Drawbacks of debate

According to Goodwin‘s (2003) experience and literature, there are three specific aspects in debating that learners may consider as negative are: Firstly, since arguing requires open disagreement, learners may associate it with negative interpersonal or emotional qualities like hostility and fighting (Benoit 1983; Trapp 1986; Walker 1991;

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Tannen 1998). In this case, some learners may understandably be quite reluctant to engage actively in debate.

Secondly, learners may find the competitive nature of this specific form of arguing to be intimidating or silencing. In particular, gender differences in argumentation styles according to Meyer, Brashers, Winston and Grob (1997:23) may mean that some women are disadvantaged in debates. So therefore, learners may rightfully object that debate exercises are unfair.

Finally, learners may simply find exercises to be unfamiliar. They may resist the innovation, preferring instead activities such as class discussion and group projects through which they already know how to learn. However, Goodwin (2003:157) found that there was no evidence that competition affected any one group of learners unequally.

3.3.5.7 Concluding remarks

In order to facilitate expressiveness, fostering critical thinking in your lessons is essential. In fact, the use of debate in EFAL classes especially increases learners’ speaking skills, and the information learners gather from their research plays a vital role in building their reasoning ability.

In addition, debating allows them to utilise the related vocabulary they picked up from their reading. Finally, by evaluating their debate, Ebata (2009:2) claims that learners can learn from each other about their own strength and weaknesses.

In summary, Zare and Othman (2013:1507) corroborate that debate encourages learners to learn course content better, since they are engaged in the course content actively, broadly, deeply and personally. Then, debating also trains them to assess the data they get on a daily basis. Hence, debate provides a valuable opportunity of classroom interaction to develop learners’ speaking skills in EFAL.

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3.4 SUMMARY

This chapter shows how interactive activities in a classroom interaction approach have an influence on individual’s performance in learning EFAL for communicative competence. This suggests that interacting with ideal individuals who serve as a model in a ZPD also enables the learner to expand his or her knowledge. However, to achieve this, a healthy and conducive learning environment ought to be created by implementing interactive activities that will equip learners with the practice of English as first additional language. Such activities should provide learners with opportunities to share ideas, test their thinking, and examine different perspectives on issues.

Indeed, discussion plays a significant role for scaffolding learners’ learning as it can direct the learners towards what they can expect in the activity. It also serves as an ice breaker since it is easy to be utilised for introducing a lesson because it activates the learners’ inner knowledge. Thus, discussion creates a platform where learners can also tell their stories in a natural, relaxed manner. Since storytelling is a habitual unaware routine, then, if learners are encouraged to use the target language in their daily lives, it could lead to communicative competence. As with discussion, stories can also be used as scaffolding on which learners can build their own stories. Role play is an experiential teaching technique. After the stories have been told, read or written learners can role play the stories to consolidate what had been taught. Most of the researchers observed in classes that use role play learners become confident and fluent. The constructivist learning environments suggested in this chapter can allow learners to construct their learning as individuals and also as pairs and groups.

Furthermore, reading aloud is the other form of enhancing communicative competence and also scaffold learning for learners who do not understand a topic. It is an activity that leads to improvement in language expression across subjects in the curriculum. As learners read aloud or the teacher reads aloud, serving as a model whom learners observe and imitate, as Bandura’s cognitive theory proposes, they learn new vocabulary and grammar.

Lastly, debate is a way of encouraging learners to conduct research by listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this way, learners construct their own opinions, and

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make mistakes, and correct themselves as there are no wrong or right answers. Thus it creates a less threatening environment. Hence, it opens opportunities for confidence development where learners express their own thoughts. In short, classroom interactive activities complement each other and can be used in many circumstances to enhance communicative competence in EFAL.

Based on the information given on the classroom interaction activities, the idea is that learners have to learn the target language from different perspectives that stimulate their interest to learn more. By interaction with other learners, skills are shared to produce better individuals and enhance their self-efficacy. Learners become effective as they demonstrate their abilities to their peers acknowledge their participation and also grow in confidence.

In Chapter 4, the researcher presents the teaching methods and classroom interaction activities across the curriculum and the assessment policy statement for this study.

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TEACHING METHODS AND CLASSROOM INTERACTION ACTIVITIES