Designing Effective Debate-Based Course Activities in aScience, Technology, and Society Course

• Main Authors: Fu-an Li, 李馥安
• Other Authors: Jeng-yih Hsu
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81082531820899862249

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系應用語言學與英語教學碩士班 === 101 === ABSTRACT Course design usually emphasizes the importance of the activity features that could be incorporated into the course in order to bring in positive learning; besides, diversified course activities have to be added in order to improve learners’ proficiency in English listening, speaking, reading, and writing. A Science, Technology, and Society course belongs to required content courses of general education and is also a specific course designed for EFL college students in the research site at a public university in southern Taiwan. This course focuses on not only how students apply their English ability into each course activity but also gives students opportunities in learning different current affairs related to the interaction between human society and technology. Specifically, three research questions were formulated in the present study: (1) What are EFL college students’ overall perceived effectiveness of each debate-based course learning activity in the Science, Technology, and Society course? (2) How effective is each course activity, including group presentation, data searching and collecting, group discussion in class, issue debating and online writing in the Science, Technology, and Society course? and (3) What do I learn, as a researcher, from this Science, Technology, and Society course? In conclusion, the students’ overall perceived effectiveness of the Science, Technology and Society course was very positive, the teacher and the students considered this debate-based course innovative and beneficial. Activities such as group presentation, data searching and collecting, group discussion in class, and issue debating were all approved as highly effective by both students and course teacher. This Science, Technology, and Society course showed that the instructor’s guidance, the arrangements of the course syllabus and both the practicability and the flexibility of the course were necessary components of the course. This study provides some pedagogical implications for teachers who dedicate to implement effective activities in order to improve students’ debating proficiency and fluency in Science, Technology, and Society related debating activities in the future. Key words: Course design，Debate-based course activities， Science, Technology and Society course