Incidence of lateral thinking in the free development of activities in English classes in university students

Abstract

To verify the incidence of lateral thinking in the different options created by students of different undergraduate programs in a private university in Valledupar to develop activities in English classes. Methods: For the implementation of this research, a quantitative non-experimental design was used. The target population of this research was composed by 1,437 students from different undergraduate programs of a private university, located in Valledupar, Colombia. A sample of 61 students from second to eighth semester, 25 men (41%) and 36 women (59%), 7 from the Bachelor in Law, 13 from the Bachelor in Social Communication, 20 from the Bachelor in Industrial Engineering program and 21 from the Bachelor in Early Childhood Education belonging to Elective I (English) and transversal courses English 2 and English 3 was extracted. The age range of the participants is from 16 to 41 years old. In order to investigate the incidence of lateral thinking in the free development of activities in English classes, six activities were designed with their respective diagramming and a general procedure that the students never knew, in order to compare it with the possibilities that they propose. The students' answers were collected using the Quizizz application. Results: The results show a strong incidence of lateral thinking in the free development of activities in English classes. Conclusions:The relationship between achieving an accomplishment or discovering the simplest way to perform a task taking into account individual experience and divergence of options from lateral thinking and the motivation represented by being able to make that individual perspective known was shown to be positive.