Speaker
Description
In this presentation we will briefly review research literature on creativity and language teaching, drawing especially from Creativity in Language Teaching (Jones & Richards, 2016). We will consider the qualities of creative teaching, as well as why teaching creatively may facilitate the acquisition of a foreign language.
We will then briefly review the conclusions of Chappell's "Creativity through Inquiry Dialogue" (2016) in order to see an example of how teachers and learners might teach and learn creatively through a very particular type of classroom talk which Chappell calls "inquiry dialogue" and which I have described elsewhere as "creative speaking" (Cohen 2025).
We will conclude this presentation with several suggestions for teaching practice which can facilitate this sort of creative speaking every day in the language classroom. We will consider how routine, impromptu student-to-student speaking activities may help foster confidence and fluency, as well as how teachers can guide classroom discussions in such a way that facilitates meaningful dialogue, where learners can inquire and build-on what they say to each other to lead the conversation into surprising and creative directions.
References
Chappell, P. (2015). Creativity through inquiry dialogue. In Creativity in language teaching: perspectives from research and practice (pp. 130–145). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315730936-9
Cohen, N. (2025) Creative Speaking: A Practice-Related Review of “Creativity Through Inquiry Dialogue”. [Online]
https://ldjournal.ld-sig.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/LDJ9-07.pdf
Jones, R. H., & Richards, J. C. (2016). Creativity and language teaching. In Creativity in language teaching: perspectives from research and practice (pp. 3–15). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315730936-1
Biography
Nathan Cohen has been working in TESOL since 2006. He began his career at Language Link Vietnam, Hanoi, where he earned his CELTA and began his own language learning and teaching journey. In 2013 he moved to Saudi Arabia, where he taught English-for-Special-Purposes at the Industrial Training Center of the Saudi Arabian Oil Company. After the pandemic he returned to Vietnam, where he worked in exams and assessment for the British Council and Cambridge ESOL. Since Spring 2026 he has been employed as a Global Teaching Fellow at the Global Teaching Institute of Tokyo International University, in Japan. His research interests include the psychology of education, language acquisition and learner development, creativity and humor in the classroom, artificial intelligence in language teaching and assessment, high-stakes exams such as TOEIC, TOEFL, and IELTS, and international education. He holds an MA Education (Learning and Teaching) as well as a postgraduate Diploma in English Language Teaching (DELTA).
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