Get Empowered by CREAM!

Kingdom of Sausi Arabia, ID CLEaR2015 - 225

No matter whatever manner you learn it is possible to develop your study skills; Stella Cottrell (2003: 55) in this regard recommends the C-R-E-A-M strategy. The acronym C.R.E.A.M. was first coined by Cottrell. She recommends five  strategies  which  seek  to  empower  students  with  essential  learning  skills: C-Creative: Have the confidence to use individual strategies and styles, by applying imagination  to  learning. R-Reflective: Be able to sit with one’s own experience, analyze and evaluate one’s own performance, and draw lessons from it. E-Effective: Organize space, time, priorities, state of mind and resources (including Information Technology, IT), to the maximum benefit. A-Active: Be personally involved and by doing things, physically and mentally, in order to make sense of what you learn. M-Motivated: Be aware of one’s own desired outcomes; keep oneself on track using short and long-term goals.  Cottrell  (2003)  further  explains  that  each  individual  strategy  in  the  C.R.E.A.M. framework is in a dependent relationship with each other. For instance, being active fosters learning motivation and interest. Being interested and motivated requires reflection and making sense of your experience. I as an ESL instructor have attempted an action research to motivate my students’ learning in the Reading/ Writing and Reading  Circle  010  courses through  the  employment  of  Cottrell’s  CREAM framework. For the enhancement of teaching and learning, it is implied that teachers can make use of the C.R.E.A.M. strategy by designing meaningful activities to motivate their students to learn.