독서토론 수업 사례와 수업 후 작문 자료 고찰

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to observe the changes that occur to learners through reading discussion classes that have been gaining attention as an alternative measure to solve the existing knowledge transfer-based teaching problem. In particular, the advantages of reading discussion classes include the development of critical thinking, the improvement of argumentation ability and the promotion of communication skills. This study focused on the improvement of thinking ability and discussed the components of argument that can assess the improvement of critical thinking and reasoning ability of learners after reading discussion classes by comparing their writing results between the pre- and post class. Critical thinking is the process of rationally reviewing one's or other's discussion and the argumentative capacity is the ability to inference the fact based on the argument, grounds, reinforcement materials and rebuttal techniques to make the fact more persuasive. To observe these improvements in ability, the present study selected writing materials to show the learners' thoughts among other things, quantitatively examined how the argumentative ability was reflected in the learners, especially after a reading discussion class by the component of the argument. In addition, the Paired sample t-test was performed to verify that the change was a significant one. This study had conducted the reading discussion class first and then examined learner’s writing materials during the class. The reading discussion class was appropriately designed by examining the learner’s previous experiences on the reading discussion. This class had been conducted for three weeks in the order of ‘understanding reading discussion’, ‘preparing reading discussion’, and ‘utilizing reading discussion’ by the researcher. To examine the changes that appeared to learners after the reading discussion class, we compared and analyzed learner’s writing results that they wrote before and after the class. Here, six criteria were defined as objective indicators and analyzed individually. Suggested six criteria were ‘1: self-perspective’, ‘2: a reason for self-perspective’, ‘3: opponent-perspective’, ‘4: a reason for opponent-argument’, ‘5: refutation’, and ‘6:　suggesting of the solution’. The result showed an increase of the scores on the post, writing in the order of 6: suggesting of solution > 5: refutation=4: a reason for opponent-argument > 3: opponent-perspective > 2: a reason for self-perspective > 1: self-perspective. These incremental factors demonstrate that learners have changed in their thinking ability after a reading discussion class, especially after our results indicated that their abilities in critical thinking and reasoning skills were clearly improved. Furthermore, Paired t-test was performed on averaged scores for all criteria and it showed t=-6.46 and p<0.01 which explains that there is a significant difference in writing results before and after the class.