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Volume 10 Number 1, Spring 2013, Pages 1-131   


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Creativity and Learners' Performance on Argumentative and Narrative Written Tasks
    Reza Zabihi, Mohsen Rezazadeh and Dariush Nejad Ansari


This study explores the differential role of creativity in Iranian EFL learners' performance on argumentative and narrative written tasks. The study involved the measurement of learners' (N=70) creativity using the Abbreviated Torrance Test for Adults (ATTA) in terms of features of fluency, elaboration, flexibility and originality as well as the elicitation of the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of their performance on written narrative and argumentative tasks. Whereas the argumentative task required that learners wrote an argumentative essay giving their opinions concerning the effect of technology on human's life, the narrative task involved learners in narrating a story based on a picture as a visual cue. With regards to the argumentative task, the results shows negative relationships between two measures of argumentative task fluency and students' creative originality score. However, the syntactic complexity of argumentations was affected by creative elaboration. Concerning the narrative task, significant positive correlations were observed between creative fluency and the three fluency measures of narrations. Besides, all three fluency measures correlated positively with the total creativity score. Yet the number of words was found to be negatively correlated with the creative originality. The findings are discussed in the context of language teaching and learning.

Keywords: creativity, task type, argumentative task, narrative task, upper-intermediate EFL learners