USING DEBATE TECHNIQUE TO IMPROVE ENGLISH SPEAKING RESPONSE FOR THE SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION

Abstract

English is a compulsory subject in Vietnam education system. Nevertheless, many Vietnamese students in general and the second-year English major students at Thai Nguyen University of Education in particular have some difficulties in learning English. Especially, in terms of speaking, although students have a large number of vocabularies and good grammatical structures, they cannot express their ideas to respond others’ opinions due to lacking of practicing speaking English regularly and having few opportunities for exercising English with foreigners at school campus. Therefore, the aim of the study is to evaluate the effectiveness of using debate method to help the students improve their speaking response. The participants of this study are 24 students of the second-year English majors. By observing the process of speaking lessons, the researcher found out the current situation of using debate technique in learning speaking, the helpfulness of using debate technique to improve sophomores’ English speaking response. There were two instruments used in the research, such as tests and checklist in order to collect more reliable and valid data for the study. The outcomes of the study will help second–year English majors at TNUE improve their English speaking response effectively as well as other English majors.