Module teaching and integrating language skills lesson 1

MODULE1. TEACHING AND INTEGRATING SKILLS
LESSON 10
Theme: Designing discussion activities
Aim: To raise students awareness of designing discussion activities
Aids: Charts, laptop with speakers, audio recordings, handouts, video clips, white board
Lead-in (5 min.): Teacher introduces the theme:


Discussion is very often used as a tool in classrooms. When designed properly and used thoughtfully, discussion tasks can be an effective learning tool that promote creativity, as well as generate meaningful interaction and understanding for the student. Well-designed discussion tasks lead to progressive knowledge-seeking inquiry (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994) or expansive learning (Engestrom, 1999) where students are actively synthesizing new information with prior knowledge and experiences in the process of creating not only new knowledge but also new understanding of the learning process. Teachers use discussion tasks to achieve different goals: critical inquiry, debate and reflection. Hacker and Niederhauser (2000) argue that effective learning comes about through teachers' thoughtful design and use of instructional strategies.
Types of discussion
There are a variety of different types of discussions that occur naturally and which we can recreate in the classroom. These include discussions where the students have to:

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  Make decisions (e.g. decide who to invite to a party and where to seat them)
  
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  Give and / or share their opinions on a given topic (e.g. discussing beliefs about the effectiveness of capital punishment)
  
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  Create something (e.g. plan and make a poster as a medium for feedback on a language course)
  
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  Solve a problem (e.g. discussing the situations behind a series of logic problems)
  

Some discussion topics may fall into more than one of these categories, but it is useful to consider a variety of formats to which the students can apply the skills they are learning.
Useful sub-skills for students
There are a number of different sub-skills which students will need to be able to successfully and effectively participate in a group discussion. Students need to develop the ability to analyse, persuade, control emotions, support, use functional language.
Analyse
This skill can be developed by giving students the topic individually and asking them to brainstorm or mind-map all of the possible sub-topics they could speak about. The students can then swap their notes and assess or analyse the relevance of each of the sub-topics their partner has included. Together, the students then draw up a fresh list or mind-map and discuss how the sub-topics might be linked together, along with examples or reasons for any arguments they might have.
Persuade
This skill comes in useful when students need to make decisions on how to do something (e.g. which candidate should get a job). A fun activity to develop this skill is to give groups of students this topic and ask them to decide on the profile of the perfect candidate, creating a list of 7 adjectives. The students are then re-grouped and asked to persuade the other members of the group that their selection is the best while compiling a second, negotiated list. The group members who retain the most from their original lists are the winners. Note down useful phrases that you hear the students using while doing this task and discuss these at the end for future reference.
Control emotions
This can be practised by giving the students a fairly controversial topic, such as ‘Friends are more important than family’ and asking the students to decide whether they agree, disagree or have no opinion, making notes on their main arguments to support their viewpoint. Divide the students into groups ensuring that there is a mix of views within each group. Explain that for this discussion, the aim is to keep their voices low and try to control their emotions as far as possible. Monitor and give feedback on these areas.
Support
One of the most important things for this skill is for students to learn when it is and isn’t appropriate to interrupt and how to do it. Very often students will talk over each other in an effort to get their point across and forget to listen.
To practise this, you can get your students to make a list in small groups of when it is and isn’t appropriate to interrupt other speakers. They should include things like ‘not appropriate during the middle of a point, if the speaker has not said very much previously, or when you are feeling angry and liable to say something you’ll regret’. It is appropriate when the speaker has been dominating the discussion for too long, what the speaker is saying is completely irrelevant to the topic, or you don’t understand the point he / she has made’.
You can then give them or elicit a list of phrases which they might use to interrupt politely (e.g. ‘Can i just add something here?’, ‘Sorry I’d just like to clarify something,’ etc.) The students then write five of these on slips of paper (one per slip) and have a group discussion on a given topic. The aim is to use all of the language on their slips. When they have used a phrase, they put the slip in the middle of the table. The other students in the group judge whether the interruption was appropriate / polite. If not, they take the slip back and try again.
Use functional language
Depending on the types of group discussions that you plan to do with your class, it is useful to draw up a list of useful functional language for the students to refer to. This could include phrases for functions such as ‘Giving reasons’, ‘Giving your opinion’, ‘Agreeing and disagreeing’, etc. You can either make up the list yourself and distribute it or get the students to do this. For each group discussion, you can then refer them to the appropriate section of the list and give them a few moments to consider the language before beginning the discussion.


TYPES OF DISCUSSION TASKS
1. GUIDED DISCUSSION TASK
The goal of guided or directed discussion tasks is to give students a chance to develop critical thinking, clear oral expression, as well as experience in posing and responding to questions.
Stage 1: The teacher poses a discussion question to the whole class. Guidelines are given on discussion etiquette and criteria for evaluation. Each student contributes an original answer in response to the discussion question.
Stage 2: Students offer responses or questions to each other's contributions as a means of broadening the discussion's scope.
Stage 3: Students present their views or the views of their groups, either orally or in writing at the enmgd of the guided discussion task.
INQUIRY-BASED DISCUSSION TASK
This task guides students through a series of questions to discover some relationship or principle, and to help students acquire reasoning skills to analyze new information. The beginning stages are similar to those in the guided discussion task, but in an inquiry-based discussion task, students are further required to bring in information and issues from outside the textbook or classroom for discussion.
Stage 4: The teacher poses a discussion issue that requires argumentative reasoning and elaboration. Students are required to go beyond the textbook to evaluate this discussion issue.
Stage 5: Students identify and highlight main issues relevant to the discussion. In doing so, they appraise the new information they have acquired for its validity and relevance as well as test their ideas against insights and perspectives provided by their peers.
Stage 6: Students summarize the discussion in light of other discussants' reactions and interpretations. This helps them to synthesize supporting and opposing ideas that are relevant to the issue.
REFLECTIVE DISCUSSION TASK
Teachers use this task to help students become more aware of the learning process and to enable them to derive meaningful insights from their learning experiences.
Stage 7: The teacher asks students to prepare a self-analysis of their roles and contributions to the discussion process.
Stage 8: Students analyze "how they learn" and think about what will help them be more effective in future discussions. They respond to introspective questions that help them to reflect on conditions that facilitated or hindered their learning processes.
EXPLORATORY DISCUSSION TASK
This task assists students by honing their analytical skills to arrive at alternative explanations in a variety of real-world scenarios. Here, students are compelled to first examine their personal opinions, suppositions or assumptions and then visualize alternatives to these assumptions.
Stage 9: The teacher poses a real-world problem that requires students to consider- in context - the premises or ideas they have been discussing.
Stage 10: Students assess their beliefs or opinions and evaluate how alternatives to these beliefs and opinions apply in a variety of real-world situations.
Activity 1. Begin with a list of contemporary annoyances and elicit how they annoy the students.
Great Personalized Discussion Cues
What do you think about.....
People who jump the queue in supermarkets...
Ketcup packs you can't open..........
People who talk about soap operas.............
People who steal your answers in class........
Songs that have bad lyrics..........
Slow walking shoppers...........
People who crack their fingers to show off.....
Mosqitoes you can't kill...............................
Waiters who look the other way.....................
Blackouts in the middle of good movies...........
People who press the lift button after you.........
It maybe a good idea to review "negative adjectives" and their uses and variations .....ie....silly, lazy, impatient, ...are annoying,....annoy you,..drive you crazy,...make you mad,...frustrate you,....are frustrating, ..irritate..etc.
Activity 2. Find out how you learn best by doing the following quiz. Read the statements and decide if they are true or false for you then discuss your answers with your partner.
1. I learn best when the teacher explains something to me.
2. I like singing in class.
3. I enjoy speaking to the other students in class in English.
4. I love doing listening exercises in class.
5. I find it easy to remember the words and phrases from listening exercises and songs we
have listened to in class.
6. I am good at remembering faces.
7. I sometimes draw pictures/diagrams to help me remember something we have studied.
8. I speak very quickly in English and in my own language.
9. I can picture English words easily in my head.
10. I write in different colours and I often highlight/underline important words.
11. I fidget in class.
12. I like doing stand-up activities and roleplays in class.
13. I am good at making things.
14. I take a lot of notes.
15. If I don't know how to do something new I like to 'have a go' at it.