The relationship between Creativity and Language Achievement: An Iranian EFL-based Study

This study investigated the correlation between Creativity and Language Achievement (LA) among Iranian EFL students. Iranian EFL students (n=138), from three different Iranian universities, were invited through census sampling technique to participate in the study. General English questions (adapted from university entrance exam) and Self-report Creativity Test designed by Rand Sip et al. (1979) were employed for collecting data on LA and creativity, respectively. Questionnaires were distributed among the participants during the class hours by prior arrangement with teachers and students, and were collected a few days later. SPSS statistics software was used to find the relationship between the study variables. Significance level was set at 0.05. Overall, 103 students, aged 18 to 27, returned the questionnaires for analysis. The creativity scores ranged from 134 to 210 (165.53 ± 15.34) and the LA scores were between 0 and 16 (6.92 ± 3.25). The Pearson correlation coefficient test revealed no significant correlation between the participants’ creativity and their language achievement (r = -0.136, p =0.17). In this study Iranian EFL learners creativity didn’t predict their LA. While some opposing results exist, the present study depicted that the relationship between the two variables is not significant. Such a discrepancy in research findings suggests future repeated studies with different settings to be able to generalize the findings to different contexts. Further research may involve different contexts with different types of instruments and designs (observational studies with different types of tasks such as grammar competency, reading efficiency and vocabulary learning, and with more participants).

کلیدواژه ها:

Creativity ، EFL learners ، Iran ، Language Achievement (LA).