Sparking Creativity in the World Language Classroom : Strategies and Ideas to Build Your Students' Language Skills

Creativity in teaching practice is a wellresearched topic (Cremin & Chappell, 2019), but there is no consistent definition of creativity, and how it should be integrated into teaching practices also remains unanswered.Because personality, aptitude, and teaching styles differ among individual teachers, it is difficult to conclude which strategy of creativity is more effective than others.With decades of experience of working as language teachers, Deborah Blaz and Tom Alsop wrote the book Sparking Creativity in the World Language Classroom, discussing the benefits of being creative and the strategies and ideas to be creative in language teaching.Instead of giving a clear definition of creativity, they prioritized the process of becoming creative by recognising individual differences among educators.Divided into 12 chapters, the book is interactive, providing space for the reader's reflections and introspections.It even includes award certificates for creative achievements gained by following the strategies in the book.Chapter 1 puts forward the idea that creativity benefits both students and educators.It presents the teacher's individualistic traits, including his or her personality, intellect, curiosity, imagination, goals, ideas and expectations that can be put into practice as they become creative.The authors claim creativity can benefit the educator's health, happiness and life skills.The chapter tries to motivate readers to discover why they should be creative.Chapter 2 begins by providing a road map to the ensuing chapters.It also explains basic concepts like curiosity, imagination, goal setting, and implementation, all required for creativity and the right mindset to pursue creative goals.It highlights the value of a positive mindset, a willingness to take risks, and persistence in learning from mistakes, all of which are crucial for enhancing creativity.Chapter 3 recognises the skills and activities that the educators enjoy, which can help them bring more creativity into their classrooms.Be it arts, food or cooking, games, movies or TV shows, all of them can be used to increase creativity in the classroom.The chapter lays a foundation for teachers to think beyond the familiar and implement the best of their ideas, personalising them with the things they enjoy most.The chapter is enriched with the author Deborah Blaz's personal experiences with activities she has used in the