The utilization of debate instruction using a learning management system to understand the effects on Turkish EFL learners' L2 speaking anxiety

Speaking has been regarded by many students as the most difficult skill to master yet it is essential for communication and learning a foreign language. Because they cannot prepare their speech beforehand, especially in real-life situations, most language learners are afraid of making mistakes when speaking a foreign language. Although numerous research has attempted to utilize different methods to lower the degree of L2 speaking anxiety, there still has been a heavy emphasis on helping students get past this problem. The researcher of the current study chose debate instruction as one of the efficient methods that can aid students in communicating effectively and encourage them to talk confidently as debating gives students the opportunity to participate in a variety of cognitive and linguistic skills. Therefore, the aim of this study is to understand the effects of debate instruction on Turkish EFL students regarding their speaking anxiety, speaking performance and willingness to communicate. The study has been conducted at a foreign language school of a foundation university in Turkey. 189 students and 5 instructors participated in the study. As for the quantitative part of the study, the Turkish version of Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety questionnaire (T-FLSAQ) has been implemented to students as a pretest and posttest. Additionally, a survey regarding learners' perceptions on the learning management system has been given to students. In order to create the descriptive statistics of the survey results, quantitative data have been analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics 22.0. Qualitative data, on the other hand, have been analyzed by descriptive content analysis. Results of the study show that there is a statistically significant difference between the foreign language speaking anxiety levels before and after the debate instruction. In other words, the participants' foreign language speaking anxiety levels have decreased after the debate instruction. Moreover, the findings show that the use of LMS increases the motivation and satisfaction with the course. In conclusion, researcher of the study suggests the use of debate instruction with the LMS as a medium of teaching in order to lower the level of speaking anxiety of students and to increase their speaking performance as well as their willingness to communicate in English.