Debate Technique and the Speaking Skill

Abstract

Nowadays the focus of teaching a language is based on communication. Where the students are encouraged to speak as much as possible, stating their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and points of view. Debating allows learners to do all the ideas stated above helping to create a communicative environment. For that reason, the main aim of this research was to study the effectiveness of the debate technique and its impact on the development of the speaking skill. The participants of the current study were 32 students from seventh semester in “Pedagogía de los Idiomas Nacionales y Extranjeros” program at Universidad Técnica de Ambato. The methodology applied in this study was quasi-experimental, and the data was gathered through a pre, and post-test performed by both control and experimental group. The treatment lasted 2 weeks with four sessions in total. At the first stage of the experiment, learners took a pre-test based on the FCE speaking discussion part. Then the experimental group was taught how to debate appropriately by using different grammar, vocabulary, and how to improve their interactive communication. At the end of the treatment, the students took a post-test based on the FCE speaking discussion part. In addition, a survey was applied for analyzing students´ perceptions towards the use of the debate technique. Finally, the data obtained was analyzed through the T-student statistical test. The results showed that the implementation of the debate technique improved students´ speaking skill.