3 Teacher provide a stick or other kinds of things that will be
used in the discussion; 4
Student who is holding the stick have a chance to speak and share his ideas or opinion;
5 After this student has shared his ideas, he passes the stick to
the students next to him; 6
Talking circles can be used with a large group or small groups;
2.2.3 Benefits of Conducting Class Discussion
Brookfield and Preskill 1999 make fifteen benefits of conducting class discussion. They are:
a It helps students explore a diversity of perspectives;
b It increases students awareness of and tolerance for ambiguity
and complexity; c
It helps students recognize and investigate their assumptions; d
It encourages attentive, respectful listening; e
It develops new appreciation for continuing differences; f
It increases intellectual agility; g
It helps students become connected to a topic; h
It shows respect for students voices and experiences; i
It helps students learn the processes and habits of democratic discourse;
j It affirms students as co-creators of knowledge;
k It develops the capacity for the clear communication of ideas
and meaning; l
It develops habits of collaborative learning; m
It increases breadth and makes students more empathetic; n
It helps students develop skills of synthesis and integration; o
It leads to transformation.
Mandal 2004:91 states
2.2.4 Whole Class Discussion in Speaking Class in the Framework of Cooperative Learning
Chapin, et al 2003:139 defines: Whole-class discussion is the talk format that can be used at the
beginning of a lesson to set the stage for what is to come and to clarify the parameters of the instructional task.
Whole-class discussion can also be used during the last third of the lesson as a
forum for students to share what they have discovered and then both summarize and generalize the important ideas.
Whole class discussion must involve all students in one class. All students must have equal right to speak. This creates a new problem in conducting the
discussion itself. For example, if in a class there are 20 students and the teacher wants to conduct a whole class discussion, he needs to think hard to find a good
way of managing 20 students that will speak all at once. If the teacher uses the inappropriate way of conducting class discussion, the discussion will be
ineffective. The class will be so noisy or, on the other hand, some of the students will keep silent because the smart students dominate the discussion.
This case is being the basic reason of finding new ways of conducting class discussion. Conventional class discussion is conducted by dividing students
into some groups and then gives them a topic to be discussed. Teacher gives them some times to discuss about the topic, then find the result, and tell it to the whole
class. In this class discussion, not all of the students are engaged in the discussion itself. In this such a discussion, only the smart students will share the ideas. The
rest will only listen to what he says and simply says
engagement is being the focus of teaching learning process. All students in a group must have equal rights to speak their feelings and ideas. These principles
only can be implemented by using the cooperative learning structures that will be discussed in the next sub-chapter.
2.2.5 Cooperative Learning in Language Learning
