A most fundamental research in the education sector is to investigate the developmental stage of learners. The necessity of this research is stressed in language arts education as well, but few studies have ever been conducted to evaluate the language...
A most fundamental research in the education sector is to investigate the developmental stage of learners. The necessity of this research is stressed in language arts education as well, but few studies have ever been conducted to evaluate the language arts development level of learners. The purpose of this study was to examine the developmental aspects of discussion ability in an effort to pave the way for research on discussion education, as discussion ability is increasingly accentuated in today's diversified and democratic modern society.
Earlier studies of the development of the Korean language proficiency, discussion knowledge, discussion education and discussion skills were analyzed to make a definition of discussion ability. Discussion ability is largely divided into discussion knowledge, discussion skills and meta- ability. The scope of this study was confined to discussion skills among the three components of discussion ability. There are three factors in discussion skills: attitude, thinking and expression, and the three factors were classified into 32 subfactors. A survey was conducted on 16 experts in language arts education and speech education to evaluate the validity of the subcomponents of discussion skills. After the collected data were analyzed with a SPSS 10.0 program, five factors and 16 subfactors were finally selected as the components of discussion skills.
The five components of discussion skills were attitude, expressiveness, analytical skills, reasoning power and interpersonal skills. A longitudinal research was conducted to find out the developmental aspects of the discussion skills of fifth-grade students, eight-grade students and tenth- grade students to see if there would be any differences among the students according to the grade of school and developmental stage. The fifth-grade students were selected since they started to have a discussion in class as part of the curriculum, and the eight-grade students were selected as they learned about demonstration. And the tenth-grade students were selected as the coverage of the basic national curriculum was between first- and tenth-grade students. As a result, the tenth graders had excellent discussion skills, which were similar to those of adults, and the discussion skills of the fifth graders were at an intermediate level, which was appropriate for their grade. But the eighth graders didn't reach the level of their grade in that regard. They scored lowest in all the five components, which indicated that there was room for improvement in eighth-grade discussion education. The eighth graders who received education in accordance with the 7th national curriculum had a chance to learn about discussion, but it seemed that the education that they received didn't produce any fruitful results. Afterwards, the eighth graders actually had little chances to have a discussion in class, and that seemed why they scored lowest. Out of the five components, all the students scored higher in the attitude factor, which seemed to indicate that current education worked well in that aspect, but it seemed that they should be taught to approve of others' assertions. In terms of expressiveness, the fifth and eighth graders should learn about the use of nonverbal expressions, and they should be instructed to improve their language fluency and confidence as well. As for analytic skills, the fifth and eighth graders scored lower in general, and they should be taught to boost their ability to find out errors and compare different opinions. In terms of reasoning skills, the fifth and eighth graders scored lower as well, and they should learn about how to provide rationale on their assertions and how to discriminate between grounded and nongrounded assertions. Education of interpersonal skills was conducted well in general, but they should be taught to improve their ability to speak in consideration of the given contexts. The fifth graders were well educated in terms of attitude and interpersonal skills, but analytical and reasoning skills were elusive for them when their developmental stage was taken into account. The eighth graders scored lower in all the five components, and they especially lagged behind in analytical skills and reasoning power in comparison with their developmental stage. So it's urgently necessary to improve education on analytical skills and reasoning power. The tenth graders scored well in every factor, which implied that they received quality discussion education.
The above-mentioned findings suggest that if discussion education focuses on the developmental stage of students and what they were especially in want of, that will produce the best learning effects. In the future, more intensive research should be implemented by examining all the students who are in their first to tenth grade.