Critical pedagogy-based communicative language teaching lesson on English discussion skills for tenth grade students at Benjalakpittaya school, Si Sa Ket province

Critical pedagogy ideas are in line with communicative language teaching (CLT) principles in that both help inhibit dominance in education and empower individuals’ role in their own learning. The present study applied critical pedagogy and CLT ideas to enhance English discussion skill learning for eight tenth grade students at Benjalakpittaya School, Si Sa Ket Province. With reference to the critical pedagogy ideas of voicing oneself, respecting others, and empower others, the CLT lessons were developed to help students learn discussion skills in English and develop democratic practice of equal and fair participation at the same time. A quantitative method was used. A pretest and a posttest were applied with rubrics to measure the students’ discussion skills: fluency, accuracy, and contents. Moreover, different kinds of target language functions and turn taking and giving behaviors were counted. It was found that generally students performed better in all aspects of the discussion skills in the posttest than in the pretest, with the fast learners improving the most, and all participants demonstrated a good democratic participation during the discussion.