IMPROVING STUDENTS’ SPEAKING SKILL THROUGH ENGLISH DEBATE ACTIVITY AT SMK NEGERI 1 KOTA BENGKULU

Author : HARUM WIBOWO
NPM : A1B009013

1.    Introduction

Nowadays, debate has widely known all over the world. Many countries have accepted the system and adapted it with their country’s condition. In Indonesia, debate is often used in political fields, such as in a government election. A debate forum displayed on TV which invites some experts in their fields always successfully attracts people’s attention thus making debate has its own ‘fans’.

Debate was then exposed more to the students. This creates a remarkably situation that debate is not only accepted but also developed rapidly among them. When the first time debate was introduced, students still use their native language in the debate but then as the time goes by, debate is run in English or a foreign language. They make debate become a quite prestigious student’s competition, such as in ISDC (Indonesian School Debating Championship) which is for senior high school and NUEDC (National University English Debate Championship) which is for university or college students.

A good debate of course requires fluent speaking and in fact, many debaters that the writer has encountered so far showed such quality on them, such as the students at SMK Negeri 1 Kota Bengkulu. The students always speak confidently and fluently. Indeed, this is exactly the ultimate goal of all English teachers; to enable the students to use English proficiently.

This small research paper will reveal the writer’s findings concerned with the question ‘In what ways do English debate improve students’ speaking skill?’.

2.    Objectives

These are the writer’s objectives in writing this research paper:

·      This research paper is hopefully can be used as a reference in other researches related to this topic which both conducted by the writer in the future research and other people since there are no many similar papers which take the data from Indonesia.

·      Introducing English debate activities which can be useful in teaching speaking skill to anyone who might concern with the issues.

·      Supporting and maybe opposing some existing theories related to English teaching methodology.

3.    Method of Research and Population

The method used in this research is empirical method. The writer took the sample directly from the first grade students who join in Vocational English Club (VEC) at SMK Negeri 1 Bengkulu. The writer takes only the students from the same grade due to their level of speaking ability; I can tell that theirs is relatively poor or average in the first day. All of them do not know English debate at the first time thus becoming a good chance for the writer to monitor them from the very beginning. The sample is distributed into two variants based on their gender; male and female.

The total of the samples are as described in the following table;

Table 1.1 Members

Male	10
Female	10
∑	20

The writer observed all the phenomena occurred during the research in five days with the following schedule;

Table 1.2 Schedule

Meeting	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
Date	October 18, 2011	October 20, 2011	October 22, 2011	October 25, 2011	October 27, 2011

4.    Definition

           4.1. Speaking Skill

Speaking skill is an ability to produce the language verbally or orally. This skill has some sub-skills; speaking fluently, speaking accurately and public speaking, etc. Many authors in their research projects found that the most related and important speaking sub-skill which has to be acquired in debate is public speaking skill. It deals with the way how the speaker speak (manner), how the speaker deliver his arguments (method), and the quality of the presented arguments (matter).

       4.2. English Debate

Even though it seemed not important to define English debate since it has been widely known by people but still the writer thinks that it is necessary to define it and in order to make the case limitation.

English debate, as we have already known or as the name implies, it is a systematic or organized way of arguing or provoking others in English. It has many kinds of form (later on it will be called as parliamentary) based on the origin country where it is developed, such as British parliamentary, American parliamentary, Australian parliamentary, etc. Each of them obviously has different rules and systems.

We of course cannot mix them up together in the training process since it can cause students’ confusion, therefore, the writer will only discuss one kind of debate parliamentary; Australian parliamentary, since it is the most well-known parliamentary among senior high school students.

5.    Discussion

           5.1. Activities

The first day when they came to our English club, we divided them into two groups (affirmative and opposition), next we chose an interesting issue which is familiar for them and gave them some minutes (30-45 minutes) to build their concept in their note book. Nevertheless, I and some of the third grade students who know English debate pretty well, assisted the students in case that they do not know the appropriate expressions, vocabularies or even the arguments to support or oppose the topic. They will ask many questions and often the same one, therefore, we need patience in teaching them and indeed it is an essential part of this teaching method since the nature of language presented in here is that “to acquire the language, one should repeat the process and practice it intensively”.

The last section of the training is obviously debate. We paired a student from a group with another student from another group so we will get the composition of debate; one speaker who supported the topic and one who apposed the topic. Each speaker was required to speak in order; the affirmative speakers will deliver their argument first (no time limit in delivering the speech) and after that either the case brought by the previous speaker will be responded or the speaker delivered his own arguments and so on until each of the speaker has spoken twice. While the students were delivering their arguments, we monitored them from quite a distance as long as we can hear their voices. Remember, the most important part in this section is the trainer should avoid doing much corrections whenever he encountered students’ mistakes (miss-pronunciation, grammar error/mistake, etc). The reason for both acts (refer to keeping a distance and avoiding much correctness) is in order not to create stress while the students were speaking. The students therefore can keep up their spirit and confident in speaking.

The idea presented here might be shocking for those who believe in the theory that the first language skill which has to be exposed to the learners is listening as in many language teaching approaches such as audio-lingual approach but it does not necessarily mean that the writer judge it as a wrong approach. The writer strongly believes that each approach has its own portion and in this case English debate (or should we say ‘English debate method’) can play a bigger role in improving students’ speaking skill. Further explanation about this issue will be discussed in the next part; strength and weaknesses.

As the time goes by to the next day, our guidance is getting stricter. As the students developed their confident we did more correctness promptly to the students and disallow the students to open or even read their notes very often. Nevertheless, we still kept encouraging the students to speak up their mind without any hesitation of being wrong.

The topics that I decided for the training are as the following;

Table 1.3 English Debate Topics

1st Meeting	High school students should wear uniforms
2nd Meeting	Swimming in the ocean is better than swimming in a public pool
3rd Meeting	Smoking should be permitted in public places
4th Meeting	Studying grammar is more important than practicing conversation skills
5th Meeting	The government should pay for post secondary education

        5.2. Strengths

5.2.1.      Raising students’ confident and awareness of self learning

The students obviously feel confident in speaking. This is due to the conversation is not made up such as in role play technique where the students just imitate exactly the same as in the text. When the students reach this level, they become an independent learner. They raise a question and answer it himself.

In addition, it is the nature of human to have a right-self feeling on them. Therefore, while delivering their arguments they really go for it. We never oblige the students to always response the case first but it just their awareness rising which drive them to be brave to do so. Remember that debate is always provoking.

5.2.2.      Giving opportunities to the students to develop their well-being emotional potency

Even though we cannot measure one’s emotional quality precisely but we can tell it by observing the students’ behavior. This point does not necessarily suggested that debate change students to be temperamental but in contrast, debate train them to use their emotional quality in a good way, such as encouraging his other friends to speak up.

By being fluent, the students can speak effectively to his friends thus making the desire to speak and share their ideas about the topic are more frequent.

5.2.3.      Improving students’ fluency rapidly

This one is unquestionable point for the writer who has witness the power of this method. The key is placed on the first point that debate can raise their confident. When a student has no stress in speaking, then all of part of his body will support or even boost the students’ verbal ability. The students will move part of his body (mostly hands and walking a little) freely while they are speaking.

The more students asking the question (even the same one) the more vocabularies they will learn. The vocabularies will help them much to create a sentence effectively.

5.2.4.      Broadening and sharpen their critical thinking ability

Debate can open the window to the new world, the world that the students might have not discovered yet. This can happen due to the topics given to the students are various. They come from different side of life (education, economy, social, culture, etc). In fact 100% of the students who join in our English club always get a good mark from their teacher. Their ability in thinking a logic solution drives them to be sensitive toward a statement especially the one which being said without evidence.

      5.3. Weaknesses

Indeed, this method can improve the students' speaking skill rapidly but only in the fluency field not the accuracy. I still found many miss-pronunciations in students’ speech (the range is 30% of their whole speech). This weakness can be covered by their self awareness to improve their pronunciation themselves. This problem will eventually disappear as the learners improving their ability.

The second major mistake done by the students are grammatical error. The students might have learned many vocabularies, but in order to make a good sentence the students have to know the grammar rule. The mistake usually is on the adjective placement; the students often said ‘a student smart’ instead of ‘a smart student’. Once again, their consciousness rising in self learning will eventually help them to get rid of this problem sooner or later.

6.    Conclusion

Apart from its weaknesses, the strengths of this method contain all the vital things that the students badly need to have in acquiring a language, such as being independent learner, raising confident, sharpen their critical thinking ability, etc. Even though this method bravely opposes a long existed language teaching theory, but it has been positively proved as a successful method to boost up students speaking skill.

Actually, there have been many studies conducted about this issue (outside of Indonesia) and they all show a positive conclusion that the effect of learning debate for improving students' speaking ability is, indeed, unquestionable. This method, furthermore, is a worthy try to be applied in the class room or even taught separately as a subject.

The key is always placed on the students, the higher student's motivation the faster they will acquire the language and debate can help the students to reach this level easily.