The role of foreign languages in the development of creativity of university students: an empirical study

Abstract

This article is devoted to the study of the relationship between learning foreign languages and the development of creativity among students of higher educational institutions. The relevance of the topic is due to the growing importance of creativity as a key competence in the modern knowledge economy. The purpose of the study is to identify the influence of the level of foreign language proficiency on the creative potential of students. The tasks include analyzing students' linguistic and creative abilities, studying correlations between these variables, and evaluating the effectiveness of educational programs that integrate language training and creativity development. The research methods combine psychometric testing (Torrence creativity tests, language ability tests), questionnaires and statistical data analysis. The empirical base covers 450 students of 1-4 courses from 5 Russian universities of humanities and technical profile. The results show a statistically significant positive correlation between the level of foreign language proficiency and students' creativity (r=0.68; p<0.01). There were also differences in creativity indicators between students of linguistic and non-linguistic specialties (t=3.24; p<0.01). The analysis of educational programs demonstrates the effectiveness of interdisciplinary courses combining language training with the development of creative thinking (d=0.74). The results obtained confirm the importance of foreign languages for the development of students' creativity and open up prospects for improving educational practices in higher education. Further research may be aimed at studying the specifics of the influence of individual foreign languages, as well as at developing innovative methods for the integrated development of linguistic and creative competencies.