Humanising Language Teaching
Year 5; Issue 5; September 03

Creative Computing in EFL

Dr Enrica Piccardo. Italy

INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCING NEW INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOGY ( NICT) TO THE LANGUAGE CLASS: IS THERE ONLY ONE WAY?
BEYOND SURVIVAL COMMUNICATION
THE ECOLOGICAL VS THE CARTESIAN METAPHOR
CREATIVITY: A TOOL FOR MASTERING COMPLEXITY
WRITING: A SKILL TO BE EXPLOITED
NICT AND THE CREATIVE LEARNER: A POSSIBLE SYNERGY?
FINAL REMARKS

INTRODUCTION

This paper argues that the introduction of New Information Communication Technology, NICT, into the language class, though potentially very powerful both for improving student motivation and for enhancing learner creativity, risks mechanical implementation. If this happens a great, innovative opportunity is lost. New Technology (NT) represents a golden opportunity for rethinking some of our teaching habits, especially in the area of teaching writing skills. The new technology can bring in a creative approach to the learning of a foreign language among students, provided that the learning process remains at the forefront and the attitude towards the equipment is not that of worshipping technique at the expense of the human being using the technique.

Creative use of computers requires a complete change in our philosophy. Both the complexity of the language and of the learning process needs to be taken into consideration from the very beginning, thus throwing out the Cartesian metaphor on which our western society is based, i.e. that of reducing phenomena to their simplest components in order to be able to explore them.

INTRODUCING NICT IN THE LANGUAGE CLASS: IS THERE ONLY ONE WAY?

The use of new technologies in foreign language classes is often considered such an important aspect of teaching that nobody dares to question its role and function. However, the "why" and the "how" of NT in the language classroom have not been explored in any depth.
The new technical devices, especially computers, are in danger of following the same path as first generation language laboratories. These seemed to possess a kind of wonder-working power: students were supposed to learn the language just by being exposed to it in a language lab, where they were required to do a certain amount of drilling. After a relatively short time, following a technological honeymoon, brand new equipment, which had required considerable investment in terms of the money used to purchase it and of the time necessary to learn how to operate it properly, lay dusty and neglected in a far too quiet room. And this happened despite the fact that alternative uses of these same laboratories would have been possible, uses that would have been less mechanical, more cooperative, and more creative.

In one way the risk today is greater than at the time of the language lab because the new technologies are indeed much more flexible and multi-purpose and offer a great number of resources to be exploited by a creative teacher.

As a matter of fact what teachers tend to look for, and publishers to offer, are usually rather sophisticated, graphically attractive CDs, offering a large variety of so-called interactive activities, possibly including keys and scores. I do not want to question the usefulness and suitability of this kind of material, no material being indeed good or bad in itself but being so according to its use in the EFL class. What I would like to point out though, is that this is only one possible implementation of NICT in the foreign language classroom, a rather expensive one, and far from being the most effective for the purpose of language learning. Although matching NICT with creative work may somehow sound contradictory, it is worth a try. This means both exploiting the great potential of the new medium and working effectively on creativity in language learning which is not always really catered for.

BEYOND SURVIVAL COMMUNICATION

Despite the various changes in EFL methodology over the last decades one basic principle seems to have remained unchanged: the principle of simplification, of a necessary movement from simple to complex. One may argue that this is a natural way of proceeding for anybody who wants to learn a language or to improve their knowledge and that is certainly true in the sense that a syllabus moving from easy structures to more complicated ones is inevitable and helps learners achieve their linguistic goals in a confident and structured way.

However this way of working has brought an unnatural oversimplification, as the idea has not been to provide the learners with the necessary, although simplified, linguistic means to encourage them to find their own path by actively using such means. What actually happened was an attempt to ensure that all possible needs had been foreseen and all possible structures and functions necessary to satisfy those needs had been specified. The consequence of such an approach, although apparently comfortable and natural, has often made it hard for learners to move on to more personal and complicated production. They would often get stuck in stereotyped ways of expressing themselves both orally and in writing.

A common criticism to the communicative approach is the difficulty learners experience in moving from survival communication to a more personal and complex interaction. As HLT readers surely know, this problem has already been investigated, mainly by methodologists and teachers who are familiar with the humanistic approach. One of the pillars of humanistic teaching, i.e. the need for the learners to find what they are learning significant for them, has greatly helped to solve this problem. What I would like to point out is that, oddly enough, the latest technology may help us to reconsider the whole process of language acquisition in all its complexity and help us to realise the importance of creativity as a tool for mastering complexity.

THE ECOLOGICAL METAPHOR VS THE CARTESIAN

Without questioning the importance of scientific research in absolute terms, I would like to underline the difficulty of applying the same approach used by the exact sciences to the human sciences where the topic under investigation is the way brain, mind and thought work. According to the dominant Cartesian metaphor:

The individual is an autonomous being who makes intellectual and moral judgements; knowledge (the explicit and measurable variety) is the chief source of power and progress in developing technologies that will enable us to exploit nature's resources; and nature (including human beings) and society are represented in the mechanistic terms that allow for greater predictability and control (Bowers, Flinders, 1990)

Bateson (1972) opposed to this an ecological metaphor which placed the person and the symbolic world of culture within a system of interdependent relations not outside it (Bowers, Flinders ). We are now more and more aware of the inadequacy of the Cartesian paradigm and of the Newtonian view of science according to which the whole world is a kind of huge and complicated machine whose behaviours are fully predictable as each sub-component of the machine can be investigated by means of models aiming at finding linear and universal laws governing the whole system. We now more and more refuse reductionism as the only possible way of explaining phenomena: we have learnt the painful lesson that nature is by far more complex and unpredictable than we might have thought. We need to go beyond method in order to regain possession of the complexity of life. As Rorty (1982) puts it, if we get rid of traditional notions of "objectivity" and "scientific method" we shall be able to see the social sciences as continuous with literature - as interpreting other people to us, and thus enlarging and deepening our sense of community.

Not only has the refusal to oversimplify now come to inform scientific investigation in general, but all the progress which has taken place recently in the investigation of language acquisition mechanisms has moved towards regaining complexity a leading role (let's think of some fundamental examples, such as the refusal to separate emotional factors from cognitive ones, the need to consider the person as a whole, the awareness of the coexistence of opposite factors -going from brain hemispheres to child/adult or masculine/feminine oppositions -, but also the existence of multiple intelligences as well as the strict relationship between each individual learner and their environment). I think we should try to go deeper into the matter by investigating complexity from a linguistic point of view and by analysing the reasons why creativity appears to be such a relevant tool for dealing with complexity.

CREATIVITY: A TOOL TO MASTER COMPLEXITY

If we consider the two main models which try to investigate the nature of language by describing the different linguistic functions (Jakobson’s and Halliday's), we notice that both point to the existence of a function of the language which we may call "non-utilitarian" in the sense that it does not aim to communicate. Its role is, nevertheless, of paramount importance as its purpose is to broaden discourse, working with symbolism and imagination and deepening the meaning. Jakobson defines it as "poetic function" and underlines its complex, ambiguous and symbolic character, while according to Halliday the "imaginative" function is a fundamental one as it is intrinsically bound to the language itself and it represents a tool the child uses actively from the very beginning:

As well as moving into, taking over and exploring the universe which he finds around him, the child also uses language for creating a universe of his own, a world initially of pure sound but which gradually turns into one of story and make-believe and let's pretend, and ultimately into the realm of poetry and imaginative writing ( ).

The poetic/imaginative function appears as a major component of the language, which proves the complexity of the language phenomenon by underlying the existence of another dimension of the language, a different level beyond the utilitarian one not aiming specifically at coping with survival needs or communicating with somebody else. This dimension of the language, which may be defined as a creative one, is seldom taken into serious consideration in FL teaching. If we accept, with Vigotsky, that creativity is an inalienable aspect of personality as all people have equal creative skills, we understand that we owe a greater respect to this dimension and we should try to include it more thoroughly and consciously in our daily teaching, thus avoiding the risk of overestimating or underestimating it, i.e. of considering it too literary or too childish, both processes being negative for working with it effectively.

Apparently creativity is one of the main concerns of UNO’s education policy but all declarations on the matter have not brought with them a real change in practical teaching . The fundamental reason for the difficulty in moving from theory to practice is that working creatively implies a total change of perspective: pursuing creativity means accepting complexity. For a creative person "problem finding" is the most valuable activity, a creative person can tolerate less determined and clear situations, is a non-conformist, is able to pair the latest research with the heuristic attitude typical of a child. And creativity is multifarious too: there are different types of creativity in the same way as there are different types of intelligence. Clearly, in a context like this, the role and the attitude of the teacher needs to change as well and the approach adopted needs to be a holistic one. It is no longer a question of simplifying and generalising in order to be able to produce linguistically acceptable but totally impersonal utterances which will eventually and automatically lead to personal, imaginative and complex productions. The teacher needs to foster creativity from the very beginning of the learning process.

However familiar we may be with the idea of learner-centred teaching, we usually forget the fact that "the learner" doesn't exist, since we face several learners and all of them are different, as all human beings are different. If we only view people as learners, we only take into consideration one dimension of them, precisely the "learner" dimension, and we forget their subjective dimension as well as their social one, not to mention their relationship with creativity. Learning a foreign language is not the same as learning other subjects, as the language is the filter through which we relate to the world, the means that convey our affective, symbolic, imaginary references, in a word, all our values (Coďaniz 2001).

WRITING: A SKILL TO BE EXPLOITED

If it is true that creativity can reveal itself in all possible domains and pervade all skills, we may argue that, as far as language is concerned, writing is the most suitable one for several reasons. First it is a productive skill, and creativity implies taking an active role in whatever a person does, the learning process being no exception in this respect. Secondly writing is a process which happens over a certain time, thus allowing the learner to work - in general - at their own pace, to brainstorm ideas, to draft and redraft, to share, to structure, to evaluate, to review. All this may represent a frame within which creativity is more able to find its way. If we consider creativity to be an intrinsic faculty of human nature, according to which people - in this case learners - can produce and reproduce in an original way by personally structuring and combining data, use different elements to create something new by freely associating and dissociating and by making use of different codes, all this in a joyful dimension, we can clearly conclude that there is more than a general resemblance between creativity and written production, there is indeed some sort of elective affinity.

Confirming what I have just said we can also consider the lack of importance given to real written production, i.e. production that is personally relevant for the learning individual, within all the language learning approaches commonly used, included the communicative one. Although the Common European Framework has done much to make people reassess the importance of written production for effective second language acquisition, the current situation is still very similar to what Grabe and Kaplan described some years ago:

…in most schools, writing is given very little time, and students are not encouraged to write. […] many of the traditional uses of writing in schools have negative associations for most children: writing tasks are used for disciplinary purposes, for testing and evaluation, for busywork - artificial assignments with little relevance for students; and when writing is produced, it is returned with teacher's feedback in the form of extensive correction of surface features. (1996)

If we look at the way languages are generally taught in school and we adopt the term "utilitarian" to indicate a perspective favouring everyday communication , we understand why free, creative written production has been neglected: in everyday situations written production is usually reduced to filling in forms or writing short personal messages or letters. This can be clearly seen as another proof of the fact that if we want to enhance creativity among foreign language learners we have to reconsider the why and the how of written production in the foreign language class.

We should abandon what has often been done so far, i.e. the reduction of writing to getting a predetermined content down on paper, in the belief that you make the task easier for the student by reducing its complexity. Instead we should aim for A holistic process where the student is asked to go from the ideational to the editorial phase of the writing, possibly within a group, in order to produce a personally significant text (Huneke, Steinig, 1997).

If such an approach were adopted writing would regain all its multifarious complexity: technical complexity as it is an activity which requires special skills in order to carry out more or less structured subtasks, individual complexity as an activity which really involves all dimensions of the learner's personality, social complexity as the product of a co-operative activity or at least whose target is a real or virtual community. The journey of discovery, and self-discovery, that writing can be for the students would eventually take place.
The right means of transport for such a fascinating journey is probably the word processor.

NICT AND THE CREATIVE LEARNER: A POSSIBLE SYNERGY?

The main functions of computers can be subdivided into three categories. First, computers are a huge source of authentic material, and material which users find easy to manipulate and reorganise. Secondly computers are word processing tools, and very flexible and effective ones. Finally computers are a powerful means of communication, and quite an expressive one if we think at some devices people have found to make their message convey emotions too, like the emoticons.

Computers are there to help people construct their learning not simply a device for providing ready-made knowledge, and within this paradigm the three functions I mention above are more central than one might think: the complexity of the screen page with its wealth of components (including a bigger or smaller variety of the following: written texts, sounds, images, hot words, buttons and icons…) encourages learners to act upon this immaterial text by exploiting their ability and will to manipulate, associate and to create.

What would be difficult if done with pen and paper, i.e. changing, adding, modifying, moving, reducing, increasing, re-ordering becomes very easy with the WP, thus helping learners overcome the sort of discouragement they may feel when faced with " a blank page".

Interactive multimedia increase the pleasure of learning with the variety of codes and the hyper-textual structure they offer. The whole process of reading is modified and follows the natural mental path, which is anything but linear. As the French novelist Daniel Pennac has so clearly explained, it is only by turning the ordinary perspective up-side-down that we transform the learner from a user, a "consumer" of multimedia products, into a creator of these very products. By taking on a creative role, learners both construct their own knowledge and raise their level of personal efficiency. (Bandura, 1995). They also avoid the common consumerist attitude towards NICT.

All this may seem quite a fashionable way of approaching NICT, since people are indeed interested in creating new multimedia products, and the most technically advanced ones possible .

What I would like to point out, however, is the need to focus on the pedagogical aspects more than on the technical ones. In children's games, creativity is usually enhanced by less structured materials and toys and in foreign language learning materials like Cuisenaire rods have proved very effective in helping learners become more active and creative. We would argue, that, in the area of computing, the less sophisticated the software the more effective it proves to be for improving learners' ability to produce, to combine, to write, and to create. Software like Winword or Power Point can be powerful tools and can really open doors as the focus is actually on the mental process of creation, not on the more or less complicated way of operating the programme. Their constraints, far from being a hindrance, represent a help as they generate a lot of meta-cognitive thinking in the learner’s mind. In the case of Power Point, for instance, the learner has to make choices, to select, to reorder, to add or to eliminate, to combine different codes in order to convey a more effective message.

Learners are conceived of and treated as the active and acting agents who will assert their creativity in the process of "doing", and learning through "doing". The principal role of the teacher is to see to it that this comes about. The principal role of the classroom, equipped with computers and giving access to networked resources, is to assure that a mediational facility is available to enhance student efforts, as they manifest themselves in various disciplines (Barson&Debski, 1996).

Computers can indeed be seen as catalysts of a creative process but for this to become true it is essential to choose the modality of project work as this generates learning by discovering. Moving from traditional teaching to project work means going from a passive view to an active one, just as with computers the focus needs to move from the machine to the learner. Project work very naturally involves co-operative learning as projects are seldom carried out by a single student. Writing projects integrating multimedia within a cooperative learning environment can be a very effective way of using NICT, as these projects not only side-step the numerous risks inherent in this same technology, like zapping, idealisation of the tool, mechanisation, lack of real interaction, lack of feedback, lack of pedagogical reflection, but also allow learners to exploit new ways of proceeding.

Screen texts, and web texts in particular, are complex, as they may include very different elements all attempting to convey a message in a more effective way and they may represent a new opportunity for learners who can first express themselves in a global and complex way and only later go into detail and refine their work, including the use of hyper-textual links.

FINAL REMARKS

Integrating NICT into EFL methodology is a positive challenge for teachers but deep pedagogical reflection is necessary if we want it to become a golden opportunity to rethink the role of learners in the process of constructing their own learning and above all if we want it to be implemented within the humanistic paradigm.

There is the need for didactic, as well as cognitive ergonomics. The aim of school is to help the learners solve complex problems, therefore a serious reconsideration of the educational context is essential if we do not want to run the risk that computers end up being the reason for a progressive impoverishment of cognitive activity. We must not be seduced by the external beauty of the machines.

The WP can be a catalyst and a powerful spur to creativity within a perspective of low technology and high creativity Enrica Piccardo