Opening and background of the study
interview.
Assalamualaikum
The honorable examiners, good morning. Allow me to introduce
myself my name is Andini Amaylia Putri from English education
program 2016. First thing first, I would like to say thank you for
the opportunities that has been given to me to present my final
assignment with a title “EFL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTION ON
THE USE OF DEBATE IN SPEAKING CLASSROOM”.
Without any further do, I’d like to start the presentation with the
background of this study. Indonesian EFL learners have been
studying English for several years, but when it comes to speaking,
they did not seem to have developed good fluency, they were
passive in speaking especially if the teacher asked them about their
opinion and responding on another’s opinion because they didn’t
know how to deliver their opinion or their arguments. (Desita,
Supardi, & Suhartono, 2017). This all has something to do with
their speaking fluency, speaking fluency is defined as the use of
language quickly and confidently, with limited hesitations and
unnatural pauses. The lack of speaking fluency tends to make
communication unsuccessful because sometimes the recipient does
not understand the message since the interaction is interrupted by a
lot pauses and hesitations.
Additionally, speaking fluency become a goal for EFL language
learner (Yang, 2014). However, Indonesian EFL learners are
mostly still have difficulty in the communicative interaction
(Marzuki, M., Prayogo, J. A., & Wahyudi, A, 2016). The students
were trying to speak but then got stuck in the middle because they
cannot deliver their ideas easily in English; in consequence, they
chose to use their native language to continue delivering their ideas
(Juhana, 2012).
In researcher’s point of view, this is when fluency is needed.
Even when learners having hard time to deliver their ideas while
speaking, they can still speak the sentence with some fluency
(Crowther et al., 2015). However, in developing fluency, there
must be a supporting activity which has some specific feature such
as: the activities should focus on meaning, it should contain
students’ previous activity and should be challenging for students.
By challenging meaning the activity should triggers students’ hard
work, it can be obtained through arranging limited time and
pressure (Nation & Newton, 2009). Those characteristics are exists
in debate. Therefore, applying debate as a technique in enhancing
students’ speaking fluency might help the students in giving
response to another’s’ opinion (Desita et al., 2017)
Debate is an effective pedagogical technique because of the
level of responsibility for learning and active involvement by all
students (Othman, 2013). Thus, it could be one of the ways to help
students in enhancing their speaking fluency. The focus of this
study mainly on the use of debate in enhancing students speaking
fluency and how it is being perceived by the students in speaking
classroom most of the previous studies focused on the
implementation of debate in Senior High School level. In this
study, the researcher chose to further investigate students’
perception toward the use of debate in EFL speaking classroom.
It is important to investigate students’ perceptions in order
to make an improvement in the selected learning method. Thus,
this research is expected to find out university students’
perceptions toward the use of debate and how much it helps their
speaking fluency. After investigating the students’ perceptions, the
adjustment can be made in order to contribute to make an
improvement on students’ speaking ability. This study used survey
method to make a descriptive analysis through questionnaire and
Thus, this study is aimed:
1. To find out how debate being perceived by the students in
enhancing speaking fluency.
2. To find out how debate help students in enhancing
speaking fluency.
Moving on to the research methodology of this study,
Research design
This is a descriptive qualitative study which employs survey and
interview as instrument to collect the data. This study used the
convenience sampling as the source of the data. The data were
presented in the form of descriptive analysis. To commence the
study, the researcher distributed the questionnaire to a speaking
classroom in one university in Bandung.
Site and participants
This study focused on one speaking classroom which had
sixteen students with a same major. This class was chosen because
the students had already experienced English debate when they
were in the fifth semester. The number of respondents for each
instruments (questionnaire and interviews) are different, as for the
questionnaire there are ten respondents meanwhile for the
interview there are five respondents.
Data collection
Due to the global pandemic covid-19, the researcher
could not collect the data directly. Hence, the researcher
distributed the questionnaire to the students by using the Google
form. The questionnaire was adapted from (Wulandari, 2017). It
was distributed in one section, the researcher used ten close-ended
statements in which the students had to choose whether they agree,
strongly agree, disagree and strongly disagree based on their
experience on using debate as a technique, whether it is affecting
their speaking fluency or not. The likert scale was used to measure
respondent’s answers.
As for the interview, the researcher decided to use it as
a second tool to further analyze the respondents’ answers in the
questionnaire to get a clear opinion or information and to avoid
misunderstanding. Furthermore, the researcher obtained the data
from the interview by using voice note. Meanwhile for the
interview the researcher used question list as a guideline to keep
the plot of the interview still on track (it can be seen in the
appendix).
Data analysis
For the questionnaire, the researcher analyzed the data
by checking the respondents’ answer one by one. The researcher
figured out how many students chose the four options (agrees,
strongly agree, disagree and strongly disagree) to illustrate how
debate affecting their speaking fluency. Therefore, the researcher
analyzed the respondents’ answer by using (Wulandari, 2017)
questionnaire formula. Then, the researcher made a description
analysis based on each statement from the questionnaire after
calculating the percentage results.
In addition, the researcher used interview to further
investigate the respondents’ answers from the questionnaire to get
a clear opinion or information of the students’ perception. The
interview consists of nine open-ended questions. The data from the
interview will be analyzed and transcribed to describe the findings.
The researcher used voice note to obtain the data and saving them
in order to make a transcript and using a question list as a guideline
to keep the plot of the interview still on track.
Finding and results
The findings from questionnaire and interview indicated
that students have positive, negative and neutral perception about
the use of debate. This can be seen from the students’ response to
the questionnaire as followed:
Positive perception
These are the questionnaire results of the students’ perception on
the use of debate. By looking at the data results, the researcher can
conclude that the debate could be one of the effective ways to
enhance speaking fluency This is also supported by the results of
the interview in which the respondents said that debate could be
one of the effective ways to enhance speaking fluency. However,
some of them argued that debate is not the only way to enhance
speaking skills, especially fluency. There are many other methods
other than debate, but what makes debate meaningful to them is
through debate they can practice speaking skills in a formal
situation. As one of the student said:
Negative perception
Meanwhile these are the negative perception from the use of
debate in speaking classroom, the respondents said that they felt
nervous, clueless and uninterested because they know nothing
about debate. One respondent mentioned that she just barely knew
that there were so many rules in debate and she did not expect that.
Besides, they also said that they were not good at speaking; this
caused them to learn even harder in order to cope up with others in
debate
Moreover, two respondents stated that the difficulty of practicing
the debate lies in preparing the data and the arguments related to
the topic. Even when the lecturer gave them some times to look for
some supporting data, sometimes, they felt that it is still not
enough.
One of them added the fact that they found it hard to decides the
first, second and third speakers. On the other hand, some students
argued that the main problem is still on their speaking skills as one
of the students claimed
Neutral
The findings from questionnaire and interview indicated that there
is a neutral perception. There are some students who toughts that
they did not have any problem with their speaking ability. Also,
most of them argued that speaking is not the hardest one among the
four main skills of English. This can be seen from the students’
response to the questionnaire as follows
This is also supported by the results of the interview.
There is a respondent who said that after she has experienced the
debate, one thing that changes is not her speaking ability, but her
confidence.
How debate helps enhance speaking fluency
Debate helps the students in expressing their
personal opinion verbally
The majority of the students said they could not
speak fluently due to the lack of opportunity for them to speak
English outside of the class. Sometimes, the students are afraid
if their opinion is not very helpful whenever someone asked
their perspectives regarding to a problem. That is what makes
them even more hesitant to express their opinion. Through
debate, they have the opportunity to practice their speaking
fluency. Especially, in a formal context that needs a proper
preparation because it is different from a casual conversation
which can happen anytime. In debate, the students felt that their
personal opinions are needed. They are required to stand firm to
their opinion regardless of their fear that their opinion is not
going to make any changes. Also, they have to deliver their
opinions out loud in front of others. Those things helped the
students to share their opinion verbally without worrying about
other things but their opinion.
4.2.2 Debate helps students to overcome their anxiety
Some students said they had several problems that
can influenced their speaking fluency, one of them is speaking
anxiety. They are worried about making errors, especially
grammatical errors. Whenever students felt anxious, the things
that they are going to say cannot be accepted well (Agustina,
2019). Actually, anxiety is not a new thing in EFL students’
context, some EFL students are feel extremely anxious because
they found it quite difficult to control their nerves, those facts are
clearly affecting their speaking performance and the outcomes
are very often becomes a mess (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009.
Through debate, some of the students said it helping them to
control their anxiety because there are few practices before the
debate began. At that time, they learnt to deliver their arguments
in front of their team mates which have a good impact for their
anxiety problem. They are getting used to that kind of activity so
when the time has come for them to speak in front of the class as
their team’s representative, they can overcome their anxiety
problem slowly but surely.
4.2.3 Debate improves students’ confidence
other problem that they found whenever they have to speak in
front of other people is the lack of confidence. During the debate
preparation, a change has happened to their confidence. After
several practices with their team mates, they began to felt a sense
of confidence because they can deliver the arguments to their
friends and the responses that they got is quite satisfying. So,
they began to think that it is okay to be confident and just deliver
their arguments, thoughts or ideas in front of others because their
friends won’t judge them even when sometimes they made a
mistakes. Students will gain confident if they are managed to
handle various communication situations that they might
encountered anytime.
4.2.4 Debate makes students prepare speech systematically
The responses from the interview section showed
that debate also helped the students to make an outlines before
speaking. As the fact that speaker could generate their ideas by
start writing an outline (Nicholls, 1990). Some of the students
argued that they need to prepare an accurate data to support
their arguments. They cannot just talk without serving the
evidence towards their arguments. If they are doing that, it
opens a huge chance for the opposite team to attack their team.
Therefore, the students wrote an outline to help them in
delivering their arguments comfortably. They also made some
points to signify the man idea of their arguments. The students
believed that by showing some data to the audience it can make
them agreed on their team’s arguments. With an outline, they
 get a support system to speak fluently in front of others without
any fear.

Conclusion

The main purpose of this study is to find out EFL students’

perception whether debate helps them in enhancing their speaking
fluency or not. This study suggests that debate can be conducted in
a speaking class as an alternative to enhance EFL students’
speaking fluency. This activity offers some benefits such as:
helping the students in expressing their personal opinion verbally,
reducing speaking anxiety, improving confidence and makes
students prepare speech systematically. Besides, having students
debate on certain topic indirectly leads them to improve their
questioning, predicting, analyzing, evaluating and forming
opinions skills, those skills are includes in critical thinking (Fisher,
2005). This is in line with the demand of the 21 st century
education, where students are expected to have critical thinking
skills as well as communication, collaboration, and creativity
(Stauffer, 2020).

Furthermore, the result of this study showed that the

students believed through debate, they can improve their speaking
fluency as the majority of the students shared the same opinion
about this. After experiencing the debate, some students claimed
that it can help them in overcoming their anxiety, nervousness and
the lack of confidence in speaking. Based on students’ perception,
they are agreed with the thoughts that debate can help them in
enhancing their speaking fluency. Even though there are lots of
other methods that might also works to enhance speaking fluency,
they said that debate is one of those methods.

Moreover, debate has taught them to speak with an evidence

to support their argument. They cannot speak anything without a
supporting data to strengthen their arguments. This also teaches
them to become a good speaker who speaks with a strong
foundation. Not a speaker who speaks whatever they want without
considering the responsibility behind every word that they said.