Written by: Karin Scheffold-Mokler

 

This long-awaited workshop in cooperation with ELTAU on 17th October 2020 was a very  interesting and entertaining experience for all of us.

After a short introduction about the importance of creativity in foreign language teaching, Jon Wright stimulated our own creativity by asking us which was our individual colour of the day.

This was of course a question we had not expected, but in spite of the rather grey day (regarding the weather) lots of participants answered with colours like orange, pink, blue etc. and told us their personal reasons for this.

Jon Wright underlined the importance of unexpected or unusual questions or exercises to make students think and be prepared to tell about themselves. 
Personalization and creativity incite in particular those students who are shy and not so active  to speak more in the classroom.

In breakout rooms we were invited to complete various dialogues NOT PLAYING THE GAME,

For example: 

A: So, you’re the teacher, are you?
B:  ……….
C: Why did you decide to become a teacher?
D:   ………. 
E: What do you enjoy most about your job?
F: ………..

Unfortunately we could not hear the other groups laughing in their breakout rooms…

Jon also taught us how to prevent dominant students from speaking too much by using role-playing games where the dominant speaker is the interviewer and has to listen to the others.
We all learnt that making our students speak by stimulating their creativity gives them more courage to speak in the foreign language and thus improve their skills.