A Preliminary Study On The Correlation Between Creativity And The Oral Narrative Task Performance Of The Chinese EFL Learners

Recently researches show individual differences like creativity may exert considerable effects on the EFL learning. However, quite a few have been attempted to investigate the effect of creativity on the task performance under different planning time conditions. So, this preliminary study aims to investigate the correlation between creativity and the oral narrative task performance of the Chinese EFL learners under two different planning time conditions—5 min and 3 min and how the shorter planning time (3 min) will be correlated to the effects of creativity on the task performance of those learners.The 64 participants, all sophomores of non-English majors in Chongqing University, whose creativity was measured by a standard creativity test—TTCT, were divided into two groups. One group performed an oral narrative task after 5 min of planning time, while the other, after 3 min. Three measures of creativity (creative fluency, originality and elaboration) and three measures of the oral narrative task performance (quantity of talk, accuracy and narrative structure) were examined.The results of Pearson correlational analysis show that creative fluency was positively correlated to quantity of talk in both groups; elaboration was positively correlated to narrative structure only in the group under the 5 min planning time condition. In either group, originality was not found to be correlated to any of the three measures of the oral narrative task performance. Accuracy was neither found to be correlated to any of the three facets of creativity in whichever group. The findings indicate that different facets of creativity have different correlations with the task performance of those learners under both the planning time conditions; under the shorter planning time of 3 min, the correlation between the two of those learners changes to a degree, which may have important implications both in the task implementation within the task-based instruction and in the future creativity-related studies in the Chinese EFL context.