英语水平对儿童创造力影响的实证研究

An Empirical Study on the Impact of English Learning on Children’s Creativity Development

儿童创造力的培养对国家的发展创新具有重要意义。针对目前社会上有关英语有用或无用的讨论,本研究以8-10岁儿童为研究对象,通过托兰斯创造思考测量(TTCT)和皮博迪图画测试(PPVT-4)的方法,探究英语学习对于他们创造力发展的影响。研究结果表明英汉双语儿童在整体创造力、流畅力和原创力表现上要优于汉语单语儿童。同时,就双语儿童而言,英语能力好的学习者,他们在整体创造力、流畅力、变通力和精致力上的表现又要好于英语能力差的学习者。研究结果修正Cummins的临界点假说,表明单语优势儿童的英语学习也有助于促进他们认知能力的发展。

The cultivation of children’s creativity is of great significance to the development of the country. For the current social debate on whether English is useful or useless, this study, taking 8-10 year-old children as the research subject, attempts to utilize Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-4) to inquire the impact of English learning on their creativity development. The results show that English-Chinese bilingual children have a better performance on creativity, fluency and originality than Chinese monolingual children;those English-Chinese bilingual children who have good English ability are better than the poor learners in their ability of creativity, fluency, flexibility and refinement. The results modify Cummins’ Threshold Hypothesis and indicate that English learning is still helpful to the development of monolingual dominant children’s cognitive ability.