Proposal view
| Proposal Type: | Individual Thematic Poster |
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| Domain: | Teaching and Instructional Design |
| SIG: | Educational Effectiveness |
| Equipment |
PC and projector |
| Paper Details |
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| Title | The effect of debate training on argumentative skills: The developmental process of Japanese College students |
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| Abstract | How do students acquire argumentative skills by debating? Although this question has long been attempted to answer in various ways, a common limitation of the previous studies is the tendency to ignore the potentials of students who learn debating for the first time and those of ESL/EFL debaters. This presentation aims at proposing a process model of acquiring argumentative skills which was brought out by a short-term experiment using a “Parliamentary Debate” format conducted for Japanese college students. The main points of the findings were: (1) all participants improved their argumentative skills, (2) a developmental process of reasoning was found, and (3) the most difficult stage for Japanese learners was revealed. For pedagogical implication, to teach debate to Japanese students who are especially unwilling to debate, we need to have them realize their improvement with confidence by reducing their mental blocks. By discussing their developmental stages of subordinate skills and argumentative patterns, the future prospects of argumentative education for Japanese students will be further explored. |
| Summary | Recently debate has attracted much attention in Japan, as a means of critically examining complicated problems as well as developing human resources in a globalized world. The number of the schools which introduce debate into English classes is now rapidly increasing from elementary to higher levels. Despite this trend, however, empirical studies about debate education are scarce and its effect has not been sufficiently tested yet. In addition, few studies have focused on debate formats considering their relative merits for developing English communication skills. Among the variety of educational debate, Parliamentary Debate (PD) has the most world-wide popularity and strong orientation towards communication with the audience. Its unique characteristic can be summarized as follows: (1) speeches are targeted to ordinary average-knowledgeable persons, not experts, (2) rhetorical persuasiveness is valued as well as logical proof in a speech, (3) manner (gesture, rhetoric and so on) is evaluated as highly as the contents of the speech. (4) all kinds of issues of daily life about politics, economics, education etc. are used for resolutions that change every round, (5) extemporaneous response is required because the standing sides and the resolution are announced only 20 minutes before the round begins, and no preparation time is secured between speeches. As PD needs improvisational communication skills and diversified range of knowledge, its effect and impact on “global literacy” -- the abilities to access to the world and to communicate with the world -- are highly expected. In fact, a series of my own studies found noteworthy outcomes that PD has positive effects on English communication abilities and conceptual change in intercultural understanding (Nakano, 2004). Furthermore, every stage of debate activity such as preparation, round, reflection and so on forms a set of cyclic learning system, and this functions as an ideal community of practice which intensify the effectiveness of its teaching method(Lave & Wenger, 1991). On the other hand, PD has not fully studied in the world. It is only in the 1990’s when communication researchers began to notice its unique communication-oriented characteristics. In addition, as most of the PD studies have been conducted in the U.S., previous studies have ignored its potentials for teaching English as a second/foreign language and intercultural education, except for my own studies (Nakano; 2004, 2005). Considering these situations, PD needs to be more closely investigated. Moreover, there is another important research theme on debate education. How do students acquire argumentative skills by debating? Although this question has long been attempted to answer in various ways, a common limitation of the previous studies is the tendency to ignore the potentials of students who learn debating for the first time and those of ESL/EFL debaters. This presentation aims at proposing a process model of acquiring argumentative skills which was brought out by a short-term experiment using a “Parliamentary Debate” format conducted for Japanese college students.The participants were 20 freshmen (M=6, F=14) who had not experienced special debate training. The average age was 19.7(SD=5.8). The procedure was as followed. The session held was debate trainings over a period of 4 weeks from June 2005, 5 days a week, at lunch time (45 min) and evening (3 hours). All participants joined the pretest and posttest of questionnaires, interviews and speech tests. The present study shows the result of the 2-min speech about 2 themes; on capital punishment and on smoking. For analytic schema, we divided argumentative skills into several subordinate elements and developed argument patterns by using above elements and the whole logical structure. The main points of the findings were: (1) all participants improved their argumentative skills, (2) a developmental process of reasoning was found, and (3) the most difficult stage for Japanese learners was revealed. For pedagogical implication, to teach debate to Japanese students who are especially unwilling to debate, we need to have them realize their improvement with confidence, for example, giving an appropriate task for each learner’s developmental level. By reducing the mental block, it is then easier and more effective to teach a higher level of debate skill. By discussing their developmental stages of subordinate skills and argumentative patterns, the future prospects of argumentative education for Japanese students will be further explored. |
| Keywords | Argumentation Educational effectiveness Learning processes/strategies |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
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| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Mika | Nakano | Kyushu University | Japan | nakanom@kyudai.jp | * | |
| Shun'ichi | Maruno | Kyushu University | Japan | syunedu@mbox.nc.kyushu-u.ac.jp | ||
