ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING

How to Develop Students’ Dialogue Skills

A four-step blueprint

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

For a multilingual classroom to thrive as a community, every student must feel safe sharing their views. But, how can they have respectful conversations without first developing the necessary skills?

What skills do students need for respectful conversations?

When two people communicate with each other, we refer to it as dialogue. It goes beyond just talking and discussing. It starts with a willingness to see things through another person’s eyes and ends with a better understanding of a viewpoint that hadn’t been considered before.

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.

~ Andre Maurois

Disagreements invariably stem from ignorance. Will Rogers hit the nail on the head when he said that all of us are ignorant, only about different issues. If we teach our students to accept that:

• they don’t know everything and
• there is always something new to learn,

they will gradually internalise the rationale behind dialogue. From here, we lay the foundation for students’ dialogue skills.

How can we develop students’ dialogue skills?

By incorporating this four-step blueprint into a series of lessons, we can prepare students for respectful communication as well as difficult conversations.

Step 1: Help students understand the difference between dialogue and debate

Most students mistake debate for dialogue. By helping them understand that these are two distinct ways of communicating, we can train them to seek opportunities to build bridges instead of walls.

• Debate is competitive, confrontational and quick. In contrast, dialogue is a collaborative effort to find common ground by tapping into each other’s inventory of knowledge and inherited wisdom.
• Debate is where participants undermine each other’s arguments by using interruption as a tool to confuse each other. On the other hand, dialogue is an opportunity to learn about a new and different perspective by questioning your own assumptions and diving deeper into the other person’s lived experiences.
• Debate is where the opponent searches for loopholes in the exponent’s logic. By contrast, dialogue is where participants are willing to admit the deficit in their knowledge of a subject and seek to offset it by engaging in intelligent and respectful conversations.

Step 2: Train students in the language of dialogue

A dialogue involves:

• explaining your own views and beliefs;
• listening to another person’s views and asking for more information;
• checking you have understood the other person’s views by summarising what you hear;
• agreeing to disagree and showing respect for opposing views.

Practising language specific to each of these situations will give students the confidence to engage in dialogue over a point of contention. It will also equip them for conversations about difficult topics such as religion and politics as they grow older.

Step 3: Remind students about the golden rules of dialogue

Display a poster of the eight golden rules of dialogue in your classroom:

1. Be curious about the other person’s point of view — ask thoughtful, open questions.
2. Speak for yourself by drawing on your own personal experience and expressing your own opinion.
3. Listen to the other person without judging them.
4. Let the other person finish what they have to say — don’t interrupt.
5. Allow time for reflection.
6. Don’t let social status drive a wedge between you — communicate as equals.
7. Speak less, listen more — speak only when you have to answer a question or ask one.
8. Every person is entitled to their own opinion — respect this.

Step 4: Encourage students to participate in dialogue-building exercises

Classroom activities are a good way to help students develop their dialogue skills through consistent practice.

Here, I share two activity ideas from an online course on teaching communication skills. I’ve adapted them for my local teaching context.

Activity #1: Keep the conversation going (pair work)

Level: A2

Duration: 15 minutes

Student A: Wazeera

Student B: Anamta

Topic: Should we avoid communicating in Bengali during English class?

1. Anamta asks open and checking questions to find out about Wazeera’s views on the topic. Anamta then summarises Wazeera’s answers.
2. Wazeera listens to Anamta to check if Anamta understood her correctly. If there’s something Anamta didn’t understand correctly, Wazeera corrects it.
3. The students swap roles and repeat the activity.

Keep the Conversation Going is a dialogue-building exercise that allows students to develop the following skills:

• asking open-ended questions,
• listening for detail,
• hearing the other person’s views while resisting the urge to express their own, and
• hearing an opposing point of view without passing judgement.

Activity #2: Volunteering for a charity (pair work)

Level: B1

Duration: 30 minutes

Student A: Shuhaan

Student B: Zulfikar

Charities in Bangladesh: As-Sunnah Foundation, Jaago Foundation, HEART Bangladesh, Bangladesh Environment and Development Society, Saajida Foundation

1. Before being paired with a classmate, each student must choose a charity he/she would volunteer for.
2. Shuhaan and Zulfikar take turns to ask each other open questions about their preferred charity and why they would volunteer for it.
3. Students should be encouraged to listen to their partner and avoid passing comments about their partner’s choice of charity.
4. The goal for each student is to find out more about their partner’s motivations, not to express their own views and opinions about the charity.

Volunteering for a Charity is another dialogue-building exercise that helps students develop the skill of asking open-ended questions to better understand another person’s choices and motivations.

What should students bear in mind when engaging in dialogue?

Questioning is important in helping us understand the other person’s views on a subject. Assumptions can be inaccurate and often sow the seeds of discord between two people. Asking open-ended and checking questions is an effective way to steer the conversation in a positive direction.

When students (a) understand that dialogue isn’t about winning arguments, (b) practise the language of dialogue, (c) orient themselves with the golden rules of dialogue, and (d) participate in dialogue-building activities in the classroom, they will be ready for difficult conversations and, more importantly, respectful communication.

Note: These takeaways were distilled from an online teacher development course offered by the British Council.