Heuristic Methods and Creative Writing

Dear students,

This week we are going to introduce you a few heuristic methods (from the word “Eureka!”) that you can use to create a neat speech.

Go over the activities and complete the tasks in red.

Post the completed tasks in your blogs. 

We hope you will find these techniques helpful and worth using.

These tasks are due Thursday, October, 26th.

The two warm ups we will do, are the "One letter," exercise and the "Random word," exercise:

• One letter

Think about a letter and name as many objects as possible that start with this letter. 

For example, C - computer, course book, case, cucumber you just had for lunch, etc. 

You can play this game with your co-workers, and if everyone thinks of ten words then you're all winners.

Now it is your turn. Pick a letter a write down 10 words.

• Random words 

1. Go to the website https://www.textfixer.com/tools/random-words.php 
2. Generate 5 random words at Random Generator List.
3. Pick a few random words and try and tie them together in the most imaginative way possible. 

Write a paragraph using 5 words generated words. Highlight these words in the text.  

After this, you are ready for the following creative writing prompts:  

I. What if… 

Imagine a problematic situation and think of possible (or impossible) solutions. 

For example, “What if you are in the shower, you have shampoo in your hair, but suddenly the water in the whole building was turned off?” - I’ll melt ice cubes from the fridge in the microwave to rinse my hair. 

Here is another one for you to practice this activity:

What if there were no desks in the classrooms, but only beanbags? Write down 7 ideas.

II. Six Thinking Hats 

To formulate ideas for your speech. First, create a topic sentence, then challenge your brain to think in six different directions. Make notes while considering the following "thinking hats," as points to use in your future speech. 

White thinking hat. This hat covers facts, figures, information needs, and gaps.

Red thinking hat. This hat covers intuition, feelings, and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it.

Black thinking hat. This is the hat of judgment and logic. It is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts.

Yellow thinking hat. This is the hat of optimism. Why something will work, and why it will offer benefits.

Green thinking hat. This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, provocations, and changes.

Blue thinking hat. This is the hat of overview, and analysis. In technical terms, you look over your final product and see if it makes sense. 

Use this method to come up with ideas for the speech “How many foreign languages should be taught to students in school?” 

Formulate a topic sentence and simply describe the ideas that each hat helped you to generate.