Teaching Debate Skills Using Video Modeling: Supporting Urban Adolescents’ Academic Language Development

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Cognition and Literacy Using Digital Technologies (Table 13)

Abstract

Many urban students from socio-economically disadvantaged households require additional support to develop academic language skills that are critical for their success in school. Technology-enhanced instruction has potential to help students develop expository and persuasive skills. This article reports on a 5-week intervention study that integrates video modeling of debate with whole classroom discussion to support adolescents’ learning of these skills. This exploratory study with a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design was conducted in an urban middle school in the U.S. The results indicated that video modeling was effective in significantly decreasing students’ low-dialogic talk and incrementally increasing their high-dialogic talk associated with advanced academic language skills. Pedagogical suggestions are made for future interventions using video modeling.

Authors

• Jia Li, Ontario Tech University

• Shireen Al-Adeimi, Michigan State University

• Catherine E. Snow, Harvard University