Cover Image

Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom

Soft skills are considered equally essential as hard skills or even more important than hard/technical skills in the 21St century knowledge economy. However, a mismatch exists between graduates' acquired soft skills and the soft skills required by industries. Literature shows the scarcity of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Aclan, Eunice Miguel
Format: Thesis
Language:English
English
Published: 2015
Subjects:
LB1025-1050.75 Teaching (Principles and practice)
Online Access:http://etd.uum.edu.my/5396/
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
id my.uum.etd.5396
record_format eprints
spelling my.uum.etd.53962021-03-18T00:23:38Z http://etd.uum.edu.my/5396/ Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom Aclan, Eunice Miguel LB1025-1050.75 Teaching (Principles and practice) Soft skills are considered equally essential as hard skills or even more important than hard/technical skills in the 21St century knowledge economy. However, a mismatch exists between graduates' acquired soft skills and the soft skills required by industries. Literature shows the scarcity of pedagogical tools to develop soft skills. Thus, this study explored how debate as a pedagogical tool with three stages, i.e. pre-debate, actual debate and post-debate can develop the soft skills prescribed in the Malaysian Soft Skills Development Module (MSSDM). The participants were five debate experts with debating experience and had taught All-Asians Parliamentary Debate for at least two years in the EFL/ESL contexts. A semi-structured one-on-one interview was used for data gathering. To triangulate the debate experts' perspective, a focus group interview was conducted with six classroom debate students from three ASEAN countries. The transcribed data were analysed using data analysis flow model where the data were reduced, sorted out, focused, organized and presented using participants' verbatim words. Template approach was also used to analyse the data. In the findings, the participants described how the pre-debate, the crucial foundation stage to outline the team's case and arguments supported by evidences from research, can develop the soft skills in MSSDM especially teamwork and critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The participants also described how the actual debate, the most challenging stage due to time limit in speech and Point-of-Information, can develop soft skills particularly quick critical thinking and effective communication skills. They also portrayed how the post-debate can develop various soft skills by highlighting lifelong learning and information management and communication skills. From the findings, a debate pedagogical model to teach soft skills was developed. Issues and challenges stakeholders might face if debate is introduced across the EFL/ESL curriculum were also identified by the participants. 2015 Thesis NonPeerReviewed text en /5396/1/s94705.pdf text en /5396/2/s94705_abstract.pdf Aclan, Eunice Miguel (2015) Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom. PhD. thesis, Universiti Utara Malaysia.
institution Universiti Utara Malaysia
building UUM Library
collection Institutional Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
content_provider Universiti Utara Malaysia
content_source UUM Electronic Theses
url_provider http://etd.uum.edu.my/
language English
English
topic LB1025-1050.75 Teaching (Principles and practice)
spellingShingle LB1025-1050.75 Teaching (Principles and practice)
Aclan, Eunice Miguel
Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
description Soft skills are considered equally essential as hard skills or even more important than hard/technical skills in the 21St century knowledge economy. However, a mismatch exists between graduates' acquired soft skills and the soft skills required by industries. Literature shows the scarcity of pedagogical tools to develop soft skills. Thus, this study explored how debate as a pedagogical tool with three stages, i.e. pre-debate, actual debate and post-debate can develop the soft skills prescribed in the Malaysian Soft Skills Development Module (MSSDM). The participants were five debate experts with debating experience and had taught All-Asians Parliamentary Debate for at least two years in the EFL/ESL contexts. A semi-structured one-on-one interview was used for data gathering. To triangulate the debate experts' perspective, a focus group interview was conducted with six classroom debate students from three ASEAN countries. The transcribed data were analysed using data analysis flow model where the data were reduced, sorted out, focused, organized and presented using participants' verbatim words. Template approach was also used to analyse the data. In the findings, the participants described how the pre-debate, the crucial foundation stage to outline the team's case and arguments supported by evidences from research, can develop the soft skills in MSSDM especially teamwork and critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The participants also described how the actual debate, the most challenging stage due to time limit in speech and Point-of-Information, can develop soft skills particularly quick critical thinking and effective communication skills. They also portrayed how the post-debate can develop various soft skills by highlighting lifelong learning and information management and communication skills. From the findings, a debate pedagogical model to teach soft skills was developed. Issues and challenges stakeholders might face if debate is introduced across the EFL/ESL curriculum were also identified by the participants.
format Thesis
author Aclan, Eunice Miguel
author_facet Aclan, Eunice Miguel
author_sort Aclan, Eunice Miguel
title Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
title_short Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
title_full Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
title_fullStr Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
title_full_unstemmed Exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the EFL/ESL classroom
title_sort exploring parliamentary debate as a pedagogical tool to development soft skills in the efl/esl classroom
publishDate 2015
url http://etd.uum.edu.my/5396/
_version_ 1695533674852777984
score 13.211869

Similar Items