IH Mian Annual Conference 16/10/2015 “Innovate and Educate: Creativity in the Language

1. Making your toenails twinkle:
creativity in the language
classroom
A personal view of creativity in the English
language classroom
Alan Marsh

2. Acknowledgements:

3. Jill and Charles Hadfield’s Creative Practice MET
January 2012

4. What are the missing words?
•When I .. old, I …. …. purple.

5. What are the missing words?
When I am old, I will wear purple.

6. What’s the rule?
• When I’m old, I will wear purple
• When we’re talking about the future, after adverbs
like when, we use a ………….. tense

7. What’s the rule?
• When I’m old, I will wear purple
• When we’re talking about the future, after adverbs
like when, we use a present tense

8. • satin sandals
• pavement
• gobble up
• railings
• the sobriety of my youth
• slippers
• spit
• swear

9. What’s the title?
When I am an old woman I will wear purple
…………………………………………..

10. What’s the title?
When I am an old woman I will wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I will spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I will sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I will go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

11. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Jenny Joseph
Warning

12. I’ll definitely
I’ll probably I might
I’ll

13. I’ll definitely I definitely won’t
I’ll probably I probably won’t
I might I might not
I’ll I won’t

14. What’s the rule (2)?
• I’ll definitely go
• I definitely won’t go
• I’ll probably stay
• I probably won’t stay
• Where do definitely, possibly (adverbs) go with verbs like will (modal
auxiliaries)?

15. Learner poems: When I’m old …
When I’m old I won’t be quiet and I’ll bother my neighbours. I
might have a toy boy.

16. A word my learners wanted to know…!
• Sugar Daddy

17. When I’m old …
When we are old we shall definitely do many crazy and dangerous
things.
We will wear full make-up from morning and we will spend our money
for a face lift

18. When I’m old …
When I’m old I’ll be an honarable person.
I’ll live in America and I’ll speak the good English.
I’ll teach my children to honar their old country and their new country.

19. Going to the bank …

20. I’m forever blowing bubbles…

21. My first bank account …

22. … in Burnley. Lancashire, England

24. West Ham United

25. I’m forever blowing bubbles…

26. Going to the bank …

27. Don’t worry…
It’s his synapses firing

28. Er …..not sinuses…….synapses!

29. Neurons

30. Synapses

31. Teaching the syllabus: Learning in lockstep

32. Learners’ interlanguages

33. Making space for personal syllabi

34. Switching on the light(s)

35. Some conditions for creativity in the language
classroom: S L P

36. Scaffolding: e.g. breaking up a task to make it
achievable

37. Linking explicitly to language items

38. Link the creativity to explicit learning points
• You and your learners will explicitly focus on a specific language point
or skill
• Implicitly, lots of other connections will be made
• Probably different connections for different learners