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ENHANCING STUDENTS’ CRITICAL THINKING THROUGH DEBATE 

Abstract

The countries that use English as a foreign language need effective activities which encourage students to practice skills of the language properly so that students can freely express their thoughts and ideas  inside as well as outside classrooms. Debating is a practice that inspires learners to open their mouth, get into discussion, defend their own positions, place counter arguments and also conduct research on related issues. While debating in English, the debaters get involved into a challenging and thrilling activity; moreover, they find themselves well-conversant in the aforesaid language. This paper presents the rationale behind using debate for university students as adult learners. The paper also examines utilities of the debate practice and exhibits how students while practicing debate can improve their critical thinking skills in English Language Teaching.  

  

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

In globalization era, the importance of English language cannot be overstated. Proficiency in English is the most challenging factor in today’s education as it has been considered as one of the parameters to determine a students’ overall academic ability. 
Not to mention, English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world and its value has expanded enormously in the past decade due to increase the demand of English language in jobs, growing social mobility and global competitiveness.

Unfortunately, most of university students especially language learners in Indonesia seems not ready yet to face global competitiveness. It is because they are not only having low proficiency in communication, but also lack in developing their critical thinking skills as an educated people. University students are less motivated in realizing why they need to develop these skills. And yet, when you ask them to explain exactly what these critical thinking skills are and how you can develop them, they tend to get confuse.

Recently, many researches have documented problems in the instruction of English language learners. There was a clear need for research documenting the need for improvement. When students are presented with conventional curriculum with no modifications, they tend to flounder, become overwhelmed, and mentally tune out or withdraw from active classroom participation. Most of language learners are struggling to learn English when taught in all-English settings. Students may fail to understand what the teacher is talking about, and may become frustrated when they have an idea but cannot adequately express their thoughts in English. This is also because teachers themselves do not provide appropriate technique in English Language Teaching (ELT).

However, we can overcome those problems by using certain teaching strategy to help students improve their critical thinking through debate. Conducting debate in a classroom not only plays important role in enhancing English speaking skills of the students, but also it helps them to organize their thoughts and ideas in a specific way while speaking. Debate is an excellent activity for language learning because it engages students in a variety of cognitive and linguistic ways. In addition, debate is highly effective for developing students’ critical thinking. Debating opens up opportunities for them to use the language in the form of expressing their opinions with logic. This is a single practice where students need to use this skill in delivering argumentation.

B. Problem Identification

1.      Students have low awareness in developing their critical thinking in learning process.

2.      Most of Students fail to understand what the teacher is talking about, and cannot   adequately express their thoughts in English.

3.      Teachers do not provide appropriate technique in ELT.

4.      Students have difficulties in organizing their thoughts and ideas in a specific way.

C. Objectives

This paper discusses how debate technique in ELT can enhance critical thinking of university students as adult learners.

CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW AND DISCUSSION

1. English Language Teaching (ELT)

a. The Nature of ELT

The English language teaching tradition has been subject to tremendous change, especially throughout the twentieth century. Perhaps more than any other discipline, this tradition has been practiced, in various adaptations, in language classrooms all around the world for centuries. There are several aspects that should be considered in teaching language according to Jeremy Harmer (1991:37)

1). Methodology

Some techniques and exercises that are suitable for beginners look less appropriate for students at higher levels. Teachers for adult learners will necessarily use activities whose organization and content is more complex than those for young learners.

2). Language

Teachers need to adjust the classroom language we use to the level we are working with. The language materials teacher expose students to should be of a completely different level too, not only in terms of complexity, but in a range of genre and length. For example in advanced learners, teacher would expect them to tackle a national newspaper in English not offer them simplified dialogues.

3). Topic

It is important to match topics to the level, reserving complex issues for more advanced learners.

4). Age

The age of students is a major factor in our decisions about how and what to teach. People of different ages have different needs, competences, and cognitive skills.

Brown (2001) writes that Adult language learners are notable for a number of special characteristics:

a)      They can engage with abstract thought. Those who succeed at language learning in later life, according to Steven Pinker, often depend on the conscious exercise of their considerable intellects, unlike children to whom language acquisition naturally happens (Pinker 1994:29). This suggests that we do not have to rely exclusively on activities such as games and songs-though these may be appropriate for some students.

b)      They have a whole range of life expectations about the learning.

c)      They come into classrooms with a rich range of experiences which allow teachers to use a wide range of activities with them.

Based on characteristic above, we can conclude that adult learner needs to provide appropriate material as well as activities that suitable for their level.

b. Current Practices of ELT

English language teaching methods play an important role in learning English. There are many students who are able to achieve a good performance as taught using proper English language learning. Instead, most students feel tired and reluctant to learn English because there are so boring method.

In ELT, many teachers use methods that are less precise and tedious. The teachers have not been able to develop a method that already exists and modify it to make it more interesting for students. For examples in Indonesia, most of English teacher still use an old methodology like Grammar Translation Method or commonly abbreviated with the GTM. With minimum activities and less participation of students, this method is no longer appropriate for certain level.

As purpose of ELT in which demand the learners to be able use the language as communicative as possible, teacher should find a proper method or at least develop and combine the current method with interesting technique. It will be much better if the technique integrate all skills of the students, not only their English skill, but also their cognitive, psychomotor, and affective skill.

2. Critical Thinking

a. Definition of Critical Thinking

      Critical thinking means making reasoned judgments.  Basically, it is using criteria to judge the quality of something.  In essence, critical thinking is a disciplined manner of thought that a person uses to assess the validity of something: a statement, news story, argument, and research.

b. Characteristics of Critical Thinkers

As explained in the pages above, critical thinking is essential for effective functioning in the modern world. We understand critical thinking to be purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation, and inference, as well as explanation of the evidential, conceptual, methodological, and contextual considerations upon which that judgment is based. Since this includes almost all types of logical reasoning, critical thinking is essential as a tool of inquiry.  As such, critical thinking is a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one's personal and civic life.  While not synonymous with good thinking, critical thinking is a pervasive and self-rectifying human phenomenon.       

The ideal critical thinker is habitually inquisitive, well-informed, trustful of reason, open-minded, flexible, fair-minded in evaluation, honest in facing personal biases, prudent in making judgments, willing to reconsider, clear about issues, orderly in complex matters, diligent in seeking relevant information, reasonable in the selection of criteria, focused in inquiry, and persistent in seeking results which are as precise as the subject and the circumstances of inquiry permit. 

Thus, educating good critical thinkers means working toward this ideal.  It combines developing critical thinking skills with nurturing those dispositions which consistently yield useful insights and which are the basis of a rational and democratic society.  

c. Critical Thinking in Education

Education in critical thinking offers an alternative to a drift toward postmodern relativism by emphasizing that we can distinguish between facts and opinions or personal feelings, judgments and inferences, inductive and deductive arguments, and the objective and subjective. A person can be good at critical thinking, means that the person can have the appropriate dispositions and be adept at the cognitive processes. Thus, a person that good in critical thinking is able to deduce consequences from what he knows, and he knows how to make use of information to solve problems, and to seek relevant sources of information.

d. How to Teach Critical Thinking

Teachers encourage critical thinking development through instructional processes like scaffolding and modeling. Students who see their teacher asking questions that require in-depth exploration on a regular basis will begin to ask deeper questions about their own perceptions. The development of critical thinking skills is segmented into several steps:

1)      Knowledge acquisition: Receiving information and placing that data into retrievable chunks for future application.

2)      Comprehension: Understanding the knowledge gained thoroughly.

3)      Application: Finding ways to apply that knowledge to real life in a meaningful way.

4)      Evaluation: Analyzing applications for accuracy.

5)      Incorporation: Using acquired knowledge in myriad ways and for other purposes than originally identified.

6)      Review: Evaluating the process through more challenging questions and applications.

By leading students through this process, teachers trigger analytical thought and prompt students to look beyond their own knowledge base to expand their comprehension of concepts such as political ideology.

e. Core Critical Thinking Skills

Here are the six critical thinking skills, according to Dr. Peter A. Facione :

1)      Interpretation

Meaning: Having the ability to understand the information you are being presented with and being able to communicate the meaning of that information to others.

2)      Analysis

Meaning: Having the ability to connect pieces of information together in order to determine what the intended meaning of the information was meant to represent.

3)      Inference

Meaning: Having the ability to understand and recognize what elements you will need in order to determine an accurate conclusion or hypothesis from the information you have at your disposal.

4)      Evaluation

Meaning: Being able to evaluate the credibility of statements or descriptions of a person’s experience, judgment or opinion in order to measure the validity of the information being presented.

5)      Explanation

Meaning: Having the ability to not only restate information, but add clarity and perspective to the information, so it can be fully understood by anyone you are sharing it with.

6)      Self-Regulation

Meaning: Having the awareness of your own thinking abilities and the elements that you are using to find results.

In conclusion, Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action.

3. Debate

a. The Nature of Debate

Debating in English is a practice that requires all English language skills along with the skills of presentation and delivery. It is an excellent activity for language learning because it engages students in a variety of cognitive and linguistic ways which highly effective for developing argumentation skills.

Quoting from Davidson (1995), Debate offers English language teachers a way to combine practices of important skills. By 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.

Thus, Debate is an important educational tool for learning analytic thinking skills and for forcing self-conscious reflection on the validity of one's ideas.

 b. Debate Procedures

Debating is a clash of arguments. For every issue, there are always different sides of a story: why people support or disagree with that certain issue. A debate is also a structured argument.  Two sides speak alternately for and against a particular contention usually based on a topical issue.  Unlike the arguments, people might have with their family or friends however, each person is allocated a time they are allowed to speak for and any interjections are carefully controlled.  The subject of the dispute is often prearranged so they may find themselves having to support opinions with which they do not normally agree.  They also have to argue as part of a team, being careful not to contradict what others on speaker side have said. 

1) Format

For most beginners, the format of the debate that usually used is the Australasian 3-on-3 style debate. While there are some variations, but the basic style has the following key features:

a)      Two teams of 3 speakers each

b)      Each team is assigned a side (the Affirmative, who argue in favor of a topic, and the Negative, who argue against it.)

c)      A topic is decided for each debate

d)     Teams are given 30 minutes to prepare

e)      Each speaker speaks for 6 – 8 minutes

f)       Speakers alternate between the teams, from 1st Affirmative through to  3rd Negative

2) The Basic Debating Skills

The skills of debate are formally broken down into three categories:

a)      Matter (40%) –The idea that speaker bring, the logic link in their explanation,  the argument that they build, whether the whole of their argument is reasonable and make sense, whether the issue that they bring is appropriate with the spirit of the motion, whether the content is relevant.

b)      Manner (40%) – The style with which deabters present themselves, how they persuade the adjudicator, gesture, eye contact, body posture, emotions, pause, stressed in an important words.

c)      Method (20%) – The structure and clarity of speaker’s speech.

4. How debate improving students’ critical thinking

When learning a new language for global communication, students are required to confidently express their thoughts in order for students to be vocal, critical thinking skills are essential. The use of debate has been an effective technique to strengthen the students’ speaking and critical thinking abilities. English language teachers and practitioners have already proven that debating as an effective tool in teaching English because in its activity, students are taught how to construct an argument which consists of certain points below:

a) The Idea

The idea is simply the point students are trying to make. It is just a heading or a title - it might be true, it might not, but that’s something for speaker to prove later. In this process, students are required to collect as many ideas within the specified time limit, so they will get used to think fast.

b) Analysis

Once the students have an idea, the next step is to provide the analysis to prove it. Basically, this is where students show logically or analytically that the idea is likely to be. They can do this by demonstrating that logically the idea is true when taken in the context of the topic, or they can offer a series of reasons to support it. Logic is the chain of reasoning used to prove an argument. This involves stating, explaining and illustrating the argument. Relevance is established by tying the argument in to the topic under debate.

c) Evidence

The third step, evidence, is usually the easiest. This is the stage where students provide something like a statistic, a survey, a case study or an analogy to give greater credibility to students’ idea and analysis. Partly because it is the easiest to do, it is also the least important link in the chain of an argument, but it is a good to thing to have.

Based on the process of making an argument and building the case above, debating will trigger the students to think critically in order to make their arguments relevant and acceptable. Debaters will update information about current issues and concepts of different fields. Moreover, they need to conduct research on various issues because in presenting their logic and argument, debaters require standard delivery skills to convince judges and audiences. Finally, students are able to be critical thinkers who are able to do the followings:

1.      They will understand the logical connections between ideas.

2.       They are able to identify, construct and evaluate arguments, detect inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning.

3.      They can solve problems systematically.

4.      They can identify the relevance and importance of idea.

5.      They can reflect on the justification of one's own beliefs and values.

 CONCLUSION

Teaching foreign language is not as simple as people thought. Either teachers or learners must have found problems in teaching and learning English. Students sometimes get difficulties to understand the teacher, and the teacher got confuse too in giving them the most appropriate method to be engaged with. Thus, one of the best solutions to overcome those problems is by giving interesting technique in teaching English like debate activity.

 Debate activity not only aims to make the classroom more attractive but also it triggers students to be more interactive to actively participate in the classroom moreover when it comes to the adult learners like university students. Since most of university are demanded to be confident in expressing their idea in front of people, then they also need to have critical thinking skills as their basic foundation.

Debate activity appears to improve that skill on how in every single process and regulation in debating, students are accustomed to activate their brain to think, to find much ideas, and analyzing many issues. By doing this, finally students are able to organize their thoughts and ideas critically in a specific way.

                                                                                                                                      

Bibliography: 

Brown, H. (2001). Teaching by principles. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Brown, H. Principles of language learning and teaching.

D'Cruz, R. (2003). The Australia-Asia Debating Guide (2nd ed., p. 8). North Melbourne, Vic, 3051, Australia: Australian Debating Federation

Davidson, G. (1995). The Ethics of Confidentiality: Introduction. Australian Psychologist, 30(3), 153-157. doi:10.1080/00050069508258924

Facione, P., & Facione, N. (1994). Critical thinking ability: A measurement tool. Assessment Update, 6(6), 12-13. doi:10.1002/au.3650060611

Harmer, J. (1991). The practice of English language teaching. London: Longman.

Pinker, S. (1999). Words and rules. New York: Basic Books.