Exploring Parliamentary Debate as a Pedagogical Tool to Develop English Communication Skills in EFL/ESL Classrooms

To survive in the 21st century workplace, communication skills are extremely important. However, a mismatch between the industry requirement and the university graduates’ competencies in terms of effective communication skills exists. Rote learning and lack of opportunities to practice English communication skills inside and outside the classroom are common issues in EFL/ESL contexts. Thus, this qualitative study was conducted to explore how debate as a pedagogical tool with three stages - pre-debate, actual debate and post-debate - can develop communication skills. The data were gathered through semi-structured one-on-one interview with five debate experts across from ASEAN countries and focus group interview with six ASEAN debate students. The participants of this study described the use of the pre-debate stage for the research and brainstorming tasks that engage the team members with each other, the actual debate for the arguments, POI and rebuttals that actively engage debaters with their opponents, and the post-debate stage that engage all the debaters with the adjudicators, their team-mates and their opponents. This pedagogical aspect focusing on the three stages of debate which has implications for SLA and language teaching was not substantially dealt with in previous studies on debate.