Lectures 3.

Educational Psychology

Intelligence and Creativity

in SLA.
What is Intelligence?

 The mental abilities that enable one to adapt

to, shape, or select one’s environment
 The ability to judge, comprehend, and reason
 The ability to understand and deal with
people, objects, and symbols
 The ability to act purposefully, think rationally,
and deal effectively with the environment
 Students are considered intelligent if they
understand the course material and are able to
earn above-average.

2/36
Spearman’s Factor theory
(1904)

Factor theory of intelligence includes:

a general factor (g)  ability to achieve success in a wide variety
of intellectual tasks.
a specific factor – (s)  to excel in particular tasks:
memory,
attention and concentration,
verbal comprehension,
vocabulary,
spatial skills,
abstract reasoning

 Today, almost all IQ tests are g factors

 Put all the s-factors together, and you get the g-factor.
• Visual-spatial processing: Abilities such as putting together puzzles and copying
complex shapes
• Quantitative reasoning: The capacity to solve problems that involve numbers
• Knowledge: A person's understanding of a wide range of topics
• Fluid reasoning: The ability to think flexibly and solve problems
• Working memory: The use of short-term memory (such as being able to repeat a
list of items)
First IQ test
was
Designed by A. Binet
(1905).

It is simply the ratio of

person’s mental age to
chronological age. It
describes the
performance of an
individual relative to
that of others of the
same age.

IQ = MA/CA x 100
Intelligence tests

Intelligence tests are designed to measure

-verbal ability 69-85 – low

-math ability 86-114 – average
-memory 115-124 – higher than average
-perceptual speed 124-134 – high
-spatial ability
135 – above - genius
-verbal fluency
-reasoning
Cattell’s View of Intelligence - Intelligence as a Few
Basic Abilities (1963)

 Fluid Intelligence
 The ability to think on the spot and solve novel problems
▪ The ability to perceive relationships
▪ The ability to gain new types of knowledge

 Crystallized Intelligence
 Factual knowledge about the world
▪ The skills already learned and practiced
▪ Examples
▪ Arithmetic facts
▪ Knowledge of the meaning of words
▪ State capitals
Stenberg ‘s theory of intelligence

1) Stenberg (1986) stated that the ability to learn

from experience and the ability to adapt to the
environment /capacity to learn and behave
adaptively.
Educational video 1
R. Stenberg about successful intelligence.

1. How different is IQ from successful intelligence?

2. What should teachers do to make the most of students’ learning?
3. What made Stenberg become interested in human intelligence?
4. How can teachers improve academic achievement of learners with different patterns
of abilities?
5. Why is it so important not only to teach in a variety of ways but also test them in
different ways? Give examples.
6. What can help learners of different culture do better at school according to Stenberg/s
research?
7. What should be taken into account by college admissions and why?
8. Which overall conclusion can be drawn from this lecture about successful intelligence?

 https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow05B4bjGWQ&frags=wn&ab_channel=TheBrainwave
sVideoAnthology
Multiple Intelligence Theory(Howard Gardner )1980s

1. Verbal-Linguistic
2. Logical/mathematical
3. Musical
4. Visual-Spatial
5. Bodily -Kinesthetic
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalistic

 Almost everyone can think of a person who performed poorly at school but
excelled in sport or dance, perhaps, or a person with musical genius that
didn’t translate to any other area in their life.
 Gardner argued that the academic environment over-emphasized verbal and
logical skill while ignoring these other forms of intelligence.
He believed that the conventional concept of intelligence was too narrow and restrictive and
that measures of IQ often miss out on other "intelligences" that an individual may possess.
( 1983)
Strategic technique:

 Differentiate methods in accordance

to multiple intelligence of your
students.
 Use different activities according to
intelligence type preferences.
 Recommended activities
Verbal /Linguistic Logical/Mathematical Visual/Spatial Musical/Rhythmical

Poetry Making lists Models Rhythms to teach or

Word processing Scientific Mind-mapping learn
Letters Demonstrations Painting, collage, other Singing vocabulary
Speeches Picture graphs visual art Memorizing with the
Debates Logic puzzles and Time-lines help of rap
Reader’s Theater games Idea sketching Singing, humming,
Interviewing Problem solving Videos, slides, movies whistling
Developing test questions Classifying and Art appreciation Associations with sounds
Writing sketches or dramas categorizing Story mapping Rhyme and rhythm of
Stories Multiple solutions to Photography poetry
Conversations problems Charts Raps
Journals Subdividing Picture metaphors Creating songs
Sharing Strategy-making Color cues Poetry to music
Choral reading Prioritizing Music appreciation
Reading orally Analogies Chants
Summarizing/paraphrasing Abstract thinking
Storytelling
Word games
Radio shows
Oral interpretation
Bodily-kinesthetic/ Interpersonal Intrapersonal
kinesthetic
Demonstration Cooperative Journals
Creative dramatic Multi-cultural Role-play of emotions
Creating using the awareness and feelings
body Brainstorming sessions ‘What does it mean to
Body language; Role-playing be me?’ questions
gestures Conflict resolution diaries
Repeating a pattern by Job interviews autobiographies
clapping Newspapers self-esteem activities
pantomime Conversations ‘self-improvement’
Role-playing (physical) People sculpting skills
Sculpture Group problem solving self-assessment
Many ‘messy’ activities Simulations ‘why’ questioning
Simon says Games compliment circles
Dance independent study
Charades
 Educational video 2
 H. Gardner about multiple intelligence and academic
achievement

1. What is the importance of schools according to Gardner?

2. Why may a good grade for the exam lose its value later after
school?
3. Which examples does he give about active learning that has value
for a person?
4. What is a fair condition for teachers to teach the same way? Why is
it not possible?
5. Which priorities should school introduce?
6. What do both Gardner and Stenberg go along with about changes in
education?
https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2QtSbP4FRg&ab_channel=DerrickPurefoy
Creativity
Coming up with new or unusual responses to familiar
circumstances (closely related to the ability to solve
problems)
Guilford (1967) :
1. Convergent thinking (coming up with single correct answer)
2. Divergent thinking (with new unusual responses)

Intelligent test measures convergent thinking, creativity tests 

divergent thinking
People with higher intelligence tend to be more creative than
people with lower intelligence.
 What is being ‘CREATIVE’ in a Foreign Language
Learning? (according to Jack C. Richards, 2015)

Creativity in FLL is usually described as

having a number of different dimensions:
• the ability to solve problems in original
and valuable ways that are relevant to
goals,
• seeing new meanings and relationships
in things and making connections,
• having original and imaginative
thoughts and ideas about something,
• using the imagination and past
experience to create new learning
possibilities.
Creative Teacher and Creative Student
Csikszentmihalyi (1996) defines the characteristics
of the creative personality as follows:

1. Creative individuals have a great deal of energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
2. Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
3. Creative individuals have a combination of playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and
irresponsibility.
4. Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and rooted sense of
reality at the other.
5. Creative people seem to harbor opposite tendencies on the continuum between extroversion and
introversion.
6. Creative individuals are also remarkable humble and proud at the same time.
7. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape rigid gender role stereotyping and have a
tendency toward androgyny.
8. Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent.
9. Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective
about it as well.
10. The openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering pain yet
also a great deal of enjoyment.
 8 aspects of teacher ability and cognition that characterize some of the qualities of creative
teachers by Jack C Richards, 2015

1. Creative teachers are knowledgeable

Drawing on knowledge of texts

When I teach I may not have a detailed lesson plan but I keep my goals firmly in mind and I know what I am trying
to teach, whether it is a reading lesson, a speaking lesson and so on. And if I decide to do something that I hadn’t
planned it’s because I suddenly thought of a more interesting and engaging way of practicing something. For
example the other day we were studying narratives and were looking at a text in the book when it occurred to me
that it would be fun if students created a jigsaw narrative in groups. Each group would prepare the opening
section of a narrative, and then pass them around so that each group added the next section to the story. It turned
out to be a good way of reinforcing what we had been studying, about the features of narrative texts - you know
about setting, characters, events, problem, and resolution. (C., English teacher, Mexico)
Making use of sociolinguistic knowledge
One of the things that my students seem to find interesting and even amusing is when I present a different point of
view from an idea presented in one of the texts we are using. I guess this is just a matter of confidence but I feel it
is good for learners to see that ideas in print can be challenged. The most obvious example of this is when texts we
are reading have been written by someone writing in a different cultural context. For instance, the other day we
were reading a text, written in the USA, about taking part in a job interview. The text said very clearly that the
interviewee should call any male interviewers “Sir” and any females “Ma’am”. So I explained that in the country
I come from, that would be completely inappropriate because those terms of address are not familiar. This opened
up a very interesting discussion about terms of address, formality and respect. My intention was to highlight for
the learners that such matters are defined very differently in different cultural contexts and it is important to be
sensitive to the context. The same issues of formality and informality occur in writing of course, so I was able to
refer to this conversation later when we started working on letter writing. (S., University teacher, UAE)
 2. Creative teaching requires confidence
Creating a personal learning space
I want my class to be MY teaching leaning space. I personalize it with pictures, photos and
other things that the students and I choose. I want them to feel that when they come into my
classroom they are going to experience a lesson that has been personally created for them by
me. (J., English teacher, Ecuador)
 
Following one’s intuitions
I have been teaching for nearly ten years and now I am much more confident in the
classroom than I was when I first started teaching. At first I used to worry about what my
students thought about me – Did I know my subject?, Did I know how to introduce the
material?, Was I in control of the class? and so on. Now that I am much more confident as a
teacher I am more willing to follow my intuitions, to try out new approaches and strategies,
to take risks and experiment. It makes teaching more enjoyable for me. (M., English teacher,
Peru)
 3. Creative teachers are committed to helping their learners succeed
Developing self-confidence in learners
The more I know about my leaners, the better I can help them learn. Self-assurance can inspire second language
learners to pass through the door of the world of English especially those who do not believe in themselves. Why
is it important for a student to believe in one’s self? I have to deal with this question when working with students.
Learners who boost self-confidence, boost success in acquiring the knowledge of a foreign language. In other
words, they awake their credence in learning English. R., English teacher, Mexico

Focusing on learners as individuals

I believe that one of the most important things I can do for my learners is to increase their confidence in their
ability to learn successfully. It never ceases to amaze me how different the learners in a single class can be. I
believe it is my job to find out what the particular strengths and weaknesses of each learner are and to work with
those, usually outside of class time. One of the ways I do this is by personalizing the feedback I give on my
learners’ writing. This is where I can give advice about the areas that a particular learner needs to work on or
where I can congratulate them on something they have done very well. In this way, I treat my written feedback
with them as part of an ongoing conversation. In a way, it allows me to extend the time I can spend with each
learner beyond the hours we spend together in the classroom and the times where they drop into my office with a
question or just to chat. S., University English teacher, UAE
 
Following learners’ progress
One really nice thing that happens a lot when you are a writing teacher is that you often get contacted by
learners whom you have taught in the past and asked to comment on the texts they write when they are applying
for scholarships or jobs. This is a very exciting experience for me because it gives me an idea of what has
happened to my learners since I worked with them and allows me to maintain a relationship with them beyond
their classroom days. M., English teacher, Peru
 
4. Creative teachers are non-conformists

Making lessons unique experiences

I try to think of every lesson I teach as a unique experience. I try not to repeat myself. I
think the students in my school recognize that I teach differently from some of the other teachers in the school.
It doesn’t mean that I am better than them but I want my lessons to reflect my way of teaching. M., English
teacher, Peru

Creating effective surprises

I like my students to feel that when they come to my class they will always experience something a little
different and unexpected. Not novelty for its own sake but a different way of doing things. For example, in
addition to teaching how to write I make a point of teaching students how not to write. I try to find the worst
possible examples and ask students to mark these as if they were the teacher. I then reveal to them who the texts
were written by. Students love finding out that some of the texts came from Ministry of Education documents
and websites! I try to add new techniques to my repertoire every year. L., English teacher, Mexico

Avoiding repetition
I have been using the same textbook for over five years, along with lots of other teachers in my school. Each
time I teach from it I try to do different things with it, to use it ways that are a little but different from the ways
my colleagues use it. They tend to stick to the book a lot of the time. I find it much more interesting to try to
find different ways of teaching it, sometimes reversing the order of exercises in a unit, having students rewrite
some of the reading texts, sometimes having the students teach the book themselves, taking turns. It becomes
more interesting for me as well as more fun for the learners too. I try to challenge myself by not repeating
things too many times. R., English teacher, Mexico
 5. Creative teachers are familiar with a wide range of
strategies and techniques

Varying tasks and activities

I have a repertoire of at least 20 different ways of dealing with a writing task
depending on which stage of the process we are working on. Sometimes we
work with brainstorming techniques like listing, cubing or mind mapping.
These can be done orally or in writing. Sometimes it’s more productive when
learners work in pairs. Sometimes we do continuous writing on topics they
generate, just to focus on fluency. Other times we work with the organization
of texts, identifying the best sequence in which to present elements of the text
and allocating different learners to generate the ideas and language for
different parts. This way we come up with a collaborative text. I also use
reformulation in class a lot – this involves presenting two versions of a
completed text: the learner’s original text and then a version of it that I have
reworked to make it communicate more effectively. The positive thing about
reformulation is that it involves no ‘correction’ of the learner’s text but
invites students to identify the changes that have been made and to discuss
why they have been made. In this way it is developing their critical skills and
helping them find ways of evaluating and improving their own texts. The key
is to keep the activities fresh and to encourage learners to contribute the
content. With writing, the sky is the limit as far as content is concerned; they
are only limited by their imagination. S., University teacher, UAE
 6. Creative teachers are risk-takers

Learning from mistakes

Recently I thought I would try an activity that focused on noticing. I prepared some role-play activities and had my
low-intermediate-level students practice them. For a follow up I asked my advanced level students to try the same role
plays and I recorded their efforts, planning to use them as a ‘noticing’ activity for my lower-level students. I wanted
my students to listen to the more advanced level students doing the role plays and to ‘notice’ some of the more
complex language they used. Unfortunately my students did not find the noticing activity interesting, so I am
rethinking how I might revisit this kind of activity to make it more engaging. E., English teacher, Mexico
 
Pausing to rethink
Last year I got students to keep a writing portfolio. The idea was to get them to reflect on their progress and motivate
them by getting them to see evidence of their work. They hated it! They just thought it was more work and didn’t help
them with their exams. I will really need to rethink this one. E., English teacher, Mexico

Trying something new

Recently in my writing class I asked learners to find any website or a blog that interested them and submit a question
to that blog and see if they got an answer. I was a bit nervous that learners might choose unsuitable sites but thought
I’d give it a go anyway. As it happened only a few students completed the assignment but one of them who did
reported on a Tandem Language Learning website she had found that welcomed learners to join for free. She had
been paired up with an Australian girl who was learning Spanish and they had already exchanged a number of emails
and were planning to have a Skype meeting. Her report was completely unexpected but ended up motivating a number
of other students to visit the same site and find their own partners. Whereas at first I thought the activity had been
unsuccessful because not everyone did it, in fact this one student’s enthusiasm ended up influencing several others to
follow her lead, which eventually provided lots of additional written communication practice in English. S.,
University teacher, UAE
 7. Creative teachers seek to achieve learner-centered lessons

Personalising lesson content

As far as I can I try to involve my students in developing the content of lessons. For example if I am teaching students to
write narratives, while the textbook provides examples of what narratives are and what their features are, as soon as
possible I like to shift the lesson focus to sharing personal stories. When students share accounts of their childhoods and
write about important events or experiences in their lives they become much more involved in their writing. S., English
teacher, Singapore
Using student-selected content
I ask my students to collect examples of interesting texts they encounter out of class and bring these to class. I use these
as the basis for teaching them about different text types and styles. The texts they bring to class are often more
interesting than the ones in the book because these are the texts THEY are interested in. J., English teacher, Ecuador
Making connections to students’ lives
I try to incorporate learners’ actual writing needs into the classroom. For instance, if someone is trying to sell a second-
hand textbook or is looking for a new housemate, I ask them to let us use their situation for practice at writing an
appealing FOR SALE or FLATMATE WANTED advertisement. This way there is no big division between the writing we
do in class and the writing we do in the real world. Even if they are going to use their first language in the actual
advertisement, there is a lot of very practical learning that can occur from also producing the text in English.S.,
University teacher, UAE
 8, Creative teachers are reflective

Reflecting through journal-writing

I keep a teaching journal in which I jot down thoughts and reflections on my teaching. I try to
take 30 minutes or so, once a week, to look back at my teaching and reflect on things of
interest, or issues that arose that I need to think more about. If I have tried out a new activity
and it worked particularly well, I may make a note of it for future reference. I find journal-
writing to be a useful consciousness-raising tool. It helps me focus on things that I may
otherwise forget and helps me make better decisions about my future teaching. It’s interesting
to read things I wrote at different times to get a sense of my understanding of myself as a
teacher. E., English teacher, Mexico
 
Getting feedback from learners
One way that I help myself remain reflective on my teaching is to regularly ask my learners to
scribble on a piece of paper at the end of a morning’s teaching what they remember about the
class. This can be very telling. Sometimes the learners refer to something that I didn’t pay much
attention to, and that makes me wonder why it was so salient for them and not for me.
Sometimes I realize that they are more focused on the content of what we are writing about
than the strategies, and skills and elements that contribute to effective written texts. This
information is extremely valuable as it gives me an inkling of how the learners perceive what
goes on in class and gives me the opportunity to make adjustments to my practice where I think
this is needed. S., University teacher, UAE
 
 Home assignment for teacher test portfolio
Multiple intelligence o Linguistic
test o Logical-mathematical
  o Visual-spatial
  o Musical
o Bodily-kinesthetic
o Interpersonal
o Intrapersonal
o Naturalistic
 Simulation meeting/cards discussion for

TEAM 1 (ENGLISH department)

 Treat verbal/linguistic and visual/spatial learners with their favourite

activities from your FL textbook
 Treat bodily/kinesthetic and intrapersonal learners with their
favourite activities from your FL textbook
 Compare abilities of convergent and divergent students. Give
examples.
 Explore internet resources for recent articles and present research
findings about multiple intelligence (MI) in SLA/FLT
 Simulation meeting/cards discussion for

TEAM 2 (French/German department)

 Treat logical/mathematical and interpersonal learners with their

favourite activities from your FL textbook
 Treat musical/rhythmical and naturalistic learners with their
favourite activities from your FL textbook
 Describe briefly creative teachers. Give at least three examples of
creative teachers’ ABILITIES.
 Explore internet resources for recent articles and present research
findings about creativity / divergence approach in SLA/FLT