undergone drastic
modifications and even faced internal and
external anti-standard pressures. In contrast,
in the case of Italy, the absence of a clear
national concept blocks the formation of a
standard language, thus leading to the
instrumental use of geographical dialects as a
symbol of local identity. In this sense,
dialects function as a creative and expressive
medium which revaluate local languages and
cultures.
Section 2: Creativity and Language Teaching
Chapter 4, “Plurilingual Communication: A
Polyglot Model for a Polyglot World,” by
Rossella Pugliese and Serafina Filice, examines
the role of plurilingualism in didactical
innovations by proposing a plurilingual
approach and a polyglot model. It explores
whether such a plurilingual concept can utilize
the existing relationship between various
languages to increase students’ motivation and
creativity so as to facilitate their foreign
language learning. In order to achieve this,
this chapter introduces an integrated approach
towards the teaching and learning of two, three
or four target languages in the same course
within an Italian university context. It turns
out that such an integrative approach manages
to enhance students’ linguistic and cultural
competence simultaneously.
In Chapter 5, “Learner Autonomy and Multiple
Intelligences in Vocabulary Learning: A
Student-centred Project”, Anila R.
Scott-Monkhouse underlines the importance of
learner autonomy and multiple intelligences in
vocabulary learning by carrying out a project
focused on students’ notes in the process of
vocabulary learning. Students in this project
were required to personalize, organize and
improve their notes through a four stage
process with the support of increased learner
autonomy and activated multiple intelligences.
The results indicate that personalized learning
like this may increase students’ motivation and
creativity and facilitate their language
learning.
Ian Michael Robinson, in “Corpus Linguistics
and Fairy Tales”, illustrates the practical use
of corpus linguistics as an innovative teaching
tool for EFL students. In response to a
conflict between the sophisticated corpus
linguistics and a lack of practical materials
in the classroom, a small specialist corpus was
first created from which data were extracted to
produce a group of words and phrases. Students
were then required to employ those words and
phrases to produce creative stories. Among the
twenty-eight stories completed and received,
some showed considerable inventive talent, and
a sample of those is provided in this chapter
to demonstrate the supplementary function of
this specific corpus in activating students’
creativity and enhancing their authentic
language use.
Chapter 7, “The Use of Films as a Second and
Foreign Language Acquisition Resource” by
Fabrizia Venuta, investigates the use of
another teaching tool -- films -- in second and
foreign language acquisition by reporting data
and experience gained through organizing film
festivals for Italian as a second language
students. Focusing on the teaching of English
as a foreign language and of Italian as a
second language, Venuta highlights the
effectiveness of films as a teaching and
learning tool. The use of films may not only
easily engage students in creative activities,
but also enable teachers to be creative in
choosing appropriate films that meet students’
diversified interests and learning needs.
The last chapter of this section, “The Role of
Grammar Teaching: A Proposal for Chinese
Students of Italian L2” by Anna De Marco and
Eugenia Mascherpa, illustrates a pedagogical
approach to grammar teaching in the context of
Chinese students learning Italian as an L2. It
explores the hypothesis of ‘educational
differences’ by presenting a model of
differentiated and specific work for Chinese
students. Having reviewed literature concerning
the latest developments in the grammar
teaching-learning relationship and also
typological and cultural differences between
the Chinese learners and Italian learners, the
authors describe an experiment carried out
between an experimental group and a control
group to observe students’ reactions to
specific corrective feedback and the
facilitating role of grammar teaching in their
learning process. They found that grammar
teaching characterized by ‘Focus on Form’ can
integrate sequences of acquisition into
teaching practice and facilitate the process of
language acquisition in a natural way.
Section 3: Creativity in Business Settings
This section opens up with a chapter titled
“Intercultural Communication in Academic and
Professional Settings: Voices from Two European
Projects” by Carmen Argondizzo, Anna Maria De
Bartolo, Lydia Gómez García, Martiña Piñeiro De
La Torre, and Isabel Figueiredo-Silva. In order
to reinforce language skills required in
academic and professional contexts, the authors
implemented two online learning tools, namely
the Communicating in Multilingual Contexts
(CMC) project and the Communicating in
Multilingual Contexts Meets the Enterprise
(CMC_E) project in a Portuguese university
setting. The former project aims at developing
academic language skills while the latter is
designed to improve professional language
competence necessary in the labor market.
Moreover, a comparison is made between the
CMC_E project and other online language courses
to highlight the originality and authenticity
of CMC_E. These two projects succeed in
providing an online learning environment which
may help to stimulate students’ creativity and
enhance their academic and professional
competence.
In Chapter 10, “Intercultural Competence and
CLIL as a Way to Business Orientation in
Spanish Foreign Language”, Erwin Snauwaert
introduces a pedagogical approach that combines
aspects of intercultural competence with a
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)
approach with a business orientation. A case
study of a Spanish foreign language course is
described, made up of three components,
including business language, intercultural
competence and CLIL practice. While
intercultural competence is seen as the
backbone of Spanish foreign language learning,
the CLIL practice consists of two intercultural
experiences. This combination proves to be
successful in stimulating students’ creativity
by making the course closer to business reality
and also making the language learning for
specific purposes more dynamic and
creative.
Claire Elizabeth Wallis, in “From Reality
Television to Reality Performance: The Use of
Authentic Non-Didactic Materials”, underlines
the importance of integrating authentic
non-didactic materials into didactic course
books by examining the use of metaphor as an
integral feature of business and economics
settings. Having analyzed the role of metaphor
in business and economic discourse and the
current insufficient use of metaphor in
didactic materials, the author describes
practices carried out at an Italian university
and proposes integration between didactic
textbooks and authentic resources including
metaphor. The results indicate that the use of
authentic materials can increase students’
motivation, promote learner autonomy and
facilitate effective language learning.
Chapter 12, “Into the Business Brains of
Learners: How Neuroscience Research can Guide
the Development of Language Learning Materials”
by Y.L. Teresa Ting, investigates the use of
neuroscience research in language learning
materials. In response to a call for the
development of foreign language learning
materials, this chapter presents a
learning-centered activity about a core
economics concept -- opportunity cost. The
learning of content is considered separate from
the learning of an academic language skill
before integrating into ad hoc learning
materials so as to render learning materials
more acceptable and understandable. The overall
aim is to introduce an innovative approach by
creating brain-compatible learning materials so
as to satisfy the knowledge and skill
requirements of 21st century education.
In Chapter 13, “Creativity from the Familiar to
the Foreign: Learning Business English with the
help of Anglicisms”, Paola Gaudio explores the
creative use of Anglicisms in the process of
learning business English in an Italian
context. Given the assumption that university
students usually have business-related
background knowledge, the author puts forward
an innovative pedagogical approach, namely
devising guided activities. This approach
allows students to exploit what they already
know, such as the appropriate use of
non-adapted Anglicisms, so as to further
explore less familiar foreign lexis of English
as an L2. An approach of this kind enables
learners of English as an L2 to realize the
interlingual and cultural differences between
Italian and English along with stimulated
creativity.
Section 4: Creativity and Technology
The first chapter of this section, “The
Usefulness of a Blended Learning Module in
Erasmus Intensive Language Courses” by Teresa
Gonçalves, is a part of the EU student mobility
program. In order to respond to the students’
varying language needs, the author proposes
integrating a tripartite modular structure
(face-to-face learning, blended learning and a
language and local culture immersion module)
with a blended learning module in the context
of learning Portuguese as a foreign language
assisted by technologies and online
resources.
Laura Capitani in Chapter 15, “Wikis in
Language Teaching: Creativity and Technology,”
focuses on the use of a specific social
software tool, wikis, in educational contexts
and how this tool can serve certain educational
purposes by integrating creativity and
learning. Having presented a definition and
discussion of various strengths of wikis, the
author elaborates on a learner-centred approach
using Wikispaces at the Maastricht University
Language Center. The wiki is proved to be
effective in stimulating communication and
collaboration between students and teachers so
as to facilitate the learning process.
Chapter 16, “Online Creative Tasks to Enhance
the Intercultural Value of a Multilingual Group
of Students of Italian” by Cristiana Cervini,
examines the role of online creative tasks in
transforming multilingual and multicultural
differences into an advantage manifested as a
potential for creativity and intercultural
education. In an experiment consisting of four
heterogeneous groups of beginners in a
self-learning Italian as L2 course, a mix of
web 2.0 specific tools and Moodle is used to
create a plurilingual online and offline
learning environment. Such an approach can not
only enhance the creativity and personalization
of teachers’ practice but also supports the
self-regulation of the students.
In Chapter 17, “Online News as a Didactic
Source”, Maximillian Maurice Gold highlights
the creative use of online news found on
institutional news or information websites
offering up-to-date and authentic materials.
Compared with other websites, online news can
function as an important didactic source by
providing students with more relevant and
stimulating learning materials. The approach is
then applied to practical use in a tertiary
education setting, which indicates that
students who have been exposed to such online
materials have greater self-awareness, learner
autonomy, and increased interest, as well as
strong feelings of achievement.
Cesare Zanca, in “Online Learning and Data
Driven Learning in Translation and Language
Teaching,” explores a pedagogical approach
combining an online learning method with a data
driven learning (DDL) method based on his
teaching and research experience in the field
of translation training and language teaching.
A simple task designed in the author’s
translation course requires university students
of English as a foreign language to translate a
popular Italian proverb into English with the
help of online resources. The fact that
students successfully produced a translation
which was better than professional translators
produced reveals that this approach with a
focus on authentic linguistic data is effective
in fostering learner autonomy, stimulating
creativity as well as creating a learner
friendly environment.
The last chapter of this volume, “An Online
Course for Autonomous Learning of Swahili
through Literature” by Maddalena Toscano,
Graziella Acquaviva and Flavia Aiello, touches
upon an online Swahili literature course for
autonomous learning launched in the Oriental
University of Naples in Italy. During this
course, which consists of 22 teaching units,
students are required to read and translate
excerpts from Kenyan and Tanzanian authors’
work. A detailed description of three teaching
units reveals that students hold a positive
attitude towards this course which integrates
information technology into a traditional
course.
EVALUATION
The three interrelated chapters of Section 1
elaborate on the creative use of specific
language acts and strategies against the
backdrop of a globalized, multicultural and
multilingual world. While young people would
find the advertising discourse provided in
Chapter 1 interesting since it is close to
their language, linguists may consider Chapter
3 as thought-provoking and inspiring as it
recalls and reflects on the evolution of
languages over time.
Section 2 focuses on creative and innovative
pedagogical approaches and learning tools
employed in diversified educational contexts,
including a plurilingual approach accompanied
by a polyglot model, learner autonomy and
multiple intelligences, corpus linguistics, and
films, as well as grammar teaching. All of
these chapters are insightful and can benefit
both language learning and teaching. However,
the title of this section “Creativity and
Language Teaching” may indicate that creativity
is only manifested in the language teaching
process with language learning left untouched.
Therefore, it may have been more appropriate to
name this section “Creativity and Language
Teaching and Learning”.
Language learning for specific purposes, such
as language skills required in academic and
professional settings, is emphasized in Section
3 under the topic of “Creativity in Business
Settings”. While Chapter 9 deals with the
development of academic and professional
competence in both an academic and a labor
market, the remaining four chapters are
characterized by a business orientation.
Apparently, Chapter 9 with its focus on both
academic and professional competence is not
fully covered in the topic of this section
‘Creativity in Business Settings’ (De Bartolo
and Plastina, 2009). Thus, it seems proper to
change the topic by taking the academic setting
into consideration.
The last section, titled “Creativity and
Technology,” sheds light on the role that
technology plays in the connection between
creativity and language education. The six
chapters in this section present practical
examples of effective technological techniques
and online learning materials such as a blended
learning module, wikis, online news, etc.
Generally speaking, this volume further extends
the notion of creativity to the field of
language education, especially in a European
context, characterized by multiculturalism and
multilingualism. This collection can be of
great use to specialist language studies in the
field of linguistic theory and applied
linguistics, and may also have pedagogical
implications for language teachers in designing
creative and stimulating pedagogical approaches
which facilitate students’ learning processes
by increasing their interest, learner autonomy
and creativity.
REFERENCES
De Bartolo, Anna Maria, and Anna Franca
Plastina, 2009. The CMC Community of Practice:
a virtual language learning environment for
mobility students. In Argondizzo, Carmen (ed.),
Studenti in mobilità e competenze linguistiche:
Una sfida accademica, linguistica e culturale.
Atti del XI Seminario nazionale AICLU. Volume 3
of Quaderno del Centro linguistico di ateneo,
Università della Calabria: Rubbettino,
139-147.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Lei Song is a graduate student majoring in
second language acquisition in the English
Language Department at Nankai University. Her
research interests focus on second language
academic writing and language education.
Page Updated: 15-Mar-2014