2 Introduction
Joining the English Debating Society since my first year in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University gives me a lot of improvements in learning English. Among some of the things I learned were constructing an opinion for or against an argument (reason why I agree or disagree toward a topic), defending and arguing the argument and supporting it with logical explanation. Bell (1982) also states that preparing for a debate activity requires students to use library resources, take notes, define terms, formulate arguments and rebuttals, and develop critical thinking skills. Broda-Bahm, Kempf, Driscoll (2004) said that critical thinking is seen as one of the most salient benefits of joining a debate. It implies that the learners can significantly improve their critical thinking by participating in a debate activity.
In the debate activity, there are two positions or “benches”; affirmative or proposition and negative or opposition team. The job of the affirmative team is to defend the arguments, while the negative team against the arguments of the affirmative team or vice versa. In this study, I would use the term “unpredicted” or “unexpected” arguments interchangeably to mean the arguments brought by the opposition team that are not consciously pre-planned by either affirmative or negative team.
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competitions in both regional and national level. From that, I experienced mixed feelings of good - bad, boring - interesting, happy - sad in the competitions. I learned how to compete with other universities and won the debate.
[image:2.596.69.554.163.742.2]The hardest experience in the debate is when I had to deal with an unpredicted argument that would be brought by the opponent team. The table below illustrates which arguments could be predicted or not before the debate:
Table 1. Example of Jargons of the debate Jargons Debate
Motion This House Believes That Endorse programs protection with patent instead of copyright
Position Opposition (Me)
Case programs protection should endorse patent instead of copyright Expected
argument(s) of Proposition
- Proves that patent is better instead of copyright for programs protection with says the benefits of patent (Benefit for economic field, society and creator)
- Gives the harm of copyright for programs
Argument(s) of Opposition
- Gives harm of patent protection
- Gives benefits of copyright protection
Unexpected argument(s) of Proposition
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The last column shows that there was one argument which I did not predict and unfortunately appeared in the debate. Basically, argument is a part of case. Case is big argument which can be supported by several arguments.
Because of my experience above, I would like to conduct the study to counter argue the unexpected arguments in debate activity. In particular, the study aims to explore the students‟ strategies in overcoming the unexpected argument
brought by the opponent team. In every practice and compet ition, I always predicted what the opponent‟s case and sometimes my predictions was different with the opponent‟s case and I have to think fast how to defend the case with my
logical arguments, background knowledge (schema), or even my past educational experiences.
Because of my difficulty in overcoming the unexpected argument, I am curious whether others use similar strategies in dealing with unexpected arguments or not. The Public Speaking course is chosen because this is the only course which includes debate activity. Also, in a speaking class, to my knowledge, there is no material teaching the strategies to deal with unexpected argument. I was also struggling to figure out strategies to deal unexpected argument in the debate. I hope the findings of the study will give benefit for the teacher, course designer and also the students.
Theoretical Frame work
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paper, there are three strategies how to deal with the unexpected argument in the debate activity namely metacognitive, schema theory, and socio-cultural strategies.
O‟Malley and Chamot (1990) states that metacognitive strategies involve thinking about learning process, planning for learning, and monitoring the learning task. It is often referred to “thinking about thinking” (Sternberg, 1986). By using metacognitive strategy, students will be able to process the argument of the debate, identify the problem and think with their logical thinking as people general thought. Metacognitive strategy also involves the ability to correct errors and analyze the effectiveness of the learning strategies students have used (Ridley, Schutz, Glanz & Weinstein, 1992). Thus, metacognitive is one important strategies in the debate because it can help students to think logically toward a particular motion. Students may use their logical thinking when they are facing the unexpected arguments. Also, they can refer to cause and effect based on the argument brought by the opponent team.
The term socio-cultural generally refers to social and cultural contexts of human activity (for example, Heath 1983; Ochs 1987; Ochs and Schieffelin 1984). As Lantolf (2004, p.30) explains, “socio-cultural is a theory of mind that recognizes the central role that social relationship and culturally constructed artifacts play in organizing uniquely human forms of thinking”. Moreover, “ socio-cultural strategy is focused on the impact of socio-culturally organized and socially meanings on the formation and functioning of mental activity” (Lantolf & Thorne,
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Society) which help students to explore their debate skills. EDS as social club also teach students many strategies to counter the opposing arguments. Therefore, the relationship between human mental functioning and the activities are both many and highly consequential (Lantolf, 2006, p.1).
7 The study
Context of the study
The setting of the study is the English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University (SWCU). It is located in a small town of Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia. The subject of this study is the nine Public Speaking students from Mr. Damian Blow and Miss Fanggila London (pseudonyms) classes in English Department of Satya Wacana Christian University. Only Public Speaking class provides debate activities. Moreover, the debate activity is held as the final assignment of Public Speaking class. English Department hopes ED students will be able to produce critical thinking as well as provide a learning experience for students and increase classroom participations. The students are from second year students which have 16 students per class at the most. Public spe aking class is held once a week and lasts sixteen weeks approximately.
Participants
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Table 2. Detail information of participants Name (pseudonyms) Gender &
Age
Duration of
interview
Date of interview
Betty Female/20 05:33 February, 12th.
2011
Afgan Male/20 05:44 February, 10th.
2011
Tesya Female/20 06:35 March, 15th. 2011
Meysa Female/20 03:34 February, 10th.
2011
Vuad Male/20 04:10 March, 15th. 2011
Narita Female/20 05:03 March, 15th. 2011
Bowi Male/20 03:21 March, 15th. 2011
Jamal Male/20 04:42 March, 15th. 2011
Iva Female/20 04:01 March, 15th. 2011
9 Instruments of Data Collection
I collected the data using a stimulated Recall Interview (Brown & Rodgers, 2002) The stimulated Recall Interview is often used for teaching learning process, but in my study, I believes a stimulated Recall Interview can be used for debate activity. Stimulated Recall Interview is a technique in which the researcher record and transcribes part of a lesson or debate activity and then gets the participants to comment on what was happening at the time activity under study takes place (Brown & Rodgers, 2002;Nunan, 1989). The aim of Stimulated Recall Interview is to remind the participant of the unexpected arguments they faced in the debate activity.
To obtain the unexpected argument for the stimulated recall interviews, each participant of the debate were videotaped with the video camera for the debate activity. Then, I asked them to watch the videotape of the debate and thought aloud regarding their unexpected argument they faced and thought the strategies to overcome the unexpected arguments. Participants were free to stop the video at any time to make more detailed comments. All questions made by me (see appendix 1, interview‟s questions) and it recorded on audiotape which was then transcribed used as a source of data for analysis.
Procedure of data collection
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of the interview (Zacharias, forthcoming). From the interview‟s transcription, I was planning to find the data of students‟ strategies in overcoming the unexpected
arguments. I identified the unexpected argument by students‟ saying of her/his predictions.
I use the transcription to make the data easier to analyze. The transcription was analyzed using content analysis (McKay, 2006). Content analysis is the way to analyze the data by focusing on the contents or themes across the participants. It begins by assigning emerging themes to the participants‟ transcript. Then, the
interview transcript are extracted, classified, and gathered into categories in table 3 (Zacharias, forthcoming).
Data analysis
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Table 3. Emerging themes
Theoretical Framework Substantive or emerging themes
Metacognitive - Logical thinking
- cause and effect
Schema theory - Education
- Cultural history - Experience - Life history
Socio-cultural - Developing opposing skills
- The system of debate
12 Findings and Discussion
From the three strategies, metacognitive, schema theory and socio-cultural I have discussed in the theoretical framework, the nine participants only used two strategies namely schema theory and socio-cultural.
Schema Theory
As already mentioned, schema theory is a strategy how students organize and store information in their brains, stimulate and arrange this information when there are key words (Savage, 1998). Out of nine participants, five students stated that the strategy they used to overcome the unexpected argument is schema theory. In what follows, I will discuss students‟ strategies in using schema theories, drawn from three aspects: previous education, experience, and cultural history.
Previous education
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“Biasanya pake pelajaran IPS waktu SMA kelas 1. Pelajaran geografi
kalau gak salah. Kalau Kirgistan dan Uzbekstan memang dua Negara yang
berbeda, kan di petanya ada, mengklarifikasi kalau Kirgistan dan
Uzbekstan adalah dua ethnic yang berbeda Negara bukan seperti Jawa dan
Sumatra dalam satu Negara. (Meysa, a pseudonym, February 10th, 2011)”
“Commonly I use my knowledge in IPS (literally translated as “social subject”) in the first grade of senior high school. If I am not mistaken it is in the geographic lesson. Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan are different countries because it is in map. And then I clarify that Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan have two different ethnicities and they are not like Java and Sumatra lay in one country. (Meysa, a pseudonym, February 10th, 2011, my translation)”
From Meysa‟s excerpt above, it can be seen that the way she overcame the unexpected argument is by drawing from the social subject or “IPS” from her senior high school, particularly the geographic lesson. The way she attacked the case of the proposition team was from her previous educational background which taught her that Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan were different countries and thus, had different ethnicities.
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never predicted. In order to deal with the unexpected argument, she drew from her previous education:
“Pengetahuan umum tentang hubungan antar negara itu aku dapet salah
satunya dari pelajaran MKU, terutama hubungan negara pada umumnya.
misalnya satu negara itu gimana sih hubungannya dengan Negara lain saat
ada konflik. Kemarin waktu di MKU (Mata Kuliah Umum)
Kewarganegaraan, aku masih dijelasin tentang hak warga Negara,
misalnya aku terancam di negaraku, aku bisa minta suak a ke Negara lain.
Nah aku hubungin ke konflik di Kirgizstan sama Uzbekistan dari MKU yang
aku dapat gimana kemudian warga negara nasibnya. (Tesya, a pseudonym,
February 15th, 2011).”
“I got a general knowledge about international relationship from MKU (literally translated as “general course”), especially countries relationship in
general. For example, how a country have a relationship with other country when there is a conflict. In my general course, Citizenship, I learnt about the right of citizen. One example is if I was threatened in my country, I could ask for asylum to other country. So, I am trying to link the conflict in Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan with the lesson in general course on how the condition of their citizen. (Tesya, a pseudonym, February 15th, 2011, my translation).”
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when there was a conflict. In attacking the unexpected argument of the proposition team, Tesya put forward an argument from her previous education.
From Meysa and Tesya‟s data, it can be seen that drawing from previous
education supports earlier findings as Cook (1989) mentioned of schema theory. This finding suggests that the mind, stimulated by key words or phrases in the text or by the context, activates a knowledge schema (Cook, 1989:69). The key words of the unexpected arguments at the case of open-borders policy of countries, “Kirgizstan and Uzbekistan”, stimulate Meysa and Tesya knowledge to go back to their previous education where they learnt about both countries. By using preexisting schema theory, they might overcome the unexpected case by developing and relating their past education with the case of the debate. Because the debate forces students to know many topics and think fast, the students may rely on preexisting schemata to provide relevant arguments.
Own Experience
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dealing with the unexpected argument, he drawn from his own experience as noted below:
“Saya kebetulan sekali mempunyai pengalaman pribadi bahwa sewaktu
saya masih kecil, teman-teman saya dan saya tidak tau apa itu rating di
televisi sehingga tentu saja saya tetap menontonnya karena saya tidak
tau lambang rating itu yang tertera di televisi. (Ben, a pseudonym,
March 15th, 2011).”
“Fortunately, I had experience when was a kid, my friends and I did not know what was ratings in television so that I watched all the programs in television. I did not understand the rating‟ symbol on the right side of
television programs directing the age of viewers in television. (Ben, a pseudonym, March 15th, 2011, my translation).”
From Ben‟s comments, his strategy in dealing with the unexpected argument was by drawing from his own experience. Ben‟s data showed how symbol of ratings had no meaning in his childhood. When Ben was a child, he did not understand the purpose of ratings in television even pay attention to the symbol.
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Similar to Ben, he tried to rebut the proposition team‟ argument by using his
own experience as noted below:
Saya pernah membuktikan sendiri bahwa ternyata di televisi selama 24
jam itu lebih cenderung memberikan banyak contoh-contoh yang buruk
dari misalnya iklan-iklan rokok, sinetron-sinetron yang berisikan
konten-konten kekerasan dan pelecehan-pelecehan (Vuad, a pseudonym, March
15th. 2011).
I have proved that watching television for twenty- four hours might tend to give bad examples, for instance: cigarette advertisements, sinetron that contain harassment and violence. (Vuad, a pseudonym, March 15th. 2011, my translation).
From Vuad‟s explanation, it shows that his experience of watching television all
day long gives bad examples such as violence from cigarette advertisements and sinetron programs. Reflecting on his experience, he argued against the unexpected argument by saying that television was not good for viewers because there were violence and harassment both from programs and advertisement.
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do socialization with others. To attack the unexpected argument, Jamal drew from his experience as noted below:
“Saya pernah mengalami, waktu itu kecanduan nonton tv sampe nonton
film apa gimana juga gitu dan ya sempet lupa berinteraksi sama orang di
sekitar gituh. (Jamal, a pseudonym, March 15th. 2011).”
“I ever had experience, at that time, I addicted to watching television. I
watched a lot of programs in television. As a result, I forgot to socialize with others. (Jamal, a pseudonym, March 15th. 2011).”
Based on Jamal‟s explanation, he used the same strategy as Ben and Vuad in
dealing with the unexpected argument. Using his own experience in watching television, he had no time to socialize with people. Moreover, not being able to socialize made him become an unsociable person at that time.
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“Berdasarkan pengalamanku, kalau lihat iklan gak langsung pingin gitu.
Jadi gak langsung pingin mengkonsumsi itu (iklan) atau langsung pingin
nyoba. (Narita, a pseudonym, March 15th, 2011).”
“Based on my experience, when I see advertisement, I do not directly want it. So, I do not want to consume or directly want to try. (Narita, a pseudonym, March 15th, 2011, my translation).”
From the Narita‟s interview excerpt, it can be seen that the way she attacked the
unexpected argument is by using her experience. Narita believes that advertisements in the television do not cause consumerism. It is proven by her personal experience when she watched advertisement, she did not directly want or try it.
From Ben, Vuad, Jamal and Narita‟s data, it can be seen that drawing from their own experiences support the earlier findings of schema theory (Bartlett, 1932). This finding suggests that schema theory is an active organization of past reactions, or past experience. Their past experience for example Ben‟s childhood that he did not understand about symbol of ratings which brought improper information for him. Similarly, Vuad also stated that television brought bad things from advertisements which show of violence and harassment. Those experiences of the danger of television were activated in their mind and made them argue the unexpected argument brought by the opponent team.
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Out of the nine participants, one participant drew the schema theory strategy from her ethnicity history. When joining a debate in a public speaking class dated November 6th, 2010, Betty was debating against the case “the media should be prevented by law from intruding into the private life of public figures”. At that moment, she belonged to the opposition team, supporting the media of intruding into the private life of public figures. She said, the expected argument from the proposition team was the media would have given bad image toward public figures. Unexpectedly, the argument brought by proposition team was by the bad news of media interference, it would create bad society judgment toward public figures and their ethnicity. In overcoming the unexpected argument, Betty drawn from her ethnicity history below:
“Aku ada pengalaman, aku ada background keturunan Tionghoa. Ketika
aku sebagai orang Tionghoa masuk menjadi suatu minoritas di suatu
komunitas tertentu, otomatis aku harus bersikap layaknya Tionghoa.
Maksudnya berhubung aku minoritas dan aku punya wajah dan mungkin
keturunan Tionghoa, di mana orang-orang pasti melihat aku ini sebagai
orang Tionghoa. Jadi apapun yang nanti aku lakukan bukan cuma aku
personal sebagai Betty, tapi aku sebagai seorang Betty keturunan
Tionghoa udah harus ngejaga sikap. Biar orang-orang ngeliat oo ternyata
orang Tionghoa ga selalu kayak gini ya (pelit contohnya). Jadi kayak aku
punya tuntutan culture di belakang dan ada society control yang akan
membuat aku bersikap lebih baik. (Betty, a pseudonym, December 2nd,
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“I had an experience, as I am a Chinese descendant. Moreover I have a Chinese face which everybody can see clearly that I am a Chinese. Chinese is a minority group in my community, it automatically affects the way I behave as a minority. Whatever I do, it will impact not only me as personal but also me as a Chinese descendant. I have to behave well in order to make people know that other Chinese people do so. I have cultural demand here which also there is society control that makes me better. (Betty, a pseudonym, December 2nd, 2010, my translation).”
The excerpt above shows that Betty used her ethnicity history in order to attack the unexpected argument brought by the opposition team. She reflected her ethnicity history as a Chinese. As a minority group, Betty has to keep her attitude in order to prove to the society that her ethnicity is good. Similar to the case, Betty tried to say by keeping attitude well, public figures viewed her as well as their ethnicity.
From Betty‟s description, it can be seen that drawing from her ethnic
22 Socio-cultural
Out of the nine students, only one student use socio-cultural strategy. Lantolf (2004, p.30) explains that “socio-cultural is a theory of mind that recognizes the central role of social relationship and culturally constructed artifacts play in organizing uniquely human forms of thinking”. In what follow, I will discuss one student‟ strategy in using a socio-cultural strategy.
The use of socio-cultural in the strategy of student in overcoming unexpected argument is stated by Betty, a pseudonym. She participated in an EDS club (English Debating Society) during college years. In that moment, Betty was joining a debate activity in a Public Speaking class dated November 6th, 2010. The case of the debate was about “the media should be prevented by law from intruding into the private life of public figures”. Betty belonged to the opposition team which is against the proposition team argument by supporting role of media from intruding into the private life of public figures. She stated that the expected argument from the proposition team was the media will give a bad image toward public figures. Unexpectedly, the argument brought by the proposition team was by the interference of media for example, spreading inappropriate news into the public figures‟ life, it will create bad society judgment toward public figures and
their ethnicity. To rebut the unexpected argument, she used the following strategy: “Dulu aku sempet ikut EDS (English Debating Society) dan itu cukup ada
beberapa kayak case-case yang udah mulai ngebahas soal society control,
jadi aku juga cukup familiar dengan kata-kata itu di mana dalam case
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jadinya cocok. Mungkin sedikit banyak dari EDS karena kita jadi banyak
pemikiran bahwa setiap ada argumen masuk, kita pasti harus mikir pasti
oppositenya gitu loh jadi dalam kasus ini juga dia ngomong ini kita jadi
kayak mikir kebalikannya untuk nyerang mereka balik. (Betty, a
pseudonym, December 2nd, 2010).”
I used to join EDS (English Debating Society) and there were several cases which discussed about society control where it was quite familiar for me. In the case of public figures, argument about society control could be used. It was because of EDS since we would have many thought when there were arguments, we (students) should think the opposite arguments. So, in this case when they explained about something, we should think the other way around to oppose their case (Betty, a pseudonym, December 2nd 2010, my translation).”
Based on Betty‟s explanation, it can be seen that the way she overcame the
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However, what makes it differ is that the strategy appears by the EDS which is social clubs.
From Betty‟s data, it can be seen that drawing EDS clubs supports earlier findings of socio-cultural (Lantolf, 2006, p.1). This finding suggests that “the relationship between human mental functioning and the activities are both many and highly significant”. The skill that Betty got was from EDS club. EDS club gave her strategy in overcoming the unexpected argument. First of all, it increases the developing of vocabulary or jargon related to the case of the debate. Next is opposing argumentative skills which is when there is an argument, she was forced to think the opposite argument. Therefore, by using a socio-cultural strategy, students may overcome the unexpected argument.
Conclusion and Pedagogical Implications
When I began the study, I was curious about student‟s strategies in
handling with the unexpected arguments in debate activity in public speaking class. Through this study, I have learned their strategies in dealing with unpredicted argument brought by the opponent team. The study found two major strategies how students deal with the unexpected argument. The strategies are schema theory and socio-cultural strategies.
In the following paragraph, I give brief summary of the two major findings in the present study.
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previous education, ethnicity history and own experience (Anderson and Pearson, 1984). By the existence of their schema theory, their thoughts were easily to process and overcome the unexpected argument. The finding of ethnicity history showed that by stimulating the background of student‟ ethnicity, student was able
to argue the unpredicted argument brought by the opponent team.
Since the findings of the study have shown us that students can use their schema theory drawn from ethnicity history, previous education, and own experience, it suggested for the teacher to in include students‟ experiences in
debate preparation before facing the debate activity. It can be debate practices to store the information students have that related to motion of the debate. Teacher can also elaborate students‟ past education or experience in dealing with the
unexpected argument.
The findings of the study also pointed out to the importance of participating a debate clubs. Betty, for example, stated that she used socio-cultural strategy in dealing with the unpredicted argument. She said by her involving in EDS club, she was familiar with many arguments of the several topics in the debate. The quote showed by joining the EDS clubs made her able to overcome the unexpected argument in the term of jargons that she have. What she could learn from EDS club were various. First, she was able to develop vocabulary or “jargons” that related to the debate. Second, she was capable to develop her opposing argumentative skills.
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students meet with the unexpected argument, teacher needs to give more information of dealing with unexpected argument in material for student‟
handbook. Teacher is suggested to make some activities that forcing the students to develop opposing argumentative skills which students have to think the opposite argument of a topic given. Next, teacher need to give the debate‟ material
27 Acknowledgme nt
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