Developing Communicative Competence of Tertiary Level Engineering Students through De Bono’s Lateral Thinking Tool Design

 

P. Ramakrishnan¹*, Dr. S.P. Dhanavel², Dr. Stars Jasmine³

¹Research Scholar, Department of English, College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University, Chennai.

²Professor, Department of Humanities and Science, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai

 

ABSTRACT:

Lateral thinking is a unique form of thinking proposed by Edward De Bono. He believes that innovation is the ability to see the changes as an opportunity not as a threat. It results in the generation of new ideas and breaking out of the concept prisons of old ideas. This type of thinking decides the outcome of one’s speaking and the job of lateral thinking is to enable the brain to find multiple possibilities or perceptions. The attitude of the present set of tertiary learners, lack of confidence and positive approach, their habits hinder their brain to intake, create and present the information in the demanding context.  The major reasons for their inability are the cultural and psychological background of the learners. Developing lateral thinking skills of the tertiary level learners may pave the way to keep a constructive mind to acquire new language competencies. ‘Think out of the box’ is the crucial motto of the language teachers these days. De Bono’s concept of Lateral thinking would enable the language teachers to break a new ground in inculcating speaking skills for the learners of English as a second language. The present study proposes Design, one of the lateral thinking techniques of Bono and its effectiveness as a tool that can be adapted by the language teachers to enrich the communicative competence of the tertiary level learners of English as a second language. The criteria for speaking activity are assessed based on stage III of Canadian Language Benchmark for assessing speaking skills.

 

KEY WORDS:

 

1. INTRODUCTION

Language, by its very nature is productive, when it is used creatively. Speaking skills are considered to be more instantaneously productive than the other language skills. Language learners find speaking a challenging task as it demands effective thinking and processing abilities. Language teachers try new methods and strategies to impart language skills to their learners in an interesting, enjoying, and meaningful way.

 

 

When it comes to consideration of direct teaching of thinking as an effective pedagogical strategy, Dr. Edward de Bono (1956; 1985; 1992a; 1992b; 1992c; 1992d; 1995) is the pioneer and a leader in this field. Having developed the concept of lateral thinking, his work on how people think has been published in numerous books which are translated in many languages.  Henceforth, as a researcher one may completely rely on him and make an attempt to suggest that Edward de Bono’s concept of Lateral thinking would enable the language teachers to pave a new avenue of teaching for their learners. De Bono believes that innovation is the ability to see the changes as an opportunity not as a threat. He sees creativity as ‘the behavior of information in a self-organizing information system. The present study aims to aid the learners to originate their own ideas to develop their speaking skills. Teaching speaking skills through lateral thinking techniques would give immense benefits to the tertiary level learners. It promotes active visual and creative learning of the language in any environment, either urban or rural. This paper proposes Design, one of the Lateral Thinking techniques of Edward De Bono, can be adapted by the language teachers to develop the speaking skills of the tertiary level learners of English as a second language.

 

2.LITERATURE REVIEW:

De Bono (1990) defines, “Lateral thinking is a set of attitudes, idioms, and techniques (including movement, provocation, and PO) for cutting across patterns in a self-organizing asymmetric patterning system”. He adds that, “It is used to generate new concepts and perceptions”. He also claims that Lateral thinking is also concerned with the generation of new ideas and breaking out of the concept prisons of old ideas which is related to insight, creativity, and humour.  It is also one of the most sought out approach by most of the English language facilitators owing to its wide range of general applications. Language itself is the most obvious code system with the words themselves as triggers. Many researchers agree that, for optimal learning to occur, students need to exert a conscious effort to learn.

 

Gadd (1998) points out the use of material from De Bono (1970, 1982) are quite common in humanistic language teaching classes.  Adair (1988) believes that thinking refines one’s speech and the intellectual skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and valuing are required for clear speaking. Similarly, a public speaking tutorial on the internet categorically states that “speaking is thinking”. Ellin Kofsky Schalnick and William S.Hall (1991) say that language is simply a verbal description of thought. This idea reflects that thought is primary and language just acts as a tool to express or to convey the ideas or concepts in an effective manner. Spada and Lightbown (1993) hold that thinking skills operate effectively when students originally voice their analysis and take part in the learning process occurring in the classroom. Methodologists also argue that learners in the classroom should experience creative reflections through which the teacher probes their understanding to elicit answers for the questions he or she poses. In this way, students can lay the foundations for their internal representation of the target language which can allow effective learning to function properly (Pica, 1994).

 

Gleitman (1995) says that, “Thinking skills can enhance the learning ability of the learners”. He also states that, “Learning to occur when the mind makes connections between known and unknown”. Then he adds, “Knowledge is constructed by using the thinking process according to the cognitive theory of learning”. Stoller (1997) says that the teachers should activate the students’ minds spontaneously and involve them in problem solving and critical thinking. Munford (2001) describes lateral thinking techniques such as Random connections, Alternatives, and Harvesting can teach some innovative and motivating language learning activities such as Random Connections, Nonsense sentences, and Simple games. Thus, he proves that by thinking in this way one can build up his/her mind as a repository of concepts and possibilities that may be applied to different situation.

 

Joseph Ponniah (2007) strongly believes that thinking skill is an important component of education in today’s world of fast developments in every walk of life. He states convincingly that thinking influences all forms of communication. Consequently, he suggests that it is the high time to include and inculcate thinking skills to the Indian students to compete in an international arena. Shanmugasundaram and Meenakshisundaram (2009) project on the psychological aspect, especially, pertaining to self-esteem and the confidence level of the ESL learners. However, the focus would be more on developing writing and reading skills of the learners although there are many activities which can cover all the four areas like reading, writing, listening, and speaking in an integrated manner.

Nalini (2011) attempted to exploit Six Thinking Hats, a lateral thinking strategy, in the Indian English classroom. This technique enabled the learners to explain how the answers were obtained in a logical manner and how the conclusions were drawn based on the given text. The learners learned to participate consciously in fixing their own angles in construction of their pyramids of learning. She found that De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats as a tool to promote and enhance thinking in both learners and teachers by opening up new channels of communication. Nageswari, R. and Sundarsingh, J. (2012) in their study reveal that a proper environment should be created in a language classroom to encourage the lateral thinking skills which in turn has helped the learners to improve not only communicative competence but also their comprehension ability. They claim that providing the learners with an atmosphere conducive for thinking through interactive and creative tasks such as, Group discussions and Situational speaking in a technology enabled classrooms, would aid them to perform well in a second language classroom. These activities make the learners think in a different dimension which was less explored by the others. Therefore, it provides both the outside and inside inputs to think in a lateral way.

 

Garner (2012) defines thinking skills as the potential of the brain and the power of brain. He also affirms that trained thinking is usually focused, confident, and positive. The purpose of the present study is to develop speaking skills of the tertiary level engineering learners by exploiting lateral thinking skills as the strategies through tasks to attain suitable and desirable competency level in speaking English. It was assumed by the researcher that the lack of effective thinking impeded the process of speaking English. Hence, the implementation of strategies to activate lateral thinking skills was suggested.

 

A broad finding from the research base is that nearly all the thinking skills programs and practices investigated were found to make a positive difference in the achievement levels of the students taken for the study. The studies which looked at achievement over the time found that thinking skills instruction accelerated the learning gains of the students, and those with true or quasi-experimental designs generally found that experimental students outperformed controls to a significant degree. In this paper De Bono’s Design, a lateral thinking technique has been implemented owing to which the students got plenteous channels to explore to make presentation and discussion more effective.

 

3. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

The present study focuses on the following objectives:

a)    To enable the learners to think in a group or team and to be aware of active thinking catering to the demands of the communicative competence in the target language.

b)   The study motivates the learners of English as a Second Language to adapt the lateral thinking tool, Design, against the normal retrieval method to respond in the classroom.

 

4. METHODOLOGY:

This paper investigates the ways to enhance the speaking skills through lateral thinking technique ‘Design’ proposed by Bono, the proponent of the term ‘Lateral Thinking’. Initially, a pilot study was conducted among the students to understand the actual situation in terms of learning and teaching speaking skills in the classroom.  A questionnaire was used as a tool to gather learners’ opinions on lateral thinking.   The study was conducted at College of Engineering, Guindy campus, Anna University and nearly 50 learners from Electrical and Electronics Engineering belonging to a sixth-semester course took part in this survey.  The participants in the survey were from diverse backgrounds in terms of education, family and culture.

 

The responses were collected to create and to know the learners’ level of awareness about lateral thinking.  It has been identified that only 8% (6) of the learners -used their ultimate abilities to carry out the task, whereas, 92% (44) of the learners do not use their skills and refused to intake the information and the suggestions given by the facilitator at the beginning of the study. This is to ensure that how this lateral thinking technique can easily be used in an ideal way to reach the needs of the student’s community. Interactive and cognitively challenging types of tasks were chosen for the study because the target learners were undergraduate students of engineering departments who need English in order to read, communicate effectively.

 

A class of fifty students is equally allocated into ten different groups or teams with specific team names such as Team Elegance, Legends, Falcons, Avengers, Silent Rockers, The Oracles, Stunning Seven, We KISS (Keep it Simple and Short), Flaming Marshmallows, Bluff Masters and so on. Even these allocations were made so that the team members may have a sense of identity, motivation, team spirit, healthy sportive environment to initiate, to achieve, to take efforts to keep up the pride of their teams. The given time duration for this activity was 2 hours of regular class.

 

The first activity begins by confronting the students with a stimulating statement, and they are then told to justify it by using a tool called Design. Dr. Edward de Bono, one of the foremost authorities on creativity and thinking, has suggested that design is actually rooted in a distinct thinking skill, which he calls “design thinking.” The traditional mode of thinking is based on pattern-recognition (e.g., logic, analysis and judgment) while design thinking is based on skills of new pattern-creation. It requires a good deal of innovation. It brings in aspects of action, practicality and value.

 

A general instruction about the usage of this tool should be given by the respective instructor to the students before the activity. For example, start the first round with two different teams challenging on a single ridiculous statement such as: This computer works without electricity. Like this two different teams for each single round should challenge on a single statement given in that particular round. Totally there are 10 teams mentioned above. So there will be five rounds each comprising two teams challenging each other. For each round let us consider the followings are the given statements like Why plants are green, Give reasons for the earth’s gravity pull, Why does our heart beat. This particular activity can also be carried out even by giving some creative or abstract pictures taken from the internet, newspapers or from magazines.

 

Our brain consists of two hemispheres such as Right Hemisphere and Left Hemisphere. Such that Right Hemisphere deals with perceptions, matching global patterns, creative sensibility, musical patterns and emotional whereas, Left Hemisphere deals with analytical tasks, calculation, logical organization, information sequencing, and complex motor functions. As different learners have different levels of development of the two parts of the brain, one can design, teaching-learning materials pertaining to the predominantly right brain or left brain learners. A right brain learner would learn better if the information is given in the form of pictures, images, and so on. Verbal descriptions can be added to the pictures to explain certain features or to explain how they work. The designs are to be visual and black and white or colour. The students need to design a story, anecdote, reasons or opinions and so on from the given statement or from pictures. Finally, they ought to come out with some valid, effective, convincible, reasonable ideas to justify it. This kind of discovery based learning would result in promoting curiosity among the learners which act as a motivating factor to enhance the communicative competence of the learners.

 

Different contexts with diverse topics were given to the learners, so that the process of learning may expand the existing information/ideas, and facilitate new concepts. Instructions about the task, thinking skills and the topic for the particular task allow the learners to take decision in advance. It enabled them to challenge the situation naturally, attain specific language aspects, understand the condition, change the mindset for the present situation and functionally get prepared to carry out the given task.

 

5. PRE-TASK:

Each team was given a speaking task and the facilitator elaborated the task and conducted a brainstorming session in the classroom to encourage learners’ participation during the task. Each team was represented by an individual to perform the task. The task given is about describing an object, an event or a person. The participants have taken the topic of their choice and enough time was given to the participants to prepare for the given topic, and finally they came out with some valuable points about their own topics. But it was not creative or innovative in their approach. They used to give some facts about the objects, events or the person rather than giving the interesting points about it. These shows that how they think, assess and approach the given topic. The criteria for assessing the above task were adapted from stage III of Canadian Language Benchmark for assessing speaking skills. The criteria for assessing the speaking skills were as follows: Content (Discourse), Clarity of thought (Fluency), Coherence (vocabulary) and Creativity (perspectives). Canadian Language Benchmark for speaking skills is based on the principle of Communicative language ability. It means the ability to understand and communicate messages effectively and appropriately in a particular social situation.  The parameters used for assessing the speaking skills are Content, Coherence, Language, and Creative Thinking skills.  The marks allotted for each parameter are given in table 1

 

Table 1: Distribution of marks for the pre-speaking activity in V semester EEE classroom.

S.NO	TEAMS	NAME OF THE STUDENT	CONTENT (10 Marks)	COHERENCE (5 Marks)	LANGUAGE (10 Marks)	CREATIVITY ( 5 Marks)
1	STUNNING SEVEN	KIRAN	6.5	3.5	8	2.5
2	WE KISS	NIRANJAN	7	4	8	3
3	TEAM ELEGANCE	GOWTHAM	7.5	4	8	3.5
4	BLUFF MASTERS	SANTHOSH	7	3.5	7	3
5	THE ORACLES	SUPRIYA	6	4	7	2
6	THE FALCONS	ATHUL	8	4	8.5	3
7	SILENT ROCKERS	GRACE	7.5	3.5	6	3.5
8	THE FLAMING MARSHMALLOWS	ABISHA	6.5	3.5	6.5	2.5
9	THE AVENGERS	AKSHAY	8	4	7	3
10	LEGENDS	SIBI	8.5	4.5	8	4

 

 

 

The above table 1 distributes the marks secured by the participants in the speaking activity in the pre-task. The marks attained by these participants revealed that these participants lack creative, innovative or fresh ideas in their content which has become the benchmark of today’s job market. So a fresh perspective is needed to cater to satisfy the needs of the present employers. Hence, a new approach should be introduced in the language classes so that will serve to accomplish the requirements of the leading job seekers in the universal job market.

 

6. IMPLEMENTATION OF LATERAL THINKING TECHNIQUE (DESIGN):

Experiments have been conducted to assess and improve creativity by utilizing lateral thinking skills of the learners thereby instruct learners to realize their skills and motivate them to use suggested methods to acquire their needs naturally. Carrying out of suitable tasks can induce the lateral thinking skills of the learners. It begins by confronting the students with a stimulating statement, and they are then told to justify it by using a technique called Design. Bono is one of the foremost authorities on creativity and thinking, he has suggested that design is actually rooted in a distinct thinking skill, which he calls “design thinking”. While our traditional mode of thinking is based on pattern-recognition (e.g., logic, analysis and judgment), design thinking is based on skills of new pattern creation. It requires a good deal of innovation. It brings in aspects of action, practicality and value. At the beginning of the activity, a set of relevant instructions on the usage of this tool should be given to the learners by the respective instructor. For example, begin the first round with two different teams challenging on a single ridiculous statement such as this computer works without electricity. Like this two different teams for each single round should challenge on a single statement given in that particular round. Totally there are 10 teams mentioned above. So there will be five rounds each comprising two teams challenging each other. For each round let us consider the followings are the given statements like Why plants are green, Give reasons for earth’s gravity pull, Why does our heart beats. This particular activity can also be carried out even by giving some creative or abstract pictures taken from the internet, newspapers or from magazines.

 

Our brain consists of two hemispheres such as Right Hemisphere and Left Hemisphere. Such that Right Hemisphere deals with perceptions, matching global patterns, creative sensibility, musical patterns and emotional whereas, Left Hemisphere deals with analytical tasks, calculation, logical organization, information sequencing and complex motor functions. As different learners have different levels of development of the two parts of the brain, one can design, teaching-learning materials pertaining to the predominantly right brain or left brain learners. A right brain learner would learn better if the information is given in the form of pictures, images, and so on. Verbal descriptions can be added to the pictures to explain certain features or to explain how they work. The designs are to be visual and black and white or colour. The students need to design a story, anecdote, reasons or opinions and so on from the given statement or from pictures. Finally, they ought to come out with some valid, effective, convincible, reasonable ideas to justify it. This kind of discovery based learning would result in promoting curiosity and therefore it act as a motivating factor to generate new and original ideas by enhancing the speaking skills among the learners.

 

7. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

The criteria for assessing the above activity are content, coherence, language, and creativity. The total marks 30 is distributed as 10 for content, 5 for coherence, 10 for language, and finally 5 for creative thinking skills of the students. In the context of assessment, the learners are assessed based on the creative approach, fresh perspective, relevance of ideas to the given statement, and appropriate language functions used. As far as content is concerned, make it sure that whether the learner is able to use relevant ideas or able relate to the given statement or not. The relevance to the topic is given more importance. Then in the case of coherence, make it sure that the learner is actively using the necessary or appropriate linkers in their utterances or not. Next, in case of language, make it sure that the learner actually engaged in meaningful utterances with innovative ideas in that demanding context. The importance is given to the following items such as contextual vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Finally, in the case of creativity, make it sure that the learner is able to articulate some novel, innovative and a unique perspective towards the given statements.

 

 

Table 2: Distribution of marks for the post-speaking activity which used Design, a lateral thinking technique in V semester EEE classroom.

S.NO	TEAMS	NAME OF THE STUDENT	CONTENT (10 Marks)	COHERENCE (5 Marks)	LANGUAGE (10 Marks)	CREATIVITY ( 5 Marks)
1	STUNNING SEVEN	KIRAN	8	3.5	8	4
2	WE KISS	NIRANJAN	8.5	4	8	4.5
3	TEAM ELEGANCE	GOWTHAM	8	4	8.5	4.5
4	BLUFF MASTERS	SANTHOSH	8.5	3.5	8	4
5	THE ORACLES	SUPRIYA	7.5	4	8	3.5
6	THE FALCONS	ATHUL	9	4.5	8	4.5
7	SILENT ROCKERS	GRACE	8	3.5	7.5	4
8	THE FLAMING MARSHMALLOWS	ABISHA	7	3.5	7	3
9	THE AVENGERS	AKSHAY	8	4	8	4
10	LEGENDS	SIBI	9.5	4.5	8	5

 

 

The above table 2 shows the marks secured by the respective student from the above mentioned ten teams, namely Stunning Seven, We KISS, Team Elegance, Bluff Masters, The Oracles, The Falcons, Silent Rockers, The Flaming Marshmallows, The Avengers, Legends and so on. The marks are given transparently with critical comments based on their performance at that particular time. The participants were given 10 minutes to prepare their speech with their teams. Hence the markings were given transparently with some useful comments after each team’s presentation. The results were displayed on the board or through a projector on the screen. This kind of markings on the board motivates the students indirectly and performance of the other team members amidst others motivates the students directly to achieve their goal with confidence and a positive attitude. These two characteristics were considered to be predominant qualities of a successful professional in the present era of knowledge explosion.

As far as speaking skill is concerned, it needs to be productive, informative, resourceful, and persuasive. The students participated actively with these objectives in their mind and enrich audience with ample stories, anecdotes, framing sentences with semantically and syntactically effective sentences. Some even tried their level best to end their speech with appropriate proverbs and quotations which act as an apt and effective conclusion of their speech. The students tried to find some alternative way of starting a story to gain the attention of the audience. They make use of some gimmicks and variety of vocabulary to support and for enhanced oration. There are some students who really make use of mythological stories for their improvised version and relate it to the present. This kind of approach towards their rendering a story is laudable. These ways of rendering really made the audience pay attention towards the speaker which reciprocally made the speaker look for some fresh perspective, completely a fresh idea to put forth amidst the audience. And moreover, it kindles the mind of other team members in a positive manner so that it enables them to participate actively.

 

Table 3 statistical inferences based on t-test

Group	Pre- speaking Activity	Post speaking Activity
Mean	21.500	24.100
SD	1.958	1.807
SEM	0.619	0.572
N	10	10

 

According to the t-test, p = 0.0064, t = 3.0856, df = 18 (Table 3) and it proves that the performance between the pre-speaking activity and post-speaking activity is statistically significant.  Henceforth, it indicates that the learners’ speaking competence has been enhanced through lateral thinking tool Design. Lateral thinking engages the learner in a deep processing, which involves higher order thinking skills such as connecting, contrasting, and creating. Penny Ur (2012) highlighted the importance of Higher Order Thinking Skills and their value for language teaching and learning. She classifies higher order thinking skills into four broad categories. They are i) Bloom’s Taxonomy, ii) Convergent vs. Divergent, iii) Critical thinking, and iv) Creative Thinking. She preferred the two major types of thinking for the session mainly, Critical Thinking and Creative Thinking. She pointed out the use of higher order thinking skills in language teaching materials contribute to good learning and  important for a learner of English. Moreover, she also reveals that it is easy to implement higher order thinking skills activities in more advanced materials for the upper grades and feasible to implement them in materials for the beginners and the intermediate learners.

 

8. CONCLUSION:

Design, the lateral thinking technique has helped the learners to enhance their thinking capacity that includes creativity, generation of new ideas, and perspectives towards a given topic. Sundaram (2009) points out “in speech production, the role of the mind in formulating the message and translating it into an audible and meaningful form becomes crucial.”  Kirshnamoorthi and T.Sriraman (1991) claim that one of the major objectives of lateral thinking is to chip away mental locks that close the mind as well as to encourage thinking afresh to get the chain of ideas / points to a topic given. The special feature of the lateral thinking technique is that it serves to all age group from primary to tertiary level of learners. De Bono’s CORT (Cognitive Research Trust): Intended for use by students of any age/grade level, the program develops critical, creative, and constructive thinking skills over a three-year period (Baum 1990).This lateral thinking tool Design works well with the tertiary level of learners, when they are provided with enough inputs from school (primary, secondary and higher secondary studies). With this effective use of the lateral thinking technique Design, a learner can easily exploit the ideas from every possible way and cater to the needs of the learner to involve actively in the given task. This act of exploiting the technique positively can enhance the speaking skills of the learners. Moreover, the original, genuine ideas of the learners would have a perfect harmony with the body language which results in an effective and more spectacular presentation skill. The active participation of the learners indicated their comprehension of the information being presented and showcases their ability of oral competencies. Hence, it is possible to proclaim, in the light of the above study, that this lateral thinking strategy Design can spur students to have confidence in their target language and exploit it for communicative ends especially for speaking skills. Lateral thinking is a potential tool that can help the student to broaden and change their perception. If it is used properly, this strategy would play an efficient role in helping learners to develop communicative competence. Hence, it enhances fluency and effective way of delivering language concept which serves for a better oral presentation. Further there is also a scope of using this lateral thinking tool, Design in other prominent skills of learning English as a second language such as writing, reading, and listening.

 

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Received on 09.08.2016

Modified on 20.09.2016

Accepted on 06.10.2016

© A&V Publication all right reserved

Research J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 7(4): October- December, 2016, 305-312.