Research on the Application of Group Discussion Approaches in Graduate Courses

Abstract

Language ability is an important part of graduate students' comprehensive accomplishment. It is a basic skill of graduate students to carry out academic activities such as scientific research cooperation and academic communication. Not only in elementary education but also in higher education, teacher-centered teaching is a popular approach in most classrooms in China. As a result, with such a teaching model, graduate students are generally not good at oral communication, lack of communicating skills and strategies. By introducing group discussion approach into postgraduate courses, collecting data through methods of observations, questionnaires and interviews, this study analyzes the attitude of graduate students toward group discussion approaches, and probes into the influence of group discussion teaching methods on postgraduate courses, as well as the concrete harvest of graduate students in terms of language ability. The study found that graduate students have a high degree of recognition for group discussion teaching methods, which enhances their team leadership ability, research cooperation ability, language organization ability, word expression strategy and so on. Therefore, group discussion approaches can be an important supplement to the teaching methods of postgraduate courses.