USING DEBATE ACTIVITIES TO DEVELOP INDONESIAN HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ’ SPEAKING SKILLS

This research explores the use of debate activities which are implemented in an Indonesian high school. The aim of this research was to find out students’ perception on the use of debate activities in improving students’ speaking skills. The participants of this research were eight students participating in a debate extracurricular club in a public school. It was a descriptive-qualitative research. The data were collected through observations, questionnaires, and interviews. There were three observations in the debate activities. After that, the researchers distributed the questionnaires to the students. Interviews were conducted with eight students. The research result showed that debate activities enriched students’ vocabulary, improved students’ confidence, and helped students to become better public speakers.


Introduction
A new global trend is taking place and people, especially the young generation has to adjust to the new trends.Zarefsky (1996) explained that society undergoes a shift in the economy from "dominance by the manufacture to dominance by information" (p.5).Consequently, good communication skills play a critical role.The future or at least today, young people face greater competitive pressures in numerous aspects of life, for example, in college, communities, or workplaces, where they are required to have good communication skills.The most obvious example is that today's world obtaining employment is not at all easy, therefore only those who are well-equipped and multi-skilled will be able to remain competitive.Zarefsky (1996) further explained that today, employers and career counselors consider communication skills to be important in placing employees in a particular position, and this applies in any field of work (p.5).Grice and Skinner (1995) explained that the important factors for college graduates in getting a job are oral communication and listening skills.Consequently, the young generation should equip themselves with various skills, including oral communication so that in the future, they will stand out as applicants for a job because of their outstanding communication abilities.It is reaffirmed by Treece (1978) that success in career, no matter in what occupation, position, or organization will rely heavily on the ability to effectively communicate and this is possibly exceeding the necessity of any other skills (p.4).Grice and Skinner (1995) stated that there are three benefits of studying public speaking.Firstly, public speaking provides personal benefits such as helping people succeed in college, becoming more informed, and gaining self-confidence as well as self-esteem.Secondly, public speaking gives professional advantages such as enhancing the chances to obtain employment and helping people build a successful career.Finally, public speaking provides public benefits by helping people interact with each other so that they can play their roles in the society (p.2-5).Jerry Seinfield stated that even though possessing public speaking skills is undoubtedly beneficial, there are a great number of people who feel insecure or even terrified when they have to speak in public (as cited in Grice and Skinner, 1995, p. 35).
Debate can develop students' public speaking skills.It gives students opportunity to expand debating skills, such as English proficiency, logical and critical thinking, public speaking, and ability to formulate, present, and defend arguments (Freely, 1969, p. 30).Since competitive debating aims to convince the judges that a certain team's argument is better, it gives the opportunity to use analytical, critical thinking and public speaking skills which are useful in daily life.
The debate extracurricular has been carried out for some years in some schools in Indonesia.Therefore, the students experienced the debate activities and they have formed a perception of the activities.This research is concerned with the students' perception of the implementation of debate activities in improving speaking skills.The research question is presented as: How do debate activities improve students' speaking skills?

Speaking
Goh and Burns (2012) state that "speaking is a combinatorial skill" (p.13).It requires the ability to fulfill the various communicative demands through the efficient use of the spoken language.Second language speaking requires knowledge of the target language as a system of making meaning and an awareness of the contextual demands of speaking.It also calls for the use of various skills of using speech effectively and appropriately, according to the different communicative purposes.Goh and Burns (2012) indicate speaking skills include the ability to use a range of strategies to composite for gaps in knowledge and ineffective speaking skills (p.67).
According to Harmer (2002) "If students want to be able to speak fluently in English, they need to be able to pronounce phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation pattern and speak in connected speech" (p.343).
Sometimes, the speakers from different first languages have problems with different sounds.In this part, teachers must facilitate the students by showing the right pronunciation through demonstration and explanation.
It is abstruse for students to recognize rising and falling tones patterns.In this part, teachers should give students opportunities to recognize such moods on an audio tract.Then, get the students to imitate the way the mood is articulated.According to Harmer (2002) "fluency is also helped by having students say phrase and sentences as quickly as possible, starting slowly and then speeding up" (p.343).
Some important points in public speaking are understanding the topic and ability to develop the content.A speaker must know the topic they talk about, as Grice and Skinner (1995) suggest, "A primary, vital requirement for preparing any speech is to know exactly what to do" (p.16).A speaker can do kind of a small research to have a deeper understanding of the topic.Nicholls (1999) states that research sources are divided into primary and secondary sources (p.50).Primary sources are the people with whom the researchers have direct contact, by letter, telephone, or face-to-face.Secondary sources are almost always written, such as books, reports, journals, or newspaper.
After knowing the topic, a speaker can decide the number of main ideas that will be covered.A Speaker should know the audience's needs and wants so that the speech can attract the audience's attention.However, a speaker needs to limit the ideas and check to make sure that the ideas are relevant to the main topic.According to Nicholls (1999), a speaker can start by writing an outline to generate the ideas (p.66).The speaker can use the brainstorming or mind-mapping methods, then the speaker will learn to think in a more creative way and ideas will flow.Nicholls (1999) recommended five steps to develop the speech content.
"First, write a rough draft.Second, refine the draft, adding illustrations and changing words.Third, rewrite the speech into spoken English, shortening sentences and changing words.Fourth, rehearse the speech aloud.Fifth, make alterations in order to fit the time slot" (p.66).
A speaker cannot deliver a speech which does not have supporting materials.Effective supporting materials help the speaker to prove their statements to the audience.A speaker cannot deliver a speech do not have supporting materials.Grice and Skinner (1995) note that a speaker uses supporting materials to get three purposes: clarity, vividness, and credibility (p.154).Clarity refers to the accuracy of the messages.The audience should get the right messages.Then, vividness is to help the audience remember the key ideas in the speech, as Grice & Skinner (1995) suggest "Vivid supporting materials are striking, graphic, intense, and memorable" (p.156).Based on Cambridge dictionary, credibility is the fact that someone can be believed or trusted.In this content, credibility refers to be believability of a speaker and their sources.Freely (1969) points out that debate encourages effective speech composition and delivery (p.35).Freely (1969) also claims that debate is an ideal arena for students to develop coping mechanisms allowing them to manage their speech anxiety (p.35).According to Quinn (2005), by joining a debate event, the students will have opportunities to know others and gain insights (p.23).The students can speak up and argue with others in public through debate.

Debate
Debate is well known as arguing ideas between two opposite sides.In school environment, debate is known as one of English competitions is held by many institutions.Debate consists of argument for and against a given proportion.Debate helps students to defend their opinion and express their feeling, so it is a good practice to speak English fluently.
According to Quinn (2005), debating gives the chance to meet new people and new ideas (p.23).Debate gives opportunities the students to stand up and argue with someone in public.Debate facilitates the students to discuss their ideas and try to defend their opinion to others.Also, debate has interaction role in each practice.That fact shows debate improves students' attitude in public.
Based on definitions above, the researchers summarize that debate is a communicative interaction that involves different perspective and builds critical strong arguments.Debate facilitates the students to enrich their vocabularies through comprehending the issue and how the way they defend their perspectives.Also, students have to speak up their ideas fluently and grammatically correct.Those definitions and facts above proved that debate is a good strategy to improve speaking skills.Freely (1969) points out that debate composes arguments which are favor and against a particular statement (p.169).Debates are categorized: substantive and educational debates.Substantive debate is aimed to establish facts, values, or policy and the debaters usually have interesting on the topic.Meanwhile, an educational debate is held to give educational opportunity for students.According to Kennedy (2007), debate is an instructional strategy enhances learning particularly, in areas of mastering in content and active engagement, developing critical thinking skills, oral communication skills, oral communication skills, and empathy (p.57).
Mastering in content and active engagement means students have to be actively analyzing and discussing the issue in debate session.They cannot passively absorb whole information.They have to re-think their own thinking then share and discuss with their team.Also, debate is a right place to measure students' responsibility of comprehension for individual and teamwork.Kennedy (2007) points out "developing critical thinking skills means critical thinking skills used in debate are defining the problem, assessing the credibility of sources, identifying and challenging assumptions, recognizing inconsistencies, and prioritizing the relevance" (p.58).
Developing oral communication skills means debate gives many experiences for students to analyze, deliver, and organize speeches quickly and correctly.Oral communication skills can not get by theory but by practice.
Developing empathy means that even when the debaters have different perspectives on an issue, they still listen each other.Through debate, students are able to learn how to be open-minded to see another perspective.This fact proved that students develop empathy by debate.
Parliamentary debate is a debate system that is used in school debate competitions in Indonesia.The debate extracurricular used Asian parliamentary debate for the training activity.This debate system was conducted by two groups, each group has three people.
The rules for all speakers were as follows: • The speaker can speak for 7 minutes

Methodology
The data obtained were presented in the form of a descriptive explanation.According to Fraenkel and Wallen (2015), descriptive research explains things the way they are (p.218).In this study the writers did not have any control over the already existing data.First the writers distributed the questionnaire to debate extracurricular members.The questionnaire was used to obtain necessary information about facts, such as their opinion and thought of a new technique to develop their speaking ability especially the skills related to speaking in a public setting.
This study was conducted in an Indonesian public school.The writers chose debate extracurricular of the school because the debate teams were good and had won many titles from school debate competitions.The participants of this study were members of debate extracurricular club.The research subjects were students participating in the extracurricular debate club because the members had already experienced English debates.
Observation seeks to discover what people think and do by watching them as they express themselves in various situations.Observation used to be popular in educational research because it requires no preparation and no apparatus.There were three observations in this study.First observation observed the instructor and students' condition during the extracurricular activities.Questionnaires were distributed during the meeting.The second and third observations were done to observe the students' improvements.Extensive field notes were made to observe all potentially relevant phenomena (Johnson and Christensen, 2012).The writers analyzed the obvious evidence to produce a core description of the experience.
Questionnaire was distributed and interviews were conducted.The questionnaire consists of three parts.The first part consists of ten close-ended questions.Second part asked students' activities which can improve their English skills.The last part asked them to rate their own English skills.In this study, the interviews were used to obtain further information from the participants in giving the answers in the questionnaire.

Findings
In the first observation, the researchers distributed questionnaires to eight members of extracurricular debate club.The questionnaire contained 10 close-ended questions.The questionnaire helped the researchers to understand the students' perceptions on the use of debate activities in improving their speaking skills.The questionnaires showed that most students displayed a relatively strong relationship between debate and speaking skills.The results of the questionnaire are presented in the table 1.The second part of questionnaire indicated students' opinion on activities which can improve their speaking skills.Students had many ways to improve their speaking skills.Therefore, the researchers prepared activities list which students do in their daily life.The activities there were done the most by students in their daily life to improve their speaking skills were listening to music and watching movies or English TV programs.There were a lot of English songs, movies and TV programs.The students easily found those songs and movies from the Internet.Besides, seven out of eight students liked to read English articles in their free time.Nowadays, they could access news from different news portals via their smartphones.The other activity which was done by the students to improve their speaking skills was speaking English with their friends.This activity helped students a lot because they could practice to speak in English.The last activity was chatting with foreigners via social media that were done by three students.
The third part of questionnaire surveyed the quality of students' speaking skills.The researchers asked the students to rate their speaking skills.However, the researchers not only studied the students' speaking skills quality from the questionnaire result, but also from observations.From this part, the researchers found that most of the students, seven out of eight students, rated their speaking skills as good.
The researchers also conducted interviews with each of the eight members of extracurricular debate club.This method was used to understand information from the students better and to understand the speaking level of each student.It was a free interview therefore the reseachers could assess students' vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar competence.
The researchers observed the debate extracurricular for three times.The researchers made an observation sheet to help the observation process.The observation sheet contained six statements about the debate activities.

Debate Activities and Public Speaking
According to Kennedy (2007), debate gives many experiences for students to analyze, deliver, and organize speeches quickly and correctly (p.43).Five out of eight students checked strongly agree column and three out of eight students checked agree on column in the questionnaire.All of them agreed that debate activities helped them to improve their speaking skills.Besides, the students stated that debate developed the habit for the students to think before speaking.All of the students stated that they made outlines before speaking.In the interviews, students stated that it was impossible to talk in front of the public without an outline.Their statements were in line with Nicholls ' (1990) idea that a speaker should start by writing an outline to generate the ideas before speaking in public (p.66).
Debate also facilitated them to keep abreast with the latest issues.The teacher asked them to read every day.Reading many articles also developed their critical thinking.
According to Kennedy (2007) debate develops critical thinking.They could not absorb the information without reaffirming it.The teacher encouraged the students to discern information from the media, such as news websites, television programs, or social media.According to Grice and Skinner (1994), speakers use supporting materials because of three purposes: clarity, vividness, and credibility (p.154).Students were encouraged to read the news from reliable sources.The students said that trust-worthy information could help them to support their opinion later when they debate.The other reason why they needed to know the world's development was because the topics which were used were parliament topics.
Beside encouraging students to follow the world's development, debate also made the students to study the English materials at home.Five out of eight students studied the debate materials at home.They also read any articles related to the topic, so that they gain new information and perspective about the issue.The students stated that rereading the materials at home were important because they learned the issue better.
All of the members in the extracurricular debate club stated that they made outlines before speaking in public.They wrote their main ideas on their outline to help them speak.After they wrote the main ideas, they stated that they could develop the ideas while speaking.
The debate members developed the four-step sequence proposed by Grice and Skinner (1994) which included signpost, state, support, and summarize.Their main ideas were the signposts.After that they developed their main ideas into statements, so that the audience understand their points.To convince the audience, they supported their statements with some evidence.At the end, they made the summary to conclude their speech.

Debate Activities and Vocabulary Enricment
All of the students agreed that debate activities helped them to enrich English vocabulary items.Two students strongly agree and six agree that their vocabulary increased.Lepper (1988) indicates that "teachers could help students develop their speaking ability by making them aware of the scripts from different situations so that they can predict what they will hear and what they will need to say in response" (p.13).The debate activities helped students to express their ideas in English more.
In an act of communication, the students are influenced by their environment.It is proved by the members of extracurricular debate club.The students believed that if they talked to each other in English, they could enrich their vocabulary items, fix their pronunciation, and reduce the pauses when talking.They believed that their community supported them to improve their speaking skills.The feedback from their peers and teachers was also valuable to improve their speaking skills.Peer and teacher feedback was always positive so it encouraged the students to further improve their speaking skills.

Debate Activities and Students' Confidence
Most research participants stated that debate activities boosted their confidence.One student stated that debate activities did not promote confidence.During the debate activity preparations the teacher helped students to develop various strategies to deal with different communication situations that they may encounter outside of the classroom.
Speaking is a combinatorial skill (Goh and Burns, 2012).To be able to speak clearly, students should have enough vocabulary, be fluent, and master grammar.They also needed to be able to pronounce phonemes correctly, use appropriate stress and intonation pattern and speak in connected speech (Hammer (2002).Therefore, the teacher trained the students to improve the above mentioned components.Most students stated that the preparation and debate activities helped them improve their pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.However, there was one student who stated that the activities did not improve his or her pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary.

Conclusion
Most of the research participants stated that debate activities helped them to become better public speakers, enriched their vocabulary, and boosted their confidence.Debate activities encouraged them to read more information related to the topics of the debate.They also stated that having more information boosted their confidence.Reading different articles with various topics had also helped them to build their vocabulary knowledge.Teachers' and peers' feedback has helped them to have better pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary knowledge and skills.This study is limited on observing the students' debate activities.Therefore, the writers expect that the future writers will implement and design this teaching technique and observe the results so that any strengths and weaknesses can be identified.
• The speaker can accept Points of Information between the 1st and 6th minute • The speaker can present rebuttals, examples and new analysis • The speaker can make new arguments (except Whips -Government Whip and Opposition Whip) The rules for Opposition Reply, Government Reply: • The speaker can speak for 4 minutes • The speaker cannot accept Points of Information • The speaker cannot make new arguments, rebuttals, examples or analysis.He or she must only compare and analyze things that have already been said in the debate.

Table 1 .
Students' Perceptions on Debate