Reception of literary text within innovative teaching models and elementary school junior grades students’ verbal creativity

Abstract

Although there are views that oratory, language creativity, and verbal giftedness can be taught and perfected within the socio-cultural environment an individual lives in, this development is significantly contributed by the art of reading, with particular emphasis on the literary text. In this respect, one builds up one’s own vocabulary and enriches one’s own language culture, expands one’s own horizons, and urges one’s own language creativity. With reference to hypotheses of the reception theory and the innovative-developing teaching theory, and to findings of related research, there are theoretical foundations of reception and micro-plans of interpretation of the literary text developed and modified within two models of innovative teaching (Differentiated Instruction – DI and Responsible Teaching – RT). The research aims at determining the impact of reception of the literary text within innovative teaching models (DI and RT) on the achievement of the elementary school fifth grade students regarding verbal creativity (language production), as opposed to classic approaches to interpreting the literary text. For that purpose, over the course of implementation of a one-year experimental programme, the fifth grade students view the literary text both within one innovative teaching model (E1 and E2 experimental groups) and within the classic one (K1 and K2 control groups), with the results pointing to a higher score in verbal creativity as regards the former. In the end, these results represent a significant contribution to using the literary text in teaching, to encouraging verbal creativity in students, and to further developing the methodology of teaching literature to elementary school junior grades.