Invest in what energizes students to learn: Investigating students’ attitude towards debate in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

Debate has noticeably been penetrating our educational practice the last decades. Many studies have revealed many benefits of debate, including sharping up debaters’ critical and analytical thinking, and deepening their understanding of the issues being debated. Debate has also been deemed as an effective pedagogical tool, for critical thinking and for L1 and L2 language development. Its effectiveness has been mainly ascribed to its ability to integrate the four language skills, stimulate learners to be active and engage them in interactive activities that entail working collaboratively to negotiate meaning. In many studies students acclaimed debate as fun and enjoyable. This study investigated the factors that underlie the 44 participants’ (belonging to 2 groups) positive attitude towards debate as an instructional tool in the foreign language classroom. The data collection was triangulated consisting of a questionnaire and interviews. The study has revealed that the factors that positively shape the participants’ favourable attitude towards debate are: active participation, challenge, teamwork, fun, critical thinking, language proficiency and debate vs coursebook. The independent samples t-test showed that both groups extended the same relevance to these factors in shaping their attitudes towards debate with the exception of critical thinking factor. However, the comparison between males and females revealed a number of significant differences.