韓国の大学の日本語クラスにおける合意形成を目指した話し合い活動の試み -WEBサイト作成プロジェクトを通して-

Abstract

Students are likely to encounter situations in real life where they have to form agreements with others, and it is oftentimes not easy. Therefore, students need practice to develop their consensus-building ability. This paper introduces discussion activities aimed at consensus-building through project work in a Japanese class of a Korean university and reports the advantages and disadvantages of them. In the class, reflection and visualization are emphasized to increase consensus-building ability. Then, after sharing rules for discussion and focusing on discussion methods and process, a method was introduced to organize, integrate, and combine opinions required to draw a conclusion. As a result of the practice, learners were able to express their own evidence-based opinion and to reach a convincing conclusion that everyone can agree on. To investigate learners' awareness for the discussion activity, an end-of-semester questionnaire and interview data were conducted for analysis. The results revealed that the participants reacted positively for the discussion activities. The advantages of the discussion activities were that 1) the participants were provided with an opportunity to say their own opinions freely in Japanese, 2) learners realized improvements in Japanese speech skills and communication skills, 3) learners widened their perspectives through being exposed to others' opinions. On the other hand, disadvantages were due to level differences in Japanese skills between learners and difficulty in consensus-building.