Relationship between learner creativity, task planning, and speaking performance in L2 narrative tasks

This study examined the relationship between learners’ creativity viewed as a divergent thinking cognitive trait and the language/content dimensions of their L2 speaking performance under two task planning conditions, while controlling for the effects of L2 proficiency. Sixty-one Chinese learners of English took an Elicited Imitation Task, a verbal and a figural creativity test, and performed two picture-prompted narrative tasks. Results showed that when learners had time to plan, their L2 proficiency and creativity were predictors of their speaking performance in terms of fluency and idea productivity, while under the no planning condition, creativity predicted learners’ performance measured by idea productivity, discoursal structure, and lexical diversity. Moreover, different creativity measures contributed to L2 task performance in differential manners. This study contributes to the field by shedding light on the interaction between learner-related and task-related variables on L2 speaking production and the nature of the new individual difference variable of creativity.