Educational Proposals & Implications

Apart from the theoretical and research interest for persuasion at national and international level, persuasion and persuasive discourse has received the concern of teachers and educators in Greece, as a teaching field. Although “Persuasion”

constitutes a thematic area of focus in the third grade (last grade) of the Greek senior high school in the form of familiarizing students with persuasive modes and further recognizing them within a text, persuasive discourse has been promoted in Greek education from the third grade of primary school, in its basic forms.

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In this sub-unit, focus will be stressed on educational proposals for primary and secondary education students so that teachers can raise students’ awareness of and familiarization with persuasive discourse either within the context of foreign language teaching or within a cross-thematic context.

Reflecting on the importance of students’ familiarization with persuasive discourse Persuasive discourse constitutes a demanding and complex field which develops lifelong. It is advisable students be introduced to persuasive writing and speaking in order to be benefitted multi-dimensionally. Among the benefits derived from the students’ engagement in persuasion, the pilot projects designed and implemented by the researcher throughout the whole process of studying literature, researching and writing this thesis, have indicated that through the students’ familiarization and persuasive engagement,

a) they become more effective in their social interaction and communication In educational programs fostering persuasive communication to students of primary education in Greece, (Papadopoulos, 2016) it was shown that they developed communication strategies and they showed more flexibility and readiness in their social interaction with their classmates. More precisely, these pilot projects initiated with the purpose of providing insights into developing communication strategies of Greek primary school students in EFL (English as a Foreign Language). Specifically, they aimed at fostering the use of rationality, credibility and affection when students were engaged in discourse events within different communication circumstances. The modules of these projects were based on themes of Balkan cultures, they were piloted primary education students (11 years old). In the first stage of the projects, students were introduced to each Balkan culture within a multimodal learning environment and they got acquainted with the specific vocabulary. In the main stage, the teacher raised their students’ awareness of the target-communication strategies and they discussed examples of their use. In the last stage, students participated in role-play games with the goal to persuade their classmates in a given situation damaging the addressee’s negative face through the use of their preferred speech acts. For the estimation of the feasibility of these projects, the researcher used

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three research tools a) strategies record protocols for students, b) journals kept by the researcher throughout the intervention and c) satisfaction interviews with students. The results of the projects indicated a significant increase regarding the communication strategies employed by students as well a raise of students’

multicultural awareness while important findings emerged as for the students’

interaction and cooperation throughout the programme.

b) they develop their problem-solving skills and enhance their creativity

According to Papadopoulos and Panteli (2017), strategies of communication are employed by speakers in order to overcome the “problem” of achieving a communicative goal, within this context, persuasive strategies constitute a type of communication strategies that are used to achieve the communicative goal of persuasion, thus, students’ engagement in persuasion places them into a problem-solving situation. Dealing with persuasive discourse entails to engaging students in problem-based activities in which students are urged to achieve a certain goal, to persuade their addressee. In fact, the students are placed into a creative framework where a fostered situation is on the core and a problem arises. Within such a framework of thinking about the ways they can persuade their addresses, students are encouraged to use their imagination in order to find the solutions for the problem, given to them and they are provided with the opportunity to practice and develop their problem-solving skills as well as to enhance their creativity (Gorgiladze, 2005) through their continuous attempt to find ideas and solutions to persuade their addressees. The multidimensional nature of each communicative situation leads students to think about the possible ways they can reach a decision and persuade the other party as regards to the state of affairs or perform an action. Last, the range of persuasive strategies available to the students, gives them an opportunity to experiment different strategies in every situation, which facilitates their flexibility in solving a problem while boosts the creativity.

c) they develop critical thinking skills

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In a recent study of the researcher (Papadopoulos, 2017), it was released that students’ engagement in and familiarization with persuasion and persuasive discourse facilitates students’ critical thinking skills development. More precisely, attempt was made to record skills that students employed to approach texts, produce written discourse with the aim of achieving certain communicative goals and produce spoken discourse with the purpose to influence their classmates. Towards that goal, special record protocols designed by the researcher, were used in order to facilitate the researcher’s investigation while the journal kept after each teaching session was used as a supplementary research tool throughout the research. The qualitative analysis indicated that students that were familiar with persuasive strategies and persuasive communication a) exhibited a more proactive and critical stance within the language class by questioning the information of the texts and focusing on the writers’ attempt to influence them in a particular way and to a specific goal, b) devoted more time to producing written discourse in order to select appropriate strategies that would influence their classmates more effectively and would allow various and alternative perspectives from the part of the readers and c) produced spoken discourse which was interactive and was characterized with flexibility to a very high extend. Last, introducing students to persuasive discourse and practicing persuasion requires from the students a more critical attitude, as they have to focus on selecting appropriate persuasive strategies through which they will achieve their communicative goal, taking the addressee into account, the context the persuasive discourse is activated as well as the potential oppositions.

Developing persuading skills and strategies

Dealing with persuasion within the education context is proposed mainly because of the great range of choices both the teachers and the students have and the benefits they will be provided with. In particular, persuading skills and strategies can be fostered in various ways within the school environment through using the appropriate instruments. Having a long enough experience in designing and implementing educational projects for young and teenaged EFL learners in Greece, the researcher proposes fairytales/stories and game-based activities as the most

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effective tools for fostering a pedagogical framework for the development of persuasive strategies and communication, as they can both used from the preschool education to the secondary or higher education with certain differentiations.

Precisely,

- Stories/Tales: The use of fairytales and stories can serve beneficially towards fostering persuasive discourse. Stories seem to be a valuable tool for EFL learners, as they provide both linguistic and personal benefits to the students in a safe and relaxing environment (Shin, 2006), which decreases their stress and anxiety thus leading to more successful persuasive discourse activation. Through fairytales/stories, the students are provided with the opportunity to exercise their imagination and creativity (Halliwell, 1992), as stories are proved to provide a wide appeal to students who share different learning styles, and different language levels (Griva & Chostelidou, 2012).

They are also effective in gaining and maintaining the students’ interest.

They can “stimulate the students’ creative imagination in a way that they are encouraged to use the language to share their ideas” (Papadopoulos & Griva, 2016). In addition, “listening to stories allows the teacher to introduce or revise new vocabulary items and sentence structures by exposing the students to language in varied, memorable and familiar contexts” (Halliwell, 1992: 7).

Moreover, students can make use of the heroes and the scenes of the stories and be engaged in activities of persuading the other classmates or being persuaded by the other classmates. They can also be urged to propose persuasively changes in the plot, the role of the heroes, the end of the stories which demand critical thinking skills from the part of the students and persuading competences when thinking and proposing these changes to their classmates. As regards to upper levels, students can additionally, write and send virtually emails and letters to the other heroes of the fairytales, recognize persuasive and evaluation elements within the text of the story and/or write their own persuasive stories while the more advanced students

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can read beyond the words and the texts and interpret the lexical choices of the writers.

- Game-based activities: Games are highly motivating and entertaining (Papadopoulos & Griva, 2015), and they can provide even the shy learners an opportunity to express their opinions and feelings (Hansen, 1994). While playing games, students are urged to speak, and communicate, even with limited language repertoires which is of great importance considering the fact that persuading skills and strategies are aimed to be developed from low language level students. Moreover, games help students to practice various language aspects assuming a role, which they may encounter outside the language classroom and draw on whatever resources are available to them (Livingstone, 1983; Richards, 1985), so the teacher’s attention can be placed on the persuasive strategies that they may employ outside the school environment while interacting in real life situations.

There are various games related to the development of persuasive communication that can be implemented in the language classroom. In particular, “The painting of persuasion”, “Building persuasive sentences”,

“The letter of persuasion”, “The hot persuasive chair” and the “Persuasive Road” are among the most effective and preferable game-based activities for young and teenaged EFL learners (Papadopoulos, 2017). All of them focus on fostering both persuasive communication among students and language skills, which constitute an integral part of the language classrooms. What should be given special emphasis is that teachers should design and implement game-based activities in accordance with the students’ needs, level and interests in order to maximize the facilitation of fostering persuasive communication. Thus, through games, this complex and demanding task of developing persuasive strategies can be achieved through the students willing engagement within a stress-free environment.

Last, given that Greece has been the host country for immigrant populations for more than the two latest decades, the Greek schools are characterized with a

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continuously increasing number of students with different linguistic and cultural background. In such multicultural classrooms, which include students at different stages of language development both in the L1 and the foreign language, it is of utmost importance to approach them in a variety of ways by teaching them via multiple means in our attempt to foster persuasive communication and raise persuasive strategies in a target language (Papadopoulos & Ypsilandis, 2017). It is necessary to provide rich and meaningful input and to achieve multidimensional representations when students receive and produce language while along with games and stories, a great range of educational material is required, such as flashcards, pictures and objects that may facilitate the activation of persuasive discourse. Therefore, it is our view that the students will feel more activated, their motivation will be enhanced and their interest and willingness to communicate persuasively will increase, while through their engagement in persuasive communicative situation where they need to think about the “other” addressee and produce appropriately persuasive discourse, they are introduced to a process of thinking about the other, respecting alternative perspectives and views and showing flexibility in communication.

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