Think about a time your classroom suddenly came to life during a role-play assignment, project, or storytelling task. Compare this lively energy to the energy learners might exhibit while participating in the quieter, more passive nature of worksheet-driven tasks. Creative tasks have the potential to unlock confidence, enhanced engagement, and real communication!
Creative tasks are designed to tap into the learners’ imagination, problem-solving abilities, and personal experiences (Giroux & Kazandjian, 2023). Creative tasks aren’t just fun, but they are practical for language development too!
Key characteristics of creative tasks are elements that are authentic and meaningful; they encourage imagination, flexibility, and choice, and require language to accomplish a unique task while integrating listening, speaking, writing, and reading abilities (Giroux & Kazandjian, 2023).
Consider how you might integrate creative tasks into your teaching. Could your learners rewrite the ending of a short story or design an advertisement for a fictional business? Or produce a short “how-to” video and script a skit. These high-value instructional tools provide real communication and relevance by applying language and building rich experiences through problem solving while boosting intrinsic motivation through deeper understanding and stronger critical thinking skills (Verner, 2016).
To develop your own creative tasks, consider how you might offer your learners choice and flexibility in the learning environment. Choice can be in the form of topic, work partner, or format. Provide scaffolding opportunities and support the creative learning process while adjusting expectations (Verner, 2016). In a learning environment where creative tasks are implemented, the teacher becomes the facilitator.
As you consider how to include more creative tasks into your ESL classroom, ask yourself how you can include more choice into upcoming lessons, or where you can swap a worksheet for a small creative task instead. If you are interested in exploring how creativity, andragogy, and task-based instruction intersect in adult ESL teaching, TESL Ontario offers a specialized skills certificate course to dive deeper into creative and task-based learning; Creative Tasks and Activities for Engaging Language Learners.
References
Giroux, S., & Kazandjian, N. (2023). Teach Interactive. Teach Interactive. https://www.teach-interactive.com/blog/pbl-in-esl-project-based-learning-in-esl-engaging-students-in-real-world-challenges
Verner, S. (2016). Looking at the Bigger Picture: 7 Tips for Using Project Based Learning in the ESL Classroom. Busy Teacher. https://busyteacher.org/24259-project-based-learning-7-tips.html
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