资源描述
grammars of foreign languages thoroughly, but cannot use them properly and express meanings with correct Words. Meanwhile, the method can’t train students’ abilities in using language, make students get accustomed to being passive learners, make students can’t speak but can read English and can’t train students’ complex quality.
The thesis talks about the research of developing students’ creative thinking at home and abroad, summing up the approaches of fostering creative thinking which are studied by other people, discussing the reason that we want to foster senior high school students’ creative thinking and at last, I give my approaches of fostering creative thinking.
2. Literature Review
2.1 The research of developing students’ creative thinking at home and abroad
Since 1950, people have started to pay much attention on creativity. People explore its essence on a multi-angle and a full range, but most theories only reveal the different aspects of creativity, but can not make a satisfactory explanation about it, and it is still difficult to integrate relevant theories. In 50 years, the researchs of creativity at abroad, which develop along with creative personality characteristics, creative cognitive processes, the creative stimulation and creative social psychology, they developed and implemented a lot of plans of creative stimulation in order to improve individual and team’ creativity, such as psychological therapy, brainstorming, role-playing games, organizational plans est. With the maturity of a number of technology and the improvement of organizational model, the development of foreign creativity achieved remarkable results, a number of creative training model have gradually been recognized and promoted.
Creativity was started to research in 1980 in China. From 1980 to the present, the research of creative education have made gratifying progress in China, various experiments had different features and achieved remarkable results. For example, a teaching model of “creative activities course”, that is, thinking of opening a specialized training sessions, which focus on developing creative thinking and capacity; as in the core journals, “The research of students’ creative thinking from English Teaching in High School” has been published, the author of this paper used teaching strategies methods and principles of the research of creative thinking in domestic and foreign high school and used a questionnaire survey method, comparative law, experiment, interview. Through this experimental research, the author had some conclusions: summarizing the basic principles and methods of training students creative thinking on English teaching; introspecting in accordance with the creative thinking training in Western countries, creating the inspiration to us and putting forward urgent problems which should be solved quickly and coping strategies when English teachers train students’ creative thinking; “The research of training creative thinking when students are Learning in High School Students Creative Thinking culture study.” The author used a questionnaire method to conclude those main factors, which affect students’ creative thinking, are the learners’ cognitive factors, personality factors; teachers’ teaching methods, teachers’ quality and the support of curriculum etc. However, the research of students’ creative thinking training is still in its infancy in China. We find that in high school English teaching to develop students’ creative thinking, there has been little research on training high school students’ creative thinking when teachers teach English and the research results generally do not be spread and promoted by inspecting and retrieving all kinds of relevant information.
2.2 An overview of approaches to foster creative thinking
Many people have some methods to foster high school students’ creative thinking in English teaching. Their methods as follows:
2.2.1 To create a relaxed, joyful and democratic learning atmosphere
Emotion and character are essential to start cognitive skills. A relaxed and joyful learning atmosphere has a positive impact on the learner’ s spirit and learning motivation. A good learning atmosphere depends on the role change between the teachers and students, students and students.
2.2.2 Stimulate students’ curiosity and learning motivation
It is an important condition to help students to form and develop creative thinking ability. Students’ desire to knowledge and the emergence of curiosity depend on teaching model. Heuristic study is a process which can make students explore and creative something actively. Heuristic study creates a variety of problems scenarios; stimulates students’ curiosity and learning motivation and mobilizes activity, self-awareness and initiative of students thinking. Students can not only gain the existing knowledge and skills, but also further explore the unknown scenarios and find new knowledge which can not be mastered. Thus, teachers should try hard to excavate teaching content, organize teaching form and choice teaching methods.
2.2.3 To expand imagination
Imagination can expand people’s thinking. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge, because knowledge is limited, but imagination can sum up the all things of the world and it is a source of knowledge. The development of Creative thinking ability depends on the development of imagination. Imagine should be established on the basis of understanding the inexorable law of things. Teachers can not only pay attention to teaching the conclusions, but also let students join the teaching process actively and guide students to engage in associative activities so that they get broad imaginary space.
2.2.4 To create a creative learning atmosphere
Creative learning not only requires students to master the knowledge, skills and norms of behavior, but also deepen them on this basis and carry out re-creation. An expert in his book pointed out that the five key features of creative learning atmosphere are that students have a sense of security in their psychology when they are taking a risk and making mistakes during they are studying. Students understand the challenge of their work deeply. Students think learning is their purpose; they don’t think learning is a method that helps them achieve success. They think they are critical thinking and decision-making learners. They think they are a person who has freedom will, rather than they are a person who is controlled. Thus, teachers should pay attention on something when they are creating a creative learning atmosphere.
(i) Teachers should foster students’ interest of exploring new things
Interest is good for giving full play to students’ intelligence and promoting the concentrated level of their sensitivity and attention. Teachers should help students understand themselves correctly and establish students’ successful confidence. At the same time, teachers should encourage students to be brave and staunch, encourage them to work hard and avoid timidity, cowardly. Teachers should foster students to have sound, open-minded personality and flexible thinking way and prevent the one-sidedness and the parochialism of the character.
(ii)Students should have space so that they can discover problems, think problems and solve problems
Teachers should get rip of the expert image which is omnipotent and omniscient,because it make students be lazy to think something when they are study and prevent them from trying and innovating. On the contrary, it is necessary to provide adequate time and resources for solving their problems. Firstly, students can choose seats freely in class so that they have a relaxed free learning environment. Secondly, teachers should leave 5 to 10 minutes to discuss the text content for their small group as a unit and find out problems, then solve these problems by themselves. If some people have so difficult problems that they can’t solve, they can put forward these problems before the all students in the classroom. I think they can solve these problems by discussing and debating them. They can complete the task successfully so that further developes the knowledge and skills in this area creatively.
(iii)Students should increase the channels of digesting knowledge neatly
Increasing the channels of digesting knowledge neatly is a task-driven activity. Learners complete a meaningful learning task though they learn and explore knowledge on their own. It needs students to take a variety of exploratory approaches in addition to pay attention on the quality of inputting materials, teacher’s effect, and the learning environment. Most of these activities require students to think something actively and try hard to make use of various ways to solve problems. Teachers add some activity classes to attract students according to the English characteristics which are informational, fun, recreational. Teachers try hard to create conditions, design dexterously and organize carefully. From the content, we can see that activity classes should reflect the comprehensive use of basic knowledge, the re-expression of important and difficult knowledge. From the form, we can see that teachers can use the game method, creative performances, knowledge contests, and other methods loved by the students and the role transposition between teachers and students. From the effect, teacher should extend and expand the knowledge, consolidate and strengthen the skills. Activity classes can make students learn knowledge freely. They are good for fostering students’ creative thinking skills.
3. The Research of Fostering Students’ Creative Thinking in English Teaching
3.1 The definition of creative thinking
The human mind can be classified from different angles. Thinking and complex as the dimension of the virtue of division can be thought. Thinking is divided into action thinking, imaginable thinking and abstract thinking. Thinking can be divided into convergent thinking and divergent thinking by the direction of exploring answers to questions. Thought can be divided into up thinking, solving thinking, decision-making thinking by the purpose of thinking. Thinking can be divided into re-thinking of thinking and creative thinking by thinking’s creative dimensions.
“Creative thinking is a thinking activity, which organizes and transforms previously acquired knowledge in order to make that knowledge fit the current problems, and then solve problems” (Gu Mingyuan, 1992). Because creative thinking always embodied creative problem-solving process, psychologists often regarded them as synonymous. Besides studies have shown that the form of creative thinking structure is mainly combined by divergent thinking and convergent thinking.(Divergent thinking means that people give full play to their imagination, break the original knowledge circle from one point to all directions. Then they find more innovative, possible answers and assume a way for solving problem by recombination the knowledge and notions. Convergent thinking means that convergent thinking means people collect information about the problems. When they are thinking and answering these problems, they reorganize and reason so that they can have only one exact answer.) In the mean time, the form of creative thinking structure also includes intuition, inspiration and creative imagination. So creative thinking uses various thinking ways, which includes divergent thinking, convergent thinking, inspiration, imagination, etc, to organize and transform the previously acquired knowledge in order to fit the current problem, and then solve problems.
When students are learning English, creative thinking means students find and grasp English’ s inner law, and constantly integrate knowledge that has been learned during learning English so that students are able to form new cognitive thinking process.
3.2 Creative thinking is good for learning English
As a teacher, you should be aware that English is a foreign language in China. It means that students learn a foreign language in China and English learners have few opportunities to touch English or places, except they are in the classroom and several teaching materials, so it is difficult to learn English when they are far away from the language environments. The facts are that: 1) Because of the lack of language environment, Students are difficult to study well. 2) Because people usually learn English in the classroom, English teachers and teaching materials are often the main input source, so people can’t learn much English. 3) Because students don’t live in foreign countries whose native language is English, they lack of ability of communicating.
We can see that in this case, people require fostering students’ creative thinking, because creative thinking can make students play their ability well and make them know how to acquire knowledge on their own. It means that creative thinking can solve the above problems as much as possible.
4. How to Forster Students’ Creative Thinking
The core of creative thinking is divergent thinking. Therefore, if teachers want to foster students’ creative thinking, they should foster students’ divergent thinking. Divergent thinking produces different ideas (flexibility) from different perspectives so that produce a number of methods for solving the problems (fluency), at last, people will have to further improve the notions, and create unusual, unique, innovative ideas (originality). Divergent thinking and concentrated thinking (also be called Convergent thinking) influence each other. Therefore, fostering divergent thinking is an effective way to cultivate creative thinking.
4.1Basic knowledge and basic skills are the basis of divergent thinking
Teachers spend much time teaching the base knowledge and the base skill to students, so students have solid foundation of basic knowledge and skills. However, teachers should plan to expand the knowledge range when they are teaching, such as guiding students’ reading, watching English-language newspaper “Teens”, English programs, etc. “Standard” (this is a book name) compiled a set of materials for students to read according to the students’ interest. Only if students accumulate and master a lot of rich English knowledge, they are able to think in many ways when they are thinking, so that they have the foundation of divergent thinking.
4.2 Fostering Students’ ability of accepting new information continually
Nowadays, science and technology are developing rapidly, contents of the text books can’t catch up with the pace of the times, so it requires students to accept new things, understand the dynamics of social development, such as learning big events of the international community and national affairs. Teachers should advocate students to watch television programs in English news channels every day. If some students can’t understand these new, teac
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