metaphor provided is clear enough?
(1) Very clear 21 (53.8) (2) Appropriate 17 (43.6) (3) Not clear 1 (2.6) II. Section 3: Formal Activity
(1) The time length for this activity is 25 minutes. Do you think it is enough for this activity?
(1) Very enough 17 (43.6) (2) Appropriate 21 (53.8) (3) Not enough 1 (2.6)
Table 18. (continued)
Question Option n (%)
(2) Which of the five activities do you think is the easiest one to elaborate?
(1) Life is …… 20 (51.3) (2) Love is ... 7 (17.9) (3) My old car is …… 3 (7.7) (4) Friends are …… 7 (17.9) (5) Taipei is …… 2 (5.1) (3) Which of the five activities do you
think is the hardest one to elaborate?
(1) Life is …… 3 (7.7)
A creativity attitude survey was designed and planned to be distributed to 20 learners with higher verbal creativity abilities in English and 20 learners with lower verbal
creativity abilities in English in order to probe their attitudes toward producing creative English expressions. All of them would be selected from the entire participant pool based on their performances in the two tasks of verbal creativity in English combined as well as their willingness to complete the survey on an out-of-class basis. They would also be given a monetary reward for their participation.
The creativity attitude survey included six questions in Chinese (see Appendix O) and the informants were encouraged to address the questions in as much detail as possible by using their first language, Chinese. The first four questions tapped the informants’
perceptions regarding the relationships of English proficiency, creativity, and creativity motivation to verbal creativity skills and their comparative effects. Question Five
required the informants to think retrospectively about whether they tried their best to think of different creative metaphors while working on the Production Task of Creative Metaphor (PTCM) earlier. While provided with the metaphors they created, the
informants were further asked to choose some most interesting or most creative metaphors they provided on the PTCM and to elaborate on how and why they created those metaphors in as much detail as possible. In addition, to explore the informants’
motivation to enhance their verbal creativity in English, Question Six was designed to investigate whether the informants would like to improve their verbal creativity in English, and if yes, what they would do to polish this skill.
The informants would receive this survey as an e-mail attachment. Along with that, the PowerPoint used earlier to demonstrate concepts and examples of creative language in Chinese and English would also be provided to them so that they could review the ideas of creative language to strengthen their knowledge about creative language use prior to answering the survey. After receiving the survey and the PowerPoint, the informants were all required to complete the survey and mail it back in two weeks.
Data Collection Procedure
The present study mainly aimed to examine the relationships among EFL learners’
English proficiency, creativity, motivation toward verbal creativity, and verbal creativity abilities in English. To address these issues, data would be collected by means of the seven instruments in the 2011 fall semester and the 2012 spring semester. First of all, in the fall semester, the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking was administered first (60 minutes), followed by the Writing Proficiency Test (30 minutes), and the Reading Proficiency Test (45 minutes). In the spring semester, the Questionnaire on Motivation Toward Verbal Creativity in English and its concomitant pre-survey demonstration of creative language examples were conducted first, and it took approximately 50 minutes to
complete this activity. Following the QMVC, the two tests of verbal creativity in English were conducted, with the recognition task taking 20 minutes and the production task taking 30 minutes. Afterwards, the creativity attitude survey was distributed to a group of voluntary participants who indicated their interest in completing it.
Flow Chart 1. Timeline for Data Collection.
Semester I II
Content / Sequence 1 2 3 4 5 6
Torrance Test of Creative Thinking Writing Proficiency Test
Reading Proficiency Test
Questionnaire on Motivation Toward Verbal Creativity in English
Recognition Task of Creative Metaphors Production Task of Creative Metaphors Creativity Attitude Survey
Data Analysis
Data analysis is discussed in three aspects. First, it presents how data collected with the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the Recognition Task of Creative Metaphors, and the Production Task of Creative Metaphors were analyzed to calibrate learners’
creativity and verbal creativity skills in English. Second, it also indicates how the data were compared to address the first research issue that probed the predictability of English proficiency, creativity, and motivation toward verbal creativity in verbal creativity skills in English. Lastly, this section discusses how participants’ responses to the survey were analyzed to uncover their attitudinal differences on a qualitative basis. This would clarify how creativity motivation contributes to verbal creativity abilities in English.
Scoring Procedures for the Measures of Creativity
The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, the Recognition Task of Creative Metaphors, and the Production Task of Creative Metaphors were administered to
investigate participants’ creative thinking abilities and verbal creativity skills in English.
Scoring procedures for these instruments are presented below.
Scoring of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
The verbal Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) aimed to measure participants’ creative thinking abilities by means of six activities— Asking, Guessing Causes, Guessing Consequences, Product Improvement, Unusual Uses, and Just Suppose.
Scoring of these activities followed the scoring procedures described in Li (2006b). These scoring rubrics analyze each individual’s responses in the six activities to indicate three aspects of creative thinking abilities— fluency, originality, and flexibility. Fluency is related to the number of relevant ideas proposed by each individual; originality is assessed by analyzing the distinctness of each individual’s ideas against a chart
containing common ordinary ideas; flexibility is measured by analyzing the variety of the ideas. Detailed scoring rubrics and procedures are summarized in Table 19. In addition, all the responses were rated by the researcher independently, and he assigned fluency, originality, flexibility, and general creativity scores for every participant. To verify the reliability of the researcher’s rating, a senior student in the Department of English Instruction at University B was invited to serve as a second rater to evaluate 50 copies of the total TTCT booklets collected, that is, roughly 30 percent of the overall data sets. The inter-rater reliabilities obtained by using Pearson correlation reached an ideal level respectively: fluency, r = .99; originality, r = .97; flexibility, r = .97.
Each participant’s raw scores in the six activities were added up to demonstrate his/her total fluency, originality, and flexibility scores. These raw scores were converted
to separate standardized scores of fluency, originality, and flexibility by following the Grade-12 Conversion List provided in Li (2006b). These scores can be further used to compare participants’ creative thinking abilities. To be more specific, if a participant originally receives 75 points for fluency, 90 for originality, and 100 for flexibility, these scores would be transformed into 99 for fluency, 130 for originality, and 160 for
flexibility. In other words, the participant obtains an average score of 129.67. If this participant is compared with another participant who receives a lower average score such as 90, it can be assumed that the former demonstrates better creative thinking abilities than the latter.
Scoring of the Recognition Task of Creative Metaphors
Scoring of participants’ responses in the Recognition Task of Creative Metaphors (RTCM) was conducted to demonstrate learners’ abilities in finding meaning in creative metaphors. As stated above, the formal RTCM presented 20 metaphoric expressions including 14 acceptable creative metaphors and 6 anomalous metaphors. These
expressions were evaluated on a scale of 1 (This metaphoric expression is very inaccurate) to 5 (This metaphoric expression is very accurate), with an alternative option indicating that participants’ comprehension was obstructed by unknown words. Because this study focused on participants’ ability to “recognize” creative metaphors, only participants’
responses to the 14 items with an acceptable metaphoric expression were analyzed to demonstrate their ability to interpret creative metaphors. By contrast, the items with an anomalous metaphoric expression were excluded from discussion because the RTCM did not consider judgment of erroneous creative metaphors as part of its assessment focus.
Each of the former 14 items was given the point parallel to the numerical mark selected. The alternative option was given 0 point, meaning that the participant entirely failed to interpret the given metaphoric expression. All the scores of the 14 items would
be aggregated, and the overall score would range from 0 (0 point × 14 items = 0) through 70 (5 points × 14 items = 70). Participants who received a higher score demonstrated better receptive metaphoric competences than those who got a lower one.
Table 19. Description of the Verbal Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking Scoring Rubric (Adapted from Li, 2006b)
No. Activity Creative thinking ability
Scoring criteria
1. Asking Fluency One point is given to each appropriate question whose answer is not directly indicated in the picture. Questions whose answer is too straightforward from the picture are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Responses are reviewed against a list of 17 categories (Li, 2006b, p. 25) to indicate the number of categories mentioned in each individual’s responses.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, p. 24). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
2. Guessing Causes
Fluency One point is given to each response that indicates an appropriate cause related to the picture, while responses failing to indicate proper causal relationships with the picture are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Responses are evaluated against a list of 16 categories (Li, 2006b, pp. 26-27) to indicate the number of categories mentioned in each individual’s responses.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, p. 26). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
Table 19. (continued)
No. Activity Creative thinking ability
Scoring criteria 3. Guessing
Consequences
Fluency One point is given to each response that indicates an appropriate consequence related to the picture, while consequences failing to indicate proper causal relationship with the picture are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Responses are evaluated against a list of 16 categories (Li, 2006b, pp. 28-29) to indicate the number of categories mentioned in each individual’s responses.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, p. 28). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
4. Product Improvement
Fluency One point is given to each response that indicates a solution for making the toy fun, while responses that are not related to playful purposes are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Responses are evaluated against a list of 23 categories (Li, 2006b, pp. 30-31) to indicate the number of categories mentioned in each individual’s responses.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, pp. 29-30). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
Table 19. (continued)
No. Activity Creative thinking ability
Scoring criteria
5. Unusual Uses Fluency One point is given to each response that indicates an appropriate, unusual and realistic use of the product, while responses showing imaginary or unrealistic use of the product are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Responses are evaluated against a list of 28 categories (Li, 2006b, pp. 32-33) to indicate the number of categories mentioned in each individual’s responses.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, p. 32). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
6. Just Suppose Fluency One point is given to each response is related to the supposed scenario, while responses unrelated to the scenario are considered inappropriate and are removed with no points awarded.
Flexibility Through ideational comparison, responses that indicate change of attitude and ideas between responses will be given one point for the response that shows the change.
Originality Responses are evaluated against a list of ordinary responses provided in Li (2006b, p. 34). Responses related to any one in the list are given 0 point, while those that cannot be found in the list are given one point.
Scoring of the Production Task of Creative Metaphors
In the Production Task of Creative Metaphors (PTCM), participants were
encouraged to write as many novel metaphors as they could. As creative thinking abilities involve fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration (Guilford, 1967), the metaphors would be analyzed to calibrate four aspects of metaphoric creativity skills—metaphoric fluency, metaphoric flexibility, metaphoric originality, and metaphoric elaboration (see Table 20). These four thinking skills were measured as essential indicators of an individual’s productive metaphoric creativity.
Metaphoric fluency
Metaphoric fluency refers to an individual’s cognitive ability to come up with possible metaphors in the given contexts. In this study, it specifically refers to the total number of metaphors created by each participant for the three questions in the PTCM.
To measure a participant’s metaphoric fluency based on his/her responses, all the metaphors that were considered possible metaphors were given one point per response, while inappropriate responses were not given any points. To sum up, those who received a higher score demonstrated better metaphoric fluency than those who got a lower score.
Metaphoric flexibility
As discussed in earlier chapters, Guilford (1967) highlighted three types of
flexibility in thinking that dealt with abilities to ideationally shift from class to class, to transform ideas, and to redefine a problem respectively. Particularly defined in relation to an individual’s flexibility of classes, metaphor flexibility in this study refers to an
individual’s competence to conceive a wide range of ideational categories in metaphoric production. It looks at how many different categories of ideas were involved in the responses.
To calibrate a participant’s metaphoric flexibility, several steps were taken. To begin with, as there were 1,318 metaphors collected in the formal study, all the metaphors
collected in the three packages were thematically categorized by the researcher on a package-by-package basis in order to establish a list of metaphoric categories for each of the three questions in the PTCM (see Appendix P). These classification lists were later reviewed by the abovementioned senior student majoring in English Instruction at University B. After the establishment of these three lists, a participant’s metaphors created for the three questions were compared against the lists to calculate the total number of metaphoric categories involved in his/her responses.
Metaphoric originality
Metaphoric originality is an important component of productive metaphoric competence (Littlemore, 2001a). Assessment of metaphoric originality would be conducted by following the assessment method of originality proposed by Torrance (1966). As cited in Wechsler (2006), Torrance’s (1966) scoring criteria of originality are mainly based on percentages: category-based responses produced by more than 5% of the population are rated as 0, those used by 2% to 4% of the sample are given 1 point, and those created by 1 percent of the population or less receive 2 points. Responses that appear in the smallest number of the population are the least frequent and are thus considered the most original among all.
Owing to the preliminary nature of this study, a modified evaluation method that appeared to be a tad looser was employed in order to manipulate greater variability in the originality scores among the metaphoric responses collected in this study. As metaphors would be classified into various thematic categories, the categories containing metaphors produced by more than 8% of the participant population (14 people or above) were given 0 point for originality. Those consisting of metaphors created by 4% to 8% of the
population (7 to 13 people) were given one point. In contrast, categories comprising metaphors used by only 4% of the participants or less (6 people or fewer) were
considered the most original and they received 2 points for originality. Moreover, because
participants who produced more metaphors received higher raw scores of metaphoric originality, the total originality score was divided by the number of metaphors in order to avoid the contamination problem of metaphoric fluency. Eventually, the originality score a participant received in percentage (total originality scores divided by total number of metaphors) was calibrated to demonstrate his/her overall metaphoric originality (see Appendix Q).
Metaphoric elaboration
Metaphoric elaboration is defined as an individual’s cognitive ability to elaborate on a metaphor by providing enough details in this study. It is related to the complexity of ideas described in the metaphors, that is, whether a participant embellished the metaphors he/she created with enough details. In creativity research, elaboration is deemed as an essential divergent thinking skill related to “the level of detail” in a product (Kaufman, 2009, p. 14). To assess the participants’ metaphoric elaboration, all the metaphoric expressions were analyzed following the measurement method of elaboration adopted in Guilford’s (1967) Alternative Uses Task. All the metaphoric expressions were analyzed against a three-point scale ranging from 0 to 2. To be specific, an expression is given 0 if it only contains a single vehicle without any further explanation, such as (1-A). If the vehicle carries additional information, like “that can heal anybody” in (1-B), this expression is given 1 for its elaboration level. In addition, as shown in (1-C), if the expression carries any other further details such as why the participant creates this metaphor, it will then be given 2 for elaboration. Based on this analytical method, metaphors receiving higher scores consist of a greater number of details and are thus considered more elaborate.
(1-A) Love is a magic pill.
(1-B) Love is a magic pill that can heal anybody.
(1-C) Love is a magic pill that can heal anybody because its power is overwhelming.
Similarly, because participants who created more metaphors received higher raw scores of metaphoric elaboration, to avoid the contamination problem of metaphoric fluency, the total elaboration score was also divided by the number of metaphors. In so doing, participants who received a higher elaboration score in percentage (total
elaboration score divided by total number of metaphors) outperformed those obtaining a lower elaboration score. In addition, to ensure the reliability of analysis, all the four creativity dimensions, metaphoric fluency, metaphoric flexibility, metaphoric originality, and metaphoric elaboration, were all measured by the researcher first. The
abovementioned senior student at University B was invited to evaluate 50 data sets, roughly 30% of the entire data sets. The results indicated good inter-rater reliability:
fluency, r = .99; flexibility, r = .99; originality, r = .88; elaboration, r = .97.
Table 20. Evaluative Dimensions and Measuring Criteria of Metaphoric Creativity Dimension Measuring criteria
1. Metaphoric Fluency
Fluency = (Total number of responses to Questions 1 to 3)
2. Metaphoric Flexibility
Flexibility = (Total number of metaphoric categories involved in all the responses to Questions 1 to 3)
3. Metaphoric Originality
Originality = (Total originality scores received) / (Total number of metaphors)
4. Metaphoric Elaboration
Elaboration = (Total elaboration scores received) / (total number of metaphors created)
Quantitative Analysis
Quantitative analysis was conducted to address the first research question that probed the predictability of English proficiency, creative thinking abilities, and
motivation toward verbal creativity in EFL learners’ verbal creativity abilities in English.
For this question, English proficiency, creative thinking abilities, and motivation toward verbal creativity in English were set as the independent variables, and verbal abilities to interpret and produce creative metaphors in English were the dependent variables.
Multiple regression analysis was conducted to assess the predictive power of these variables in verbal creativity abilities in English. In multiple regression analysis, a certain dependent variable is regressed on several independent variables to determine its most adequate combination of predictors and explicate the relative importance of each of the
Multiple regression analysis was conducted to assess the predictive power of these variables in verbal creativity abilities in English. In multiple regression analysis, a certain dependent variable is regressed on several independent variables to determine its most adequate combination of predictors and explicate the relative importance of each of the