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Encouraging Critical Thinking in The Classroom

This article looks at encouraging critical thinking in the ELT classroom through the use of the Socratic Method. This method ensures students truly engage with and understand the lesson material.

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Jeremy Walters
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134 views6 pages

Encouraging Critical Thinking in The Classroom

This article looks at encouraging critical thinking in the ELT classroom through the use of the Socratic Method. This method ensures students truly engage with and understand the lesson material.

Uploaded by

Jeremy Walters
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Encouraging Critical Thinking in the Classroom

The use of the Socratic Method in ELT


By Jeremy Wysakowski-Walters BSc, MA
1. Introduction
Teaching as a skill goes back many years, with the first academy being set up by Plato in 387 BC
in Athens1. However, for much of the next two millennia little study was done as to how people
actually learn. In the early twentieth century, John Dewey became famous for theories on
pragmatism2:
() a view that rejected the dualistic epistemology and metaphysics of modern philosophy in favor of a
naturalistic approach that viewed knowledge as arising from an active adaptation of the human organism to
its environment. On this view, inquiry should not be understood as consisting of a mind passively observing
the world and drawing from this ideas that if true correspond to reality, but rather as a process which initiates
with a check or obstacle to successful human action, proceeds to active manipulation of the environment to
test hypotheses, and issues in a re-adaptation of organism to environment that allows once again for human
action to proceed.

Dewey was instrumental in changing the educative process and encouraging the idea that
learning should be an active process placed in a practical context. John Dewey unfortunately
died in 1952, four years before Benjamin Bloom created his famous Taxonomy of Learning
Domains3. In his taxonomy Bloom and his colleagues identified three domains of
educational activities or learning (Bloom, et al. 1956):
Cognitive: mental skills (knowledge)
Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (attitude or self)
Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (skills)

Most famously Bloom created a taxonomy of learning. This broke learning into various
processes: some passive and some active.

See http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Societies/Plato.html
See http://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/
3
See http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
2

Chart 1 Blooms Taxonomy4


Following on from this, the America Educationalist Edgar Dale developed his Cone of
Learning5:

Chart 2 Dales Cone of learning

4
5

See http://www.learningtech.co.nz/blooms-taxonomy/
See http://www.percepsys.com/images/percepsys_simstudio.pdf

From Dales Cone we can see that speaking and doing form the major part of memory retention.
We remember up to 90% of what we say and do. It is well recognised within English Language
Teaching (ELT) that there are different types of learners: visual, auditory,kinesthetic6 etc;
however, often this is not effectively utilised across the whole learning spectrum. As teachers,
we may understand that some of our students respond better to listening exercises whilst others
respond to activities where they have to get up out of their chair and find a partner or piece of
information in the room, yet we often dont employ this across all our lessons.
To summarise the above, a system of ensuring learners employ active learning strategies needs to
be employed where students participate in the learning process as much as the teacher and thus
retain up to 90% of the information.
2. Socratic Method
The Socratic Method, although named after Socrates comes to us through the writings of his
student Plato. Socrates himself didnt believe in writing things down. For him knowledge died
once it hit paper. He believed that dialogue, question and answer, is the only true form of inquiry
and thus learning.
Through rigorous questions he would analyse the very basis of assumptions. This inevitably led
him to undermining the very beliefs of his Athenian society and famously let to his trial and
death.
However, for us, the Socratic Method enables us to allow students to explore and discover
language. Through the guidance of the teacher the students will arrive at an answer with a sense
of achievement. Not only are they employing active learning (as in Dales Cone) but they are
also becoming owners of the learning process with a fully enfranchised role.
2.1 The method in detail
When applied to ELT the Socratic Method involves using opening questions to stimulate thought
about a topic prior to a review of any source material. All supplementary questions should then
aim at guiding the learner towards the correct conclusion. Although the method can be applied to
all language skills I have focused here on developing reading skills.
The method has been successfully employed by myself at King Khalid University, Mahala
Campus, KSA during the academic year 2014-15.

See http://www.learningrx.com/types-of-learning-styles-faq.html

The Socratic Method is made of four key components7:

the text

the question

the leader

the participants

A text should be chosen which is closely connected to the overall goals of the subject, unit, and the
classroom. The starting question to encourage the dialogue should be well-planned, and resemble an
authentic thought-provoking inquiry. The next chief constituent in Socratic instruction is typically the
teacher, who not only guides the discourse, but also takes an active part in it. The most important element is
the participants which are primarily the students but also include the teacher 8.

The teachers role is to facilitate exploration and as such they can take a somewhat backseat role
by allowing statements to lead discussions if pertinent. Whilst doing this however, the teacher
must ensure the lesson remains on topic and reaches its learning goal.
2.2 The Socratic Method in practice
I will focus here on a reading lesson involving the book Medicine published by Oxford
University Press. However, as stated above this method could be used to teach any skill. Through
the use of different types of questions the lesson will start by encouraging free thought on the
subject matter (See Chart 3). The students prior knowledge of the subject material will be drawn
out and thoughts about the topic will be encouraged.
After this a controlled review of the Reading Text will be done. Here vocabulary will be
explored in context and the students own definitions will be sought. Completely new words will
be explained in context and using metaphors. No dictionary definitions will be given as this
prohibits active learning.
Next, a review of the initial thought (?) will be done. Points raised during step one will be
analysed to see if anything has changed in the classs understanding.
The fifth step is an in-depth review of the material. Here understanding is built up from sentence
to paragraph and then paragraph to complete text. This inevitably affects the initial premises held
by the students and a re-evaluation is carried out of their ideas.

See
https://www.academia.edu/545510/Socratic_Method_Dialectic_and_Its_Use_in_Teaching_Culture_in_EFL_Classr
ooms
8
Seehttps://www.academia.edu/545510/Socratic_Method_Dialectic_and_Its_Use_in_Teaching_Culture_in_EFL_Cl
assrooms

Finally, the students produce their own material either in spoken form or written. Paragraph
summaries can be done to check understanding and then new material can be produced to apply
the lessons learn to a new context.

Chart 3 Socratic lesson flow (Own work)


3. Conclusion
The Socratic Method, when applied in the ELT classroom, ensures that student retention of
information is between 70 and 90% in line with the Active Learning section of Dales Cone of
learning.
This and similar methods are crucial in developing a true learning environment where knowledge
production involves reflection.

References and Further Reading


See http://oupeltglobalblog.com/2013/03/07/critical-thinking-in-the-elt-classroom/
See http://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2014/04/teaching-critical-thinking-using-bloomstaxonomy/
See http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/asking-questions
See http://ed.fnal.gov/trc_new/tutorial/taxonomy.html
See http://www.criticalthinking.org/TGS_files/SocraticQuestioning2006.pdf
See http://esol.britishcouncil.org/content/teachers/staff-room/teaching-articles/asking-questions
See http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Societies/Plato.html
See http://www.iep.utm.edu/dewey/
See http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
See http://www.learningtech.co.nz/blooms-taxonomy/
See http://www.percepsys.com/images/percepsys_simstudio.pdf
Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R.
(1956).Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I : The Cognitive Domain. New
York: David McKay Co Inc.

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