English Language Learning:

Get More Benefits through English Debating Practice

By Ignasia Yuyun

By practising debating in English, you ‘kill two birds with one stone’. It means that you succeed in doing two things at the same time. Why? Through debating practice in English, you can enhance your critical thinking, communicative abilities, and English proficiency at the same time. Double benefits? Absolutely.

English as an international language is absolutely to be mastered by college students. Nowadays, in this globalization era, the communication among the people with different background of countries, languages, and cultures, will run well by using English as communication language. Based on the reality, we realize that the need of enhancing English ability by accommodating those who are enthusiastic in English so that they can actualize their English ability. Therefore, in line with this, some schools and universities in Indonesia recently have been trying hard to facilitate students’ needs in English through debating activities.

Debate is a communication process in which participants argue for and against a given topic. It is considered as something formal, an activity involving two teams of three speakers each, with a set topic and an adjudicator (Quinn, 2005: 1). In academic context (in schools and universities), the debate is carried out as a game with rules ("format"), a clear and tight between the two parties, each of which support and oppose a statement. The debate was witnessed by one or several judges appointed to determine the winner of a debate. The winner of the debate is a competitive team that successfully demonstrated the knowledge and ability to debate the better.

Some research findings show that there is a lot of benefits got from debating practice. First, when it is conducted in English, debating opens opportunities to share views on a global basis. Especially in this global era where we, as a nation, will face challenges that greater than ever.

Second, English debating practice is thus to help develop your language skills of efficient listening, convincing public speaking, and debate (argumentation) in relation to extensive reading and follow-up writing. When the two teams are debating, instead of just using  speaking skill, at the same time, you are also using your listening skill (because you have to hear all of the detail of the opponent team's argument), and before the debate you are also have to prepare your material of debate, in which when doing so, you often have to search the information related to the topic/motion in the internet or other sources, this activity automatically trains your reading skill too, since you have to search for information that would be relevant to support your argument. After that you will have to write down all of the information and arrange it into the most suitable way that can persuade and can be easily understood by the audience and the adjudicators (judges/juries). So, basically by practicing English debating, you will be facing a situation and condition in which you have to use and have to train all of those English skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing) at the same time.

Third, practicing English debating is also a chance to improve such valuable skills as logical thinking, argumentation and critical thinking since debating improves argumentation skill (Freely, 1990; Snowball, 1994; Sather, 1999; Quinn, 2005). You will learn to be a persuasive speaker that can prove your argument. You will acquire the ability to see the lie and to analyze the speech of your opponent. In general, you will be perfect at developing arguments, finding conclusions and presenting you speech persuasively to the audience. Moreover, you will be trained to analyze every national and international issue around the world in a critical way and logical way of thinking (e.g. Politics, social, economics, cultures, law, war, Middle East, global warming, etc). In addition, Altman (2002), in her Business English class at University of Washington, stated that debating practice leads her students through all six categories of thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) systematically.

Moreover, once you improve your logical thinking, argumentation and critical thinking, this is of course will also change you into a person that more and more aware on every issue (problem/conflict) that happen in the national or international region. Again, you get the fourth benefit from English debating practice. Here, the debating activity stimulates your intellectual capacity to solve various problems that you may encounter in life. By developing your debating aptitude, you also learn to be open-minded while simultaneously being critical in acknowledging a variety of perspectives.

The last but not least, English debating practice also enhances your confidence to speak in front of public since it is considered as a speaking activity that offers profound and lasting benefits for your effective communication. More importantly, practice makes perfect, the more often you speak in English, the more you will feel confidence to use it in any occasion, either in a conversation or in a public speaking. 

REFERENCES:

Altman, J. (2002). Critical Thinking, Interaction, and Debates. Washington: University of Washington.

Chaffee, J. (2000). Thinking Critically 6^th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Fisher, A. (2001). Critical Thinking: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Freely, A. J., & Steinberg, D.L. (2009). Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Quinn, S. (2005). Debating. Brisbane: Australian Electronic Publisher.

Snowball, D. (1994). Theory and Practice in Academic Debate. Illinois: Augustana College.

(published in UKRIDA Newsletter | No. 71 - Year IX, April- May 2011)

Available on http://www.ukrida.ac.id/index.php?/ukrida-newsletter.html

Second Language Learning Strategies:

A Reflection of First Language Learning Theories and Second Language Learning Experience

By Ira Rasikawati

Sometimes we might wonder whether there is anything we can learn from the first language (L1) learning process to help us be proficient in another language. Children learning their native language have to undergo several stages of development prior to comprehending and producing the language. It is widely accepted that speech comprehension precedes speech production and both stages are un-interchangeable. On the basis of these processes, there are two practices that are common in the first language learning that could possibly be replicated in the second language (L2) learning. The use of Parentese and the absence of correction in L1 learning may turn into effective L2 learning strategies.

Understanding the target language meanings is the most fundamental task to be achieved in L1 learning. Children must have the opportunity to hear and comprehend words, phrases and sentences in meaningful contexts before they can produce them (Steinberg, Nagata, & Aline, 2001). Rich exposure to the target language is therefore essential for children’s’ language development. L1 learners not only have to hear speech sounds but also make connections between the sounds they hear and the objects, situations, or events in the environment (Steinberg, Nagata, & Aline, 2001). Parents or caregivers usually attempt to provide relevant environmental stimuli to facilitate better comprehension.

L2 learners also undergo a similar period in which they only listen to the language they are exposed to in the early stage of L2 learning.  Krashen and Terrell name this stage as the pre-production period (Krashen, S.D. & Terrell, T.D., 1983) or referred to it as the silent period (Ellis, 2008). At this stage L2 learners listen to the language they are exposed to and attempt to discover the language meaning. A practice in the L1 learning that can be implemented in the L2 learning context is making use of the Parentese, the type of speech that the children receive when they are young (Steinberg, Nagata, & Aline, 2001) such as talking aloud, repeating useful words, talking more slowly, using the same phrases for the same situations, and adding facial expressions and gestures to assist understanding (Dunn, 2008).

I personally experienced the use of Parentese eased comprehension in young children and adult L2 learners. Teaching children in L2 contexts has taught me not only to make use of concrete objects when speaking but also to talk aloud by using simplified repetitive language. During lunch time for example, I will have to enunciate the word “lunch” several times and show my lunch box to inform the students that it is time to go to the dining area. Another example, when I studied Japanese language about three years ago, my Japanese friends and instructors usually used short sentences and simple speech structures when speaking to foreigners. In Japanese contexts it is even easier to do Parentese as it is commonly acceptable to say only the predicator of an utterance instead of a complete sentence. One can simply say “taberu” or “tabemasuka” which mean “eat” (v) with a raising intonation to invite someone to have a meal. 

When children’ speech production has emerged significantly; they begin to comprehend and express themselves more effectively. At this point it is important to remember that paying too much attention and correction to grammatical correctness is pointless as children eventually notice their own mistakes and make effort to revise them (Steinberg, Nagata, & Aline, 2001). The same practice should also be applied in L2 learning contexts. Corrections usually have greater negative impacts in L2 learning as they may increase the learners’ level of anxiety.

Based on my L2 learning experiences, many of my instructors do corrections when they find mistakes in their students’ utterances. In spoken utterances particularly, I can hardly remember the corrections that my instructors attempted. This correction eventually turned to a burden instead of language accuracy as a result. I usually felt guilty and embarrassed if I made the same mistakes in spite of repetitive corrections the instructors pointed out to me. In my opinion, the corrections slowed down my L2 production.

Research findings show that the effect of Parentese depends on the interaction between the child and the parent (Yoder & Kaiser, 1989; Hoff-Ginsberg, 1990 in Steinberg, Nagata, & Aline, 2001). Teachers and students interactions may be more meaningful if the teachers employ the practice of Parentese in the classroom at the early stage of L2 learning. At the emergence of speech production, L2 learners might be able to communicate more effectively when grammatical correctness is not the main concern. The absence of corrections will reduce the L2 learners’ anxiety and help them develop their speech production. Further research should be conducted to examine the effectiveness of the strategies proposed in L2 learning contexts.

References:

Dunn, Opal. (2008). What is parentese language? British Council. http://www.britishcouncil.org/vietnam-english-learning-together-is-fun-what-is-parentese-language.htm

Ellis, Rod. (2008). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krashen, S.D. & Terrell, T.D. (1983). The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. London: Prentice Hall Europe.

Steinberg, D. D., Nagata, H., & Aline, D. P. (2001). Psycholinguistics: Language, Mind, and World. 2nd Edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

(published in UKRIDA Newsletter | No. 70 - Year IX, February-March 2011)

Available on http://www.ukrida.ac.id/index.php?/ukrida-newsletter.html