TEACHING INTEGRATED SKILLS THROUGH DEBATES

The teaching of integrated skills through complex activities like debates, project
works, role plays, stories or games can prove to be quite a challenge sometimes for the
language teacher. It is obvious that the preparations are essential before the activities.
There is an indestructible connection between the four language skills and the debate
activity. It is impossible to organise a debate activity without coming into contact with the
four language skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing.
The concept of ‘integrated skills’ is defined as follows: “the teaching of the
language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking in conjunction with each other as
when a lesson involves activities that relate listening and speaking to reading and writing”.
This means that in everyday life language is rarely used in isolation but in conjunction. Being
able to perform in each of the four skills is not the same as being ‘communicatively
competent’. Students need to be exposed to the four skills simultaneously; this is the
genuine ability to speak a foreign language.
The three most important features of integrated skills are the communicative one,
the simultaneity and the ‘common topic’ feature. It is recommended that the teacher should
look for opportunities to knit skills together, because this is what happens in real life. The
integration of skills is worthwhile because it allows the learner to use the language, not just
practise it.
In our daily lives, we are constantly performing tasks that involve a natural
integration of language skills. Exposure to this type of ‘natural’ skill integration shows
learners that the skills are rarely used in isolation outside the classroom and that they are
not distinct as such, but that there is considerable overlap and similarity between some of
the sub-skills involved. Overall competence in a language will also involve the learners in
effective, combined use of the skills. The motivation level of the learners will increase if the
materials used are authentic and realistic.
There is another distinction which needs to be made here, namely the fact that the
integration of all four skills cannot be made 100% naturally in the classroom, and this is due
to the nature of the situation: it is a controlled environment; the teacher is the initiator and
controller of the activities. The order in which the skills appear and the combination types
that the teacher makes are all pre-planned and therefore they lack ‘suspense’, the
unpredictable character. They can only seem realistic and authentic.
The skill combinations are varied and they can be used in the classroom depending on
the needs of the students. There is oral work which can lead to guided writing. In this case
the starting point is a conversation which will lead to a listening activity and a writing task in
the end. Then, there are reading activities leading to free writing, such as questionnaires,
quizzes, stories, picture analysis.
The techniques to be used in the classroom which integrate all skills are:
Brainstorming can be used as a warm-up activity, a ‘preface’ to any kind of activity,
to any of the four skills. It allows the teacher and the students a lot of freedom in the
classroom. There is no need for much preparation in advance on the part of the teacher.
The students are allowed to say as much as they can about a topic, without being
embarrassed with their own ideas. The teacher’s role is limited to that of the resource
person. Through brainstorming activities students produce relevant vocabulary, make
comments, ask questions, and make associations as freely as they can in a short time. They
are commonly used when teaching techniques are aimed to involve students, to help them
activate their knowledge of the language and to bring in their personal experience. The great
advantage that the brainstorming activities offer is the fact that the students get rid of
the feeling of embarrassment they have at the beginning of the lesson and they become
much more confident during the following stages of the lesson.
Through guided discussions, the teacher can get the students to talk about a topic,
especially to get them to focus on specific aspects of a topic. The students’ thinking is
directed along some predetermined lines. The ideas that they are encouraged to come up
with within the established guidelines are, however, entirely their own. If the teacher has
control over the discussion, this also enables him to help the students beforehand with the
vocabulary and sentence structures that the students need in their discussion when they
express their ideas.
Note-taking is a very useful technique which the students will need in their life and
use almost on a daily basis. People are often put in the position of taking notes, of writing
down the essential information during a telephone conversation, at work, during an everyday
conversation with friends, while listening to the radio or watching TV. As a teaching
technique used in the classroom, with beginner students, it is best if the teacher helps them
with a skeleton outline which the students will work on and expand. More advanced students,
on the other hand, can listen to longer passages and take specific notes while listening. They
can be placed in groups and allowed to work together, and then they can compare their
answers to the other groups’ answers. In the end, the groups check the answers with the
teacher and the whole class
The interviews are a very useful technique especially with new classes or newly
formed classes of students. This technique is a good way for the students and the teacher
to get to know each other better. This activity implies writing questions for the interview,
reading them aloud, listening to other questions and answering them, summarising the
essential information about a person’s life and interests. The students also learn to
synthesize the information and put it into a concise form, and also to neglect unnecessary
information by ignoring it.
Dictations may appear to be a very dull technique at first sight. But there are
numerous ways in which they can be put to use in the language class. The simplest type of
dictation activity is the one in which the teacher reads a passage through once, and then
dictates it slowly, broken down into short segments In a more complex type, the students
receive an incomplete written form of the text to be dictated. The students read it silently,
then the teacher reads aloud a text containing the same information expressed in other
words. Another version of the traditional dictation technique is described below: the text to
be dictated contains useful information which is to be used later on in another activity (for
instance: information about a class trip, a review of examination material for another school
subject, etc.)
Here are several useful activities requiring integrated skills:
Project work activities in the classroom allow the students to become active
participants, assisting in the development of independent and cooperative learning skills.
They are more likely to feel personally involved in the learning process and motivated by the
tangible end product. Project works involve the full range of skills and talents available, as
well as a planning approach for multi-level classrooms. The flexibility of this approach also
provides the teacher with cross-curriculum and language skill integration.
Role-play activities are considered to be among the most effective ways of
integrating language skills in the language classroom. They are flexible activities and can be
tailored to fit the students’ needs.
Simulation activities require students to take part in communication that involves
personal experience and emotions. They are creative, complete units of instruction that
incorporate the traditionally taught material into a simulated environment in the classroom.
They enable the students to go up one level by providing a framework for integrated
language work and by allowing them to be themselves within a defined and controlled setting.
Although they may seem rather imitative, they have two great advantages: they offer
guidance for situations which could be real and motivation for executing the writing tasks.
Story telling is considered a powerful tool in the classroom by many teachers. Telling
stories is a daily activity of which many of us are not even aware. As a learning tool, story
telling can encourage students to explore their unique expressiveness and can heighten their
ability to communicate thoughts and feelings in an articulate and lucid manner. In our fast-
paced, media-driven society, story telling can be a nurturing way to remind children that
their spoken words are powerful, that listening is important, and that clear communication
between people is an art.
Songs and poems, games and problem-solving activities can also be added to the list
of activities requiring integrated skills. They all prove that skill integration is extremely
important and useful at all levels and suitable for students of all ages and interests.
Teaching the language through the development and enforcement of the four language skills
is best to be done through integrating all four skills in complex, entertaining activities. The
students have a lot more to gain in learning a foreign language if they try to learn it in an as
natural a way as possible, that is through combining at least two language skills, if not all of
them.
The debate is an organized form of competitive speaking, an event in which two sides,
or teams, use ‘reasoned discourse’ (A. Vizental, 2007) to argue about a particular subject.
The purpose of each team is to persuade the audience that their arguments are better than
those of the opposing team. Therefore, debates are based on controversial issues that have
pros and cons. The students have to take a position after learning information about it, then
relate their position to others, and defend it with logical, moral and even emotional
arguments. Debating is, therefore, a structured contest of argumentation in which two
opposing teams defend and attack a given opposition.
The reason why this strategy is recommended for classroom practice is to engage
students in a combination of activities that cause them to interact with the curriculum.
Debates force the participants to consider not only the facts of a situation but the
implications as well. Participants think critically and strategically about both their own and
their opponent’s position.
Debates have the following positive features: require students to engage in research,
encourage the development of listening and oratory skills, create an environment where
students must think critically, provide a method for teachers to assess the quality of
learning of the students, provide an opportunity for peer involvement in evaluation.
Debating as an activity is most effectively used with students from middle years on up.
They need to have acquired the basics of the target language, namely vocabulary, grammar
structures and conversational formulas. In this way, through debate activities they can
improve their fluency and also focus on expressing their true feelings on an issue. They will
feel the debate more satisfying and rewarding this way.
Debates may be used as assessment tools or to be the summative activity in course of
study. The evaluation can be done through evidence of research, understanding of
procedures and indication of critical thinking. The teacher can assess six categories. These
are: analysis, reasoning, evidence, organisation, refutation, and delivery. A team may lose the
debate, but still have been very successful in their efforts.
We have pointed out the fact that the debate is a highly complex and challenging
classroom activity. The fact that it needs so many preparations and background research,
and it has so many strict rules to be taken into consideration, only leads to one central idea:
it is a skill-integrating activity. The debate cannot be actually separated from the concept
of integrated skills. Although some may argue that the debate is mainly a speaking classroom
activity – which cannot be denied – there is so much more to it than just a simple speaking
activity. All four skills are developed or enforced. The debate is not limited to the speeches
and questions from the audience. It also implies listening to the speakers, reading materials
before the debate and writing down notes, ideas, arguments, reasons and examples.
In the following lines I will present and demonstrate the link between the four skills and
the debate.
 The debate and the reading skills. In the context of a debate activity, the reading
skills are best to be placed at the beginning of the activity, in the research section.
The more they know about the topic, the better prepared they are to fight back, to
find counter-arguments, and to sustain their points of view. The reading skills also
appear during the debate, when the speakers of both teams read out their speeches.
This is a form of reading followed by speaking, again a skill-integration technique.
 The debate and the listening skills. In association with debates, listening skills can be
developed and enforced at the beginning, during, as well as, at the end of the debate.
They can be introduced through a listening passage, monologue, dialogue, interview on
a cassette/CD. As a while-debating activity, listening is practised while listening to
the students who deliver their speeches or support their beliefs. As a post-debating
activity, listening is practised when the conclusions are drawn, or when an analysis of
the whole activity is made with the whole class.
 The debate and the speaking skills. Since the debate is by definition a speaking
activity, it is pointless to insist on this idea. Still, it would be worthy to mention here
what exactly the speaking itself implies during a debate: the ability to speak in front
of other people, having concise interventions, confidence, and showing mutual respect.
 The debate and the writing skills. The students can be given short written tasks
during any stage of the debate: putting down ideas which will be used later on during
the debate, taking notes of the main points in order to build counter-arguments or
writing opinion essay related to the topic of the debate.
With mixed-abilities classes of students, the teacher may be forced to give the
students different tasks and only a part of the students will actually be involved in the
debate. The others, the more introvert ones, can be given other tasks to do during the
debate, such as: vocabulary or grammar exercises, all related to the topic of the debate. In
the end, they will report to the whole class the results of their group work.
To sum up the matter, the debate used as a classroom technique requires a high
level of thought, but it is effective only when there is quality classroom management in
place. Teachers must be active facilitators, monitoring for appropriate conduct until
students have learned to function within the guidelines of the classroom debate.
There has been hostility and lack of confidence from the teachers who do not give too
much credit and chances of success to the classroom debate. They state that the debate is
suitable only for the advanced students who study English in school for more than two
classes per week.
So, the two major drawbacks of the debates are the high level of formality and the
lack of time. Well, the situation is not quite like this. There are various formats that the
debates can take, the teachers themselves can adapt and simplify the complex debate
formats to shorter and simpler ones. As for the time, the students will always appreciate
such an activity (say, 3-4 times/semester) and perceive it as a well-deserved ‘break’ from
the routine of the course books or of the grammar and vocabulary lessons.
It is worth the effort!

Prof. Laura Pop

Colegiul National GH. SINCAI
BAIA MARE, 07.08.2012