Room 112 Charles-Henri Discry: "Productive Doubting: Benefits and Impacts" (HE, TTD)

In our (nearly) post-COVID 19 times, saying that doubting feels very much like a spirit-of-the-age theme is hardly a paraphrase of Hazlitt (1825). It is a slightly uncomfortable but terribly appropriate feeling to come to grips. Our society was confronted with this awkward sensation and the reactions to it were very different. Professor Brian Cox (University of Manchester, The Andrew Marr Show, April 26 2020) may appear as a keynote speaker in this debate when he cited Richard Feynman 1955's Value of Science and added that doubting was a key attitude in science, and that it should be embraced. Some French news channels also highlighted the idea that 'doubting was a good thing'. ‘[...] le savant doute [...]’, if we go by the French translation of one of Aristotle's famous quotes. Linguistics is the science of language and is closely connected to the teaching of languages. Both disciplines are indeed cognate, sitting in a relationship similar to the one translatology has to linguistics. This study is therefore a test case to show that we have a golden opportunity to introduce doubting in the classroom, and to test and implement it in EFL classrooms in a measured and controlled way for the benefits of teachers and students alike.

Bio

Charles-Henri Discry, PhD in Language and Linguistics

I am a passionate teacher! I graduated with a Master’s Degree in teaching from Liège, Belgium (2010) and did a PhD at Aberdeen, Scotland (2013). Since then, I have travelled extensively. My research is in language teaching and historical linguistics.