The Effect of Using In-Class Debate as a Teaching Technique on Yemeni English Foreign Language Undergraduate Learners' Speaking Skills

Abstract

EFL learners often experience deficiency in speaking skills. For this reason, debating can help students to overcome their fears, share ideas and improve their English oral skills. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the effect of in-class debate as a teaching technique on EFL university students' speaking skills i.e., fluency and accuracy. It also aimed to identify students' attitudes towards in-class debate and propose a comprehensive module guideline for in-class debate used by teachers and students in EFL university speaking classroom setting. A mixed method approach was employed for collecting data. A pre-test was administered to make sure that the experimental and the control groups were homogenous prior to the treatment, and a post-test was used after the treatment to assess the impact of debate on students' fluency and accuracy. A closed-ended questionnaire and an observation checklist explored the experimental group's attitudes and reactions, respectively, towards in-class debate to collect data for improving and proposing a comprehensive in-class debate module for teaching speaking skills in the EFL university speaking classroom setting. The study results revealed that in-class debate positively affected the participants’ speaking skills. The results showed that the experimental group’s speaking skills, i.e., fluency and accuracy, scores in the posttest were statistically higher than those in the pretest (p<0.001). They also revealed that the fluency and accuracy scores in the posttest were significantly higher in the experimental group than control group (p<0.05). Moreover, a comprehensive module was proposed for teaching in-class debate in the EFL university speaking classroom setting. The study recommends that EFL university teachers should be encouraged to use in-class debate as a technique for teaching speaking skills as it can positively affect students' fluency and accuracy.