by Ignasia Yuyun
By practising debating in English, you ‘kill two birds with one stone’. It means that you succeed in doing two things at the same time. Why? Through debating practice in English, you can enhance your critical thinking, communicative abilities, and English proficiency at the same time. Double benefits? Absolutely.
English as an international language is absolutely to be mastered by college students. Nowadays, in this globalization era, the communication among the people with different background of countries, languages, and cultures, will run well by using English as communication language. Based on the reality, we realize that the need of enhancing English ability by accommodating those who are enthusiastic in English so that they can actualize their English ability. Therefore, in line with this, some schools and universities in Indonesia recently have been trying hard to facilitate students’ needs in English through debating activities.
Debate is a communication process in which participants argue for and against a given topic. It is considered as something formal, an activity involving two teams of three speakers each, with a set topic and an adjudicator (Quinn, 2005: 1). In academic context (in schools and universities), the debate carried out as a game with rules ("format"), a clear and tight between the two parties, each of which support and oppose a statement. The debate was witnessed by one or several judges appointed to determine the winner of a debate. The winner of the debate is a competitive team that successfully demonstrated the knowledge and ability to debate the better.
Some research findings show that there is a lot of benefits got from debating practice. First, when it is conducted in English, debating opens opportunities to share views on a global basis. Especially in this global era where we, as a nation, will face challenges that greater than ever.
Second, English debating practice is thus to help develop your language skills of efficient listening, convincing public speaking, and debate (argumentation) in relation to extensive reading and follow-up writing. When the two teams are debating, instead of just using speaking skill, at the same time, you are also using your listening skill (because you have to hear all of the detail of the opponent team's argument), and before the debate you are also have to prepare your material of debate, in which when doing so, you often have to search the information related to the topic/motion in the internet or other sources, this activity automatically trains your reading skill too, since you have to search for information that would be relevant to support your argument. After that you will have to write down all of the information and arrange it into the most suitable way that can persuade and can be easily understood by the audience and the adjudicators (judges/juries). So, basically by practicing English debating, you will be facing a situation and condition in which you have to use and have to train all of those English skills (Speaking, Listening, Reading, and Writing) at the same time.
Third, practicing English debating is also a chance to improve such valuable skills as logical thinking, argumentation and critical thinking since debating improves argumentation skill (Freely, 1990; Snowball, 1994; Sather, 1999; Quinn, 2005). You will learn to be a persuasive speaker that can prove your argument. You will acquire the ability to see the lie and to analyze the speech of your opponent. In general, you will be perfect at developing arguments, finding conclusions and presenting you speech persuasively to the audience. Moreover, you will be trained to analyze every national and international issue around the world in a critical way and logical way of thinking (e.g. Politics, social, economics, cultures, law, war, Middle East, global warming, etc). In addition, Altman (2002), in her Business English class at University of Washington, stated that debating practice leads her students through all six categories of thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation) systematically.
Moreover, once you improve your logical thinking, argumentation and critical thinking, this is of course will also change you into a person that more and more aware on every issue (problem/conflict) that happen in the national or international region. Again, you get the fourth benefit from English debating practice. Here, the debating activity stimulates your intellectual capacity to solve various problems that you may encounter in life. By developing your debating aptitude, you also learn to be open-minded while simultaneously being critical in acknowledging a variety of perspectives.
The last but not least, English debating practice also enhances your confidence to speak in front of public since it is considered as a speaking activity that offers profound and lasting benefits for your effective communication. More importantly, practice makes perfect, the often you speak in English, the more you will feel confidence to use it in any occasion, either in a conversation or in a public speaking.
REFERENCES:
Altman, J. (2002). Critical Thinking, Interaction, and Debates. Washington: University of Washington.
Chaffee, J. (2000). Thinking Critically 6th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Fisher, A. (2001). Critical Thinking: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freely, A. J., & Steinberg, D.L. (2009). Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Quinn, S. (2005). Debating. Brisbane: Australian Electronic Publisher.
Snowball, D. (1994). Theory and Practice in Academic Debate. Illinois: Augustana College.
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