The EFL classroom is a place where students develop communicative competence. Often, this is seen, as Cole (1970) reminds us, as "helping the learner approximate the phonetic, morphological, and syntactic patterns of the language by means of pattern practice and similar drills." But there is more. Cole explains that the more is the act of communication. One method used to help students reach this goal is to implement activities that focus on critical thinking such as argumentation. Argumentation is a valuable subskill of critical thinking, but it is one that must be nurtured carefully because, if instituted haphazardly, it has a high potential for failure due to poor classroom management. Kippel (1994) illustrates Cole's discussion model through detailed descriptions of each student grouping. In this paper we will examine Kippel's illustrations and include examples my students have encountered while using them in our classroom.
The EFL classroom is a place where students develop communicative competence. "The main emphasis," as Cole reminds us, "in much foreign language teaching is on helping the learner approximate the phonetic, morphological, and syntactic patterns of the language by means of pattern practice and similar drills." Although this is necessary, it is not sufficient. The key "for the development of communication skills," he explains, "is communication itself." One feature skill we can focus on in pursuit of this goal is argumentation. The goal of argumentation, according to Pugh (1997) "is to be able to use information and arguments from various sources to arrive at one's own position on a topic or issue.
In theory, to the layman, utilizing argumentation seems easy: Produce the subject and monitor the outcome. The process, however, is the most important part and holds the highest propensity for failure. Students are not logical machines. The hope is the students will conduct an exercise in critical thinking, but this is often not the case. Things go awry, and it is the teacher's job to keep things in the right direction by creating an environment that fosters productive argumentation. The first step, according to Ur (1984), is to maintain good classroom management: "On the whole," she tells us, "it is safe to say that a class which is controlled in frontal work will be controlled in groups." But organizing the groups is still an important feature, so the second step is to plan the group work. Cole offers us a classroom dynamics model for this purpose. Kippel further assists us by giving detailed classroom illustrations of Cole's model: Buzz Groups, Hearing, Fishbowl, Network, Onion, Star, Market, Opinion Vote, and Forced Contribution. On the following pages are a list of Kippel's illustrations and examples of activities my students have successfully used with each.
