The Role of Creative Thinking in the Writings of Iranian EFL Learners

The present study explored the relationship between creative thinking and writing competence of aconvenient sample of twenty six Iranian undergraduate EFL learners. These students responded to theitems of a creative thinking measure and then completed a picture-prompt free writing task. The resultsof data analysis revealed no significant relationship between the students’ creative thinking and theirwriting abilities. There were also no significant correlations between the subscales of creative thinking(namely, fluency, elaboration, originality and flexibility) and components of writing (namely, content,organization, vocabulary, structure use and mechanics). However, among the constructs measured,there was a rather moderate level of relationship between fluency, as an attribute of creative thinking,and richness of content in writing which may be attributed to the rather similar underlying cognitivemechanisms involved in these two processes. In addition, the students’ views regarding the importanceof creative thinking in writing were explored by requiring them to respond to the items of an openendedsurvey. Finally, it was suggested that the students’ awareness of the legitimacy of using creativeattributes in their writing can possibly help them give free vein to their imagination and, hence, createtexts which are rich in content and innovative in terms of the linguistic features employed.

کلیدواژه ها:

Creative thinking ، Writing competence ، Free-writing task ، Correlation