Lateral thinking is a word coined by Edward de Bono. He classifies thinking as Vertical thinking and Lateral thinking. Lateral thinking seeks new and unusual ways of approaching and solving problems. Achievement is denoted by progress in learning of English, by the marks scored by students when they answer the Achievement test in English.In this study an attempt is made to explore the relation between Achievement in English and Lateral thinking. The study aimed at improving the Achievement of students in English by using Lateral thinking techniques. It was experimental in nature involving experimental group and control group. A sample of 120 students of 9th standard of two schools in Mysore city were matched on General Mental Ability using Raven's Progressive Matrices and Verbal Creative Thinking by using Baqer Mehdi's Verbal Test of Creative thinking. The Verbal Creativity scores and scores on General Mental Ability were converted to T scores and were clubbed to get Composite T scores. 60 students who scored almost the same were assigned to experimental group and the other 60 students were assigned to control group based on the matching technique. The experimental group was subjected to Teaching by Lateral thinking techniques and control group was subjected to conventional method of teaching. The treatment lasted for two months. pretest-post-test design was used. It was found in this study that teaching English by using Lateral thinking techniques was more effective than conventional method of teaching.
