ABSTRACT
The core meaning of being creative involves searching for new information and ideas. One of the creative thinking processes involved in such a search is ‘exploratory thinking’ – exploring all the possibilities in the search space. However, in many cases, it is impossible to search all the possibilities especially when the search space is large and has many possible alternatives. Such complex conditions necessitate the employment of simple cognitive shortcuts (heuristics) by social actors. This is to help with the exploratory search for new valuable ideas without necessarily spending an unlimited amount of effort and time. Although heuristics will not lead to the best product or the most creative idea, they arguably lead to ‘good enough’ or ‘creative enough’ outcomes, in some cases even better than a rational analytical approach. In the context of language teaching, heuristics are used by teachers as well as students. This chapter examines both general heuristics and creativity heuristics. It also considers their relevance for language teaching.
