Creativity Enhancing Activities in English Lessons for 6th Grade Primary School Students and Their Perceptions

Abstract

This study introduces four types of creativity enhancing activities(CEAs) that can be implemented as part of English lessons for 6th grade primary school students and investigates the students’ perceptions toward them. A total of 122 6th grade primary school students participated in this study, with 61 of them being enrolled in the control and experimental groups respectively. For this study, one unit of an English textbook was used. While the control group mainly used textbook activities for each lesson, the experimental group used six different CEAs in place of six textbook activities across six English lessons over a two–week period. The study employs both qualitative and quantitative data analysis for more robust data analysis and triangulation of the data. After the experiment, each participant in both the control and experimental groups completed a post survey and several students were chosen to take part in an interview. The survey results for both groups showed a positive response to the English lessons with the experimental group showing greater positivity. There were discrepancies between the two groups with regard to the activities they liked and disliked. Whereas the control group students preferred the game-like activities, many of the experimental group students preferred some CEAs to other textbook activities due to the opportunities they provided to use their thinking skills. This research showed a positive effect of CEAs on Korean primary school learners’ English learning and it also revealed possibilities of implanting CEAs in regular English lessons for Korean primary schools.