Developing Speaking Skills through Debates. Case Study Proposal in Business English

Abstract

This paper tackles the speaking skill, in general, and its role in language teaching and learning, focusing also on various ways of developing it, in particular by the employment of the debate technique EFL/ ESP classes. The theoretical part of the paper further deals with several definitions of the debate technique, with the classification of debates and with the advantages brought by the implementation of debates in EFL/ ESP classes – in particular as far as the enhancement of the learners’ speaking skills is concerned. The practical part of the paper proposes a case study which consists of an experiment that will highlight the benefits of the debate technique when adequately used in the Business English teaching and learning processes.

Keywords

• speaking skills
• debate technique
• business english
• esp teaching
• communication