Эффективность дискуссионной деятельности в классах EFL

Аннотация

The article is dedicated to the study of various researchers‘ viewpoints on the importance of using debating activities within both ESL and EFL classrooms and focuses on students‘ performing skills to be developed within its implementation by the teacher. Key words: debates, English as a foreign language, English as a second language, speaking skills, critical thinking, argumentation. Аннотация: Статья посвящена изучению точек зрения различных исследователей на важность использования дискуссионной деятельности как в классах ESL, так и EFL, и фокусируется на исполнительских навыках студентов, которые должны быть развиты в рамках ее реализации преподавателем. Ключевые слова: дебаты, английский язык как иностранный, английский как второй язык, разговорные навыки, критическое мышление, аргументация. It is commonly known that the learning process is not effective when students «acquire» the knowledge only by sitting in a classroom listening to the teacher and dealing with assignments. The 194 lesson itself is not just an observing type of activity but it is a highly effective learning process where the students are actively involved, in our case, in a language teaching context – in language learning and acquisition process. One of the activities which, indeed, push the students to be proactive learners is debating activity. Debating is a formal method of interactive and realistic argument aimed at persuading judges and audience. From our own perspective it is like an oratory practice in which different strategies of logic building as well as delivery are used to pull in the audience to a conclusion on a controversial issue. Debating can be used in EFL classes as a tool to make students practice skills of English language in real- life situations. Daniel Krieger comments: «Debate is an excellent activity for language learning because it engages students in a variety of cognitive and linguistic ways. In addition to providing meaningful listening, speaking and writing practice, debate is also highly effective for developing argumentation skills for persuasive speech and writing» [Krieger:2005:25]. Timothy Stewart found that 75% percent of his unmotivated and reserved students ranked debate as their most favorite classroom activity. [Stewart: 2003]. A survey conducted on non-native English speakers in U.S. universities about the language needs found that formal speaking and listening comprehension skills were their two biggest problem areas [Ferris:1998]. Debate offers English language teachers a way to combine practices of these important skills. Quoting Bruce Davidson, Daniel Krieger said that with practice, many students had obvious progress in their ability to express and defend ideas in debate and they often quickly recognized the flaws in each other's arguments [Davidson:1995]; [Krieger:2005]. The development of critical thinking –CT skills has become a key goal for educators in first and second language contexts. However, the linguistic skills and abilities of their students often inhibit the teachers in EFL contexts. In addition, according to the author at a university in Japan, which used a taxonomy of skills drawn up by Facione to create a course based around debates of social issues, it took students through a six-stage process, showing them how to clarify the nature of a problem, gather and organize appropriate data, evaluate the worth of that data, analyze the data to draw conclusions, express those conclusions clearly in the form of a debate, and finally appraise their performance for future improvement [Facione:1990]. Young people today not only need to have the skills needed to understand the information being presented, they need to have the skills to research through different sources, critically analyze the information presented and form their own conclusions and arguments as a result. Moreover, the evidence has shown that debating activities in schools can contribute not only to educational achievement, but also to a range of wider outcomes that work towards developing more confident and well-rounded individuals. So how can teachers bring debating activities into the classroom? Generally speaking, a debate can be described as a formal discussion where two opposing sides follow a set or pre-agreed rules to engage in an oral exchange of different points of view on an issue. In education people will probably be most familiar with using debate in competitive activities like the debating teams seen in American High Schools, but there are also less formal debate activities which teachers can bring into the classroom on a regular basis. Concerning the web site survey about various opinions about the brief notion of a debate it is said that debate should not just be a discreet activity designed purely to develop communication and argumentation skills. Instead it is a valuable tool that can be used in almost any subject class to provide a more meaningful and engaging encounter with subject knowledge than