Creative thought in teaching the turkish language

Turkish lessons are aimed to educate individuals who can use Turkish and the abilities of speaking, writing, listening and reading efficiently; who can express their feelings, ideas and dreams; who are sensitive to national values and who has the consciousness of the language and the top level conscious abilities such as classification, investigating and critical thinking, and the ones who can take responsibilities and work creatively with a group or individually. Especially, the ability of creating is the field that requires a more thorough scrutiny. Creative thinking is often described as any imaginary product involving original thoughts beyond the straight-line thinking platform. Student-based education and carefully planned lessons have great importance on developing creativity. The activities which enable students to take active part in the lesson, to express their thoughts clearly and without any fear and democratic atmosphere are effective to discover the creative sides of the students. A teacher of Turkish language should help to form and develop creative thoughts by organizing activities suitable for the students’ social and linguistic levels, which are based on the use of the students’ creative sides in the fields of listening, watching, reading, speaking, writing and learning grammar, apart from the ones given in the

Turkish activity books.

Creativity is the action of changing not only the world but also ourselves. Artistic creation is the different expression of subjective inner life during changing process. It is to realize the reproduction with one’s experiences, sensitivity and perception attitude; to find and discover new relations in dialectical meeting of subjective with objective. Creativity is to reach the solution in different ways in the action formed with dreams, imagination, sense of humor and intellectual, attention, judgment, and argumentation. Creative people benefit from their past, intellectual accumulation, experiences, perceptions and imagination in the process of creativity. Creative people can achieve more, can do more.

Creativity has a great role in improving abilities of mind. Creativity is complementary of intelligence and it is the top step. Intelligence can be described as collecting information, learning and abilities of using these and adapting different situations. It expands the content of these abilities by making connections and relations between information. There is a process of looking for a creation including concept, feeling and imagination searching and finding out. The connotation of this process with sensation and feelings that stem from perception constitutes a beginning for an efficient metaphor process.” And Conrad called this “creativity” [1]. According to the researches, left hemisphere of the brain is the center for creative thinking. If we are to explain the learning process of right and left brain briefly; left hemisphere is defined by features mentioned mostly with Mathematics, such as analytical, logical, systematic, numerical and rational. Right brain is defined by features that are mentioned mostly with art, such as instinctive, holistic, visual, sensory and spatial. Left-brain dominant people learn by phonetic and analytical methods, whereas rightbrain dominant people learn by visual methods [2]. For many people left cortex is interested in logic, words, lists, numbers, linearity, analysis, etc. Left cortex deals with these activities while right cortex waits ready to help in stand by or “alpha wave” position [3]. The future of humanity depends on creative individuals and a particular education for their creativity. All original and superior works that societies have are the works created by people with creative thinking. For every society, the most important educational problem is the early determination of the children who have creative features and forming and developing creative thinking of an individual. Because the people with the characteristics of creativity are the most important potential for the development of both the society they belong to and the whole humanity. The magic and secret power which brings developed countries that are advanced in all fields today to this stage is to provide an educational environment which is suitable for individuals with creative thinking, and according to their abilities and levels. Their creative powers should be turned into products which serve the welfare of their society and other societies.[3] As the aim of education and teaching activities is to ensure changes in students’ behavior in the desired direction, this means that students are the focus of these activities.

So it is important to find out to what extent the students’ behaviors change in the direction of target aims and the main factors that affect students’ success. When generally looked at the education process, it is seen that individuals who seem to be more successful mentally are supported more and rewarded but their creativity is ignored. In this context, teachers have the most important function in fulfilling education activities and they should support individuals’ creativity and they should help to develop their creativity power to upper limit with their behaviors. For this reason, societies need individuals whose creativity power is in upper level besides the individuals who are mentally in upper level in order to develop[4]. There are abilities that are accepted to contribute to creative thinking. These are the abilities measured with tools developed by Torrance and they are known as explanation, fluency, flexibility and originality [5]:

Explanation: It constitutes a ground for creativity. Individual’s explanations and expansion about the related subject, event and case are important abilities that determine individual’s creativity. Not using these abilities effectively and not ensuring different expansions causes abilities to be confined.

Fluency: Producing many acceptable ideas, solution or alternatives in a certain period. It shows the number of unusual usages and innovations expressed or done. For individual to produce many ideas, solution or alternatives about the subject, event or situation is an important indicator of creative thinking.

Flexibility: It is the diversity in produced ideas, solution or alternatives and bringing versatile perspective to the subject, event and situations. It is the number of categories about the unusual usage and the number of approaches used in innovations.

Creativity requires diversity in thinking and looking at the events from different perspectives.

Originality: Originality is a feature that requires mental energy, and it shows up in rare and unusual reactions. They are the ideas different from the known and simple. It expresses the unusual change and the number of usage. The emerging idea should be new and rare. In other words, answers should be different from the usual. Unusually, creative thinking individuals naturally have got different features from an average thinking person.

Creative thinkers are more flexible than other individuals and they adapt to new situations more easily. They are more careful. They see what is important for others and care about these. They are more compatible and sensitive about the environment and other people. They have self-confidence and they are confident. It is observed in the researches about creativity that almost all children have creative thinking in different levels. Creative abilities are observed more easily in younger children, however they disappear because these creative abilities are not reinforced or they are blocked with some comments such as “ do the right, do not’ be silly” or “how did you do that like this?” [6].

Creative thinking has had an important role in the development of societies. Inventions and discoveries which have improved societies have emerged as the product of creative thinking and creative problem solving. So, what is important for creativity? Creativity contains thinking in different cases in such a way that is flexible, fluent, original and different from the usual. Life is full of creative thinking events [6]. It is the subject of the discussion whether education of creativity is acceptable for creativity in real life, but, besides there are many evidences about improving creativity at school. Versatile thinking ability has a central importance in creativity in real life. It is observed that this versatile thinking ability can be improved by many educational programs [7]. In creative thinking, classroom atmosphere is another element as important as educational programs. Classroom atmosphere has a big effect on improvement of students’ creativities. These are some advices for preparing an atmosphere that supports creativity in a project oriented class:

1. Make various materials and equipments available.
2. Reduce the negative results of taking risk.
3. Expose students to many different creative products.
4. Make resources about many different subjects available in order for students to find things they are interested in and things that will activate their imagination.
5. Allow flexibility about time and classroom order.
6. Encourage the students to cooperate in projects.
7. During the project work, make sure that students have a quiet period, because noise may hinder creativity.
8. Make connections between the students and the creative people in society.
9. Think creatively yourself and share your products, process and happiness resulting from your success. Be a model.

In any step of education, success depends on student’s motivation. Researches show that extrinsic motivation gives harm to creativity whereas intrinsic motivation improves it [2]. State of the problem Which activities can be done in learning fields; listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar in order to improve creativity in primary education Turkish lesson?

There have been important developments about language teaching in our country in recent years. Teaching Turkish is stated not only as improving language abilities such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, visual reading and visual presentation but also as improving mental abilities such as thinking, understanding, sorting, classifying, questioning, relating, criticizing, analyzingsynthesizing, and evaluating. In this process, students are expected to improve their abilities such as using Turkish correctly, beautifully and effectively, communicating, problemsolving, decision-making, maintaining lifelong learning [3]:

1. Using Turkish correctly, beautifully and effectively.
2. Critical thinking.
3. Creative thinking.
4. Communicating.
5. Problem-solving.
6. Searching.
7. Decision-making.
8. Using information technologies.
9. Entrepreneurship [5]

One of the most important elements for Turkish lessons to be effective and useful is the education of improving creative thinking.

Communication is a case needed by people most and a natural result of individual’s being a social presence [6]. It is the natural understanding of people, transferring feelings and thoughts, and expressing themselves. Speaking is the most important means of the communication, at transferring level. Speaking is transferring thoughts, feelings and information to the other side by using the language consisting of sounds [3]. Speaking field has an important place in education and teaching process.

The signs and symbols perceived by the help of voice organs and eyes are interpreted, evaluated and sensed by brain. This process is called “reading”. It is aimed at learning field that students can read the written text they confront in daily life correctly, fluently and using the most suitable methods. It is also aimed that they can evaluate what they read, interpret with a critical point of view and acquire reading habit [6]

Writing is described as expressing feelings, ideas, imaginations and desires in a written form [1]. By improving writing skills, it is aimed that students express their feelings, ideas, imaginations, plans and impressions by taking advantage of language opportunities, and in accordance with the rules of the language. It is also aimed that students acquire writing habits to express oneself and for those who have writing ability improve their writing skills [6]. In accordance with these targets, students are oriented to express their feelings, thoughts, dreams and impression in written form. In the study of literary texts, different methods can be used in accordance with the goals set.

1. Writing the rest of the text and completing.
2. Writing a new ending for the text (shortening or extending).
3. Changing the point of view.
4. Changing the setting, time or characters.
5. Changing characters by adhering to the plot of the original text or changing the plot by adhering the characters.
6. Improving the characters in the plot of literary text.
7. Changing the speech format (dialogue, interior monologue, periphrasis, etc.)
8. Writing various texts about a known motive, character or story.
9. Writing parody or variations.
10. Transformation from a literary type to an other type (changing a text to an other text with a different form).
11. Constructing a new text by connotation chain of the title, concept or motif in the text [7].

Creative thinking is based on critical point of view, and finding unusual, new and original solutions. It is possible to use creative thinking in all learning areas of teaching Turkish such as listening, reading, speaking, writing and grammar. Creative thinking cannot be ignored at the point of raising students who can think, criticize, question, analyze, synthesize and make evaluation. So it is really important to create and apply activities allowing students’ creative thinking. First Turkish language teachers and then all educators have a very important duty about preparing Turkish lesson materials in accordance with creative thinking.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Amabile TM. The Social Psychology Of Creativity, Springer-Verlag Incorporated, New York. 1983
2. Aytan T The New Composition Techniques For Improving Writing Skills In Primary and Secondary Education, J. Milli Eğitim, Ankara. 2010
3. Bonk JC, Smith GS. Alternative Instructional Strategies For Creative and Critical Thinking In Accounting Curriculum, J. Account. Educ., 16: 2. 1998
4. Buzan T. Use Your Mind, Alfa Pres, İstanbul. 2008
5. Çetingöz D. The Research On The Improvement Of Creative Thinking Skills Of Pre-school Teachers Training Department Students, Master Essay, Dokuz Eylül University, İzmir. 2002
6. Demirel Ö. Turkish Lesson Teaching In Primary Schools, Milli Eğitim Press, İstanbul. 1999
7. Emir S, Bahar M. The Opinions Of Teachers and Students About Creativity, J. Abant İzzet Baysal Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler, 1: 1. 2003
8. Emir S, Erdoğan T, Kuyumcu A. The Relationship Between The Creative Thinking Level and Sociocultural Features Of Turkish Teachers Training Department Students, 15th National Education Sciences Congress, Muğla University, Muğla. 2006