Students’ Gambits and Debate Structure in National University Debating Championship (NUDC) 2018 of West Java

Competence. ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This study aimed to explain the appropriateness of using gambits in students‟ debate competition, the debate structure realized in the students‟ debate competition, the contribution of gambits to the students‟ debate structure, and the ways the students overcome the difficulties of using gambits in the debate competition. To achieve the aims, this study used discourse analysis as the research design. To collect the data, this study used video recorder in observation and interview as the instrument. This study applied Keller and Warner (1988)‟s theory about conversation gambits and Harvey-Smith (2011)‟s theory about debate structure to analyze the data. The subjects in this study were 40 undergraduate students (20 teams) from different universities participating in National University Debating Championship (NUDC) 2018 of West Java. Their debate competition (five exhibitions) were observed, transcribed and analyzed. The objects of the study were the students‟ gambits and debate structure. The findings from observation showed that most of debaters used variety of gambits from opening, linking and responding gambits to deliver their speech appropriately. Most of


INTRODUCTION
Humans are not born with the competency of understanding everything that happens in the world immediately. They need process and time to understand it all. For example, when second/ foreign language learners begin to learn English, they should be able to master four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) and three language elements (vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation) before they understand the new language. By mastering these is one way to achieve communicative competence in order to communicate in English very well.
To achieve communicative competence, English teachers should provide communicative activities to stimulate students speaking English in the classroom. Debate is a very suitable activity. Through debate, learners will know how to make sentence, to state their ideas, and to have the ability to apply their knowledge in giving reason through theories, values, and attitudes (Darby, 2007) fluently in public speaking skills (Al-Mahrooqi and Tabakow, 2015, p. 418). Besides, the learners can also develop their critical thinking through debate because they will think about how to respond others" opinion and state their ideas in a limited time (Herlinda, 2016, p. 6).
However, challenges may happen when implementing debate in the classroom since not many students mastering English grammar and vocabularies. To face this, strategies are needed to help them speak English naturally and fluently in debate activity. These strategies are communication strategies which are strategies that learners use to overcome the difficulties which arise when attempting to produce the language (Maldonado, 2016). According to Celce-Murcia (1995), one communication strategy to face communication difficulties is gambits. Keller and Warner (1988, p. 4) state that a gambit is a word or phrase which helps speakers to express what they are trying to say. For example, we use gambits to introduce a topic of conversation (opening gambits) such as "In my opinion…", I think …", to link what we have to say to what someone has just said (linking gambits) such as "Because of that…", "I mean…", and to respond to what we have heard (responding gambits) such as "That"s right", "I disagree", (Keller & Warner, 1988, p. 4). These gambits are very useful strategies to help L2 learners to express their ideas on the spot, naturally and fluently in debate activities.
Since debate is a kind of discourse in form of spoken text and in Systemic Functional Linguistics "creating a text means creating meanings" (Ghasani, 2017, p. 1), it means that students need discourse competence so that their meanings or arguments in debate delivered successfully toward audience and judge. Besides, they should be able to deliver interpersonal meanings which express their attitudes and judgments (Gerot & Wignell, 1994, p. 13) toward an issue in debate structurally.
Discourse competence refers to the selection, sequencing, and arrangement of words, structures, and utterances to achieve a unified spoken message (Celce-Murcia, 2007). One sub-area that contributes to the discourse competence is generic structure which means "formal schemata that allow the user to identify an oral discourse segment" (Celce-Murcia, 2007). By understanding the generic structure of debate or debate structure, the students will be able to deliver their speech structurally, wellmanage and understandably. According to Harvey-Smith (2011, p. 62), an introduction, rebuttals, arguments and conclusion are structure of debate.
However, based on the previous studies above, they mostly investigate one area, such as debate competition focusing on the use of gambits only. Therefore, we combine the use of gambits with debate structure as the focus of the study. As explained above that both of them are necessary to achieve students" communicative competence. This statement is also supported by Celce-Murcia (1995) who clarifies that various components of communicative competence are interrelated. It indicates that since gambits is a sub-area of strategic competence and debate structure is a sub-area of discourse competence, thus both are interrelated and necessary to achieve communicative competence. This combination can help the students as debaters to make arguments naturally and structurally to deliver interpersonal meanings successfully.
Hence, this study aims to explain the appropriateness of using gambits in students" debate competition, the debate structure realized in the students" debate competition, the contribution of gambits to the students" debate structure, and the ways the students overcome the difficulties of using gambits in the debate competition. Through the investigation, we hope this study can give pedagogical implications for both teachers and students that to speak naturally we need strategy and to speak structurally we need to understand discourse. The combination of mastering strategic and discourse competences can support whoever second/ foreign language learners achieve communicative competence.

METHODS
This study focused on the spoken text. We tried to analyze the use of gambits and debate structure by debaters dealing with interpersonal meanings to achieve communicative competence. Therefore, the data were analyzed qualitatively. In order analyze the debate speech employed by the debaters, we used discourse analysis as research design in this study. McCarthy (1994, p. 5) clearly explains that "discourse analysis is concerned with the study of the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used." Furthermore, we applied conversation gambits theory proposed by Keller and Warner (1988) and debate structure theory suggested by Harvey-Smith (2011) to capture students" judgment towards an issue given in their speech as in debate competition.
According to Cresswell (2012), subject/ object of the study is a subject that the researcher plans to study in the research. In the present study, the subjects were 40 undergraduate students (20 teams) from different universities participating in National University Debating Championship (NUDC) 2018 of West Java. Five debate exhibitions from the competition had been observed, transcribed and analyzed. Meanwhile, the objects that became the focus of the study were the students" gambits and debate structure.
Moreover, Cresswell (2012, p. 14) states that an instrument is a tool for measuring, observing, or documenting the data. It means that research instrument is necessary to help researchers to gather the data. Since we observed debate competition conducted by undergraduate students, we used tape recorder in observation as an instrument to collect the data. In addition, we used interview as well to find out the debaters" difficulties in conducting debate.
Meanwhile, there were five steps to analyze the data, namely transcribing, reading, categorizing, analyzing and triangulation. We used investigator triangulation to make sure that the data were valid and accurate.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this part, we present the results of the study, i.e. the appropriateness of using gambits in students" debate competition, the debate structure realized in the students" debate competition, the contribution of gambits to the students" debate structure, and the ways the students overcome the difficulties of using gambits in the debate competition.

Students' Gambits
After conducting the analysis of the gambits, some findings were found. The summary of the findings of the appropriateness of using the opening gambits (OG), linking gambits (LG) and responding gambits (RG) in students" debates are shown below. Opening Gambits (OG) Keller and Warner (1988, p. 5) state that opening gambit helps us to introduce ideas into the conversation since the beginning of a conversation is usually the most difficult part for most people. Based on table 1, there were found 55 (27%) gambits in the debate 1, 38 (18%) gambits in the debate 2, 53 (20%) gambits in the debate 3, 66 (25%) gambits in the debate 4, and 74 (29%) gambits in the debate 5. There were seven classifications OG found in the study, as the examples below.
(1) Stating Personal Opinion I think that it is a great security err.. to protect the country from the illegal workers.

We believe that the illegal workers is still the company that should take the responsible, responsibility, no matter what. (2) Stating the Main Problem
But the point is they are forbidden to talk with the lecturers about the exploitation of company because they are perceived to be receptive to the education processor, ladies and gentlemen.
( (5) Thinking Ahead If the parents push the children to become better, better, better, their children will improve and then they will have more independent than before.
(6) Correcting Yourself First, yes of course that the national.. I mean, the ASEAN nation is different culture, and also different specific special group.
(7) Taking It for Granted One of the member of government team said that the subject relates to the foreign workers in the country.
In fact, this country, I mean national security isn't good enough.

(8) Demanding Explanation
How can the government manage all of the society?

(9) Taking Things into Consideration
And if there is no freedom given by the parents, rebellion will be happened, they escape from their house.
(10) Countering Arguments Even if they want to learn about political, they will see in another media or in another area, in another chance, Mr. Speaker.
(11) Generalising Most of them are the ones that have higher education and they are jobless. Responding Gambits (RG) Keller and Warner (1988, p. 61) state that responding gambits are used to give respond to other speakers" idea, opinion, argument or view. These are used to give the other speakers some feedback about what they are saying. There were found 20 (10%) gambits in the debate 1, 16 (8%) gambits in the debate 2, 31 (11%) gambits in the debate 3, 15 (5%) gambits in the debate 4, and 10 (4%) gambits in the debate 5. There were six classifications of RG found in the study, as the examples below.
(1) Right or Wrong No, that is wrong.
(2) Crowd Reaction Come on, make it clear!
(3) Agreeing/ Disagreeing I agree.. I agree that this social-credit system should not be implemented in developing country.

I don't think so.
(4) Responding Interpersonally No, ladies and gentlemen.
(6) Accepting a Compliment Thank you so much.
The examples above showed that the debaters used variety of gambits from opening, linking and responding gambits to support them in delivering their speech in form of arguments, rebuttals, reasons, and suggestions in the debate competition. According to Keller and Warner (1988)"s theory, there were some gambits in present analysis that were used appropriately and some which did not. However, mostly the debaters applied them appropriately.

Students' Debate Structure
Talking about debate structure, according to Celce-Murcia (2007, p. 47), structure or generic structure is formal schemata that allow the user to identify an oral discourse segment as a conversation, narrative, interview, debate, etc. This study observed debate competition in university level and it was applied British Parliamentary (BP) as the debate style. In BP style, every speaker needs to make sure they spend a seven-minute speech with the most important aspects of what they have to say either to support their own team or against other team"s arguments. The debate structure of BP in this study was (1) Introduction; (2) Rebuttals; (3) Arguments; and (4) Conclusion.
Based on the analysis, mostly students applied the four steps of debate structure in their speech. However, there were some who did not apply one or two part/s of them.

Debate 1
The motion of debate 1 was "THBT Host Government should take Pro-Worker Approaches on Illegal Foreign Workers (i.e obliging companies to pay back wages and damages v. deporting workers)." THBT is abbreviation for "The House Believe That". It means, while the government side supported the host government to take pro-worker approaches on illegal foreign workers, the opposition side opposed it. In debate 1, most of debaters realized the four steps of debate structure, except Prime Minister (PM) and Government Whip (GW).
In case of PM, the PM did not deliver rebuttals to the opposition team. Rebuttal is the attack to the opposition"s arguments. Rebuttal involves introducing evidence and reasoning to weaken or destroy another"s claim (Freeley & Steinberg, 2009, p. 164). The reason was because the PM was the first speaker in every debate exhibition. That"s why the PM only gave introduction, explained arguments and lastly made conclusion. The PM"s role did not need to carry on rebuttals to attack the opponent since the PM came first to open the debate exhibition.
Meanwhile, Government Whip (GW) is a part of Government team. The GW did not convey the rebuttals to the previous speaker, Member of the Opposition (MO) from Opposition team. However, according to Harvey-Smith (2011, p. 32), GW"s role may introduce new contentions, but it"s not generally recommended, rebut what the MO said and summarize the debate. It means the GW should rebut what the MO had said. Otherwise, the GW did not realize the rebuttals for MO instead.

Debate 2
The motion of debate 2 is "THR the Taming of Tiger Parenting in Asian Countries". THR means "The House Regret". It indicates that the Government side opposed or prevented the taming of tiger parenting in Asian countries, while the Opposition side supported it. In debate 2, all debaters realized the application of four debate structure from introduction, rebuttals, arguments, and conclusion. However, the PM did not realize rebuttals. The same reason came to the PM like in the debate 1 that the PM did not need to convey the rebuttals.

Debate 3
"THS the Implementation of Social-Credit System Developing Nations" is the motion of debate exhibition 3. The word THS is the abbreviation of "The House Should". It indicates that the Government side was the one who supported the motion while the Opposition was the one who opposed it. In debate 3, there were only Prime Minister (PM) with the same reason as debate 1 and 2 who did not realize the rebuttals and Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) who did not realize rebuttals as well.
According to Harvey-Smith (2011, p. 30), the role of DPM is to rebut what Leader of the Opposition (LO) said and continues Opening Government case. DPM may also need to include some "reinforcement" of the case, depending on the job done by PM. Since both PM and DPM are both part of Opening Government (OG), DPM should give fully support PM and attack LO who would attack PM. However here, the DPM did not realize the rebuttals to attack the LO in the very first place.

Debate 4
In debate 4, "THR the Introduction of Practical Politics in Tertiary Education Institutions" is the motion of debate. The abbreviation of THR is same with debate 2, it means "The House Regret". Therefore, the Government side of the house should prevent the introduction of practical politics in tertiary education, while Opposition side of the house should support it. In debate 4, PM and Government Whip (GW) were the only two who did not completely realize the debate structure. While the PM did not realize rebuttals (same reason with debate 1, 2 and 3), the GW did not realize arguments.
As the rule of debate is supporting team by providing arguments and attacking the opponent team with rebuttals, the GW was considered failed because the GW did not realize the arguments. GW"s job may introduce new contentions, but it"s not generally recommended, rebut what the MO said and summarize the debate (Harvey-Smith, 2011, p. 32), Although GW did not need to introduce to the new claim, GW should support his/ her team member, Member of the Government (MG), as a part of Closing Government by providing arguments.
Furthermore, after we analyzed the scripts and categorizing each text into four parts of debate structure, we found that Leader of the Opposition (LO) delivered arguments two times in debate 4. The steps were introductionarguments-rebuttals-arguments-conclusion. According to Harvey-Smith (2011), the best speech should follow the rule. Therefore, although the LO did not break the rule by realizing all the steps, having twice arguments was too much.

Debate 5
In the last but not least debate exhibition, the motion is "THBT ASEAN Member States should Prioritize Regional Digital Divide Closure over Domestic Economic Growth Efforts". It was same with debate 1, THBT means "The House Believe That". Thus, the Government side supported the motion while the Opposition side against it. In debate 5, two debaters did not realize some parts of debate structure, namely PM and GW. The case of the PM was understandable like in debate 1, 2 3, and 4, on the other hand, the GW did not realize introduction and rebuttals.
It was similar case with debate 1 and debate 4 that GW may introduce new contentions, rebut what the MO said and summarize the debate (Harvey-Smith, 2011, p. 32). However, beside the GW did not realize the rebuttals, he/ she also did not apply the introduction to open the speech.
Based on the discussion above, most of debaters followed the rule of British Parliamentary style that there should be four parts in delivering debate, namely introduction, rebuttals, argumentation, and conclusion. Only one or two debaters did not realize one or two part/s of the debate structure. Even though it seems like it was unnecessary to follow the rule as long as the message and intention were fully delivered, but it was necessary for adjudicators as the judge to decide which team who deserves to win. Hence, the debate structure must be systematic and well structured.

Contribution of gambits to the Students' debate structure
The use of gambits in the debate might contribute to the each part of students" debate structure. For example, in making introduction, the debater in debate 1 used "So, the house believe that the host government should take pro-action or pro-approaches for the illegal workers the same as the pro-workers." (PM), and "Ok, before I go to my argumentation, I would like to rebut what this first speaker from the opening government said." (DLO), in order to open their debate speech. Harvey-Smith (2011, p. 62) states that introduction tells audiences where the speakers are going to take them by outlining the case that contains the names of arguments. From the example, PM (Prime Minister) used gambits So, the house believe that to introduce to the topic about the illegal workers. Besides, DLO (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) used gambits Ok, before I go to to begin the topic before jumping to the arguments.
Furthermore, there were some gambits that gave contribution in delivering rebuttals. According to Freeley & Steinberg (2009, p. 164), rebuttal is the attack to the opposition"s arguments. Rebuttal involves introducing evidence and reasoning to weaken or destroy another"s claim. One instance of rebuttals in debate 2 was "First, he said that err.. parents.. parents will command their children to enter the university that the parents want to be." (DPM). DPM (Deputy Prime Minister) used gambit First at the beginning of the utterance to introduce to his/ her own rebuttals towards the opponent. Here, DPM was ready to make a list of rebuttals to attack the opponent"s arguments.
Meanwhile, there were also several gambits that the debaters used to deliver arguments. Freeley and Steinberg (2009, p. 5) state that "argumentation is reason giving in communicative situations by people whose purpose is the justification of acts, beliefs, attitudes, and values". Therefore, arguments are opinions or reasons explained by the speakers to support the issue or their statement. The gambit example used in the argument in debate 3 was "First, the opposition mentioned that the developing countries and developed had different characters. It is true that both countries have different characters, but their goals are the same to make their citizens become prosperous." (MG). Here, MG (Member of the Government) used the gambits First and It is true.. but to make his/ her own argument and reasons to support and defend his/ her own team.
Last, the gambits contribution to the conclusion part. According to Sellnow (2005, p. 63), conclusion includes a sense of closure in a way that might help the audiences or listeners remember the main topic and ideas by restating the thesis statement, briefly summarizing main points, and offering a clincher. The example of using gambits to make a conclusion was displayed in debate 4 such as "So, I think it's not urgency, is not right action if the government wants to apply this kind of motion in this country for example, Mr. Speaker. That's why the government beg to propose this motion." (OW). Here, OW (Opposition Whip) used So, I think and That's why as gambits to briefly summarizing the main points in the debate and ended his/ her own speech.
Based on the discussions above, the use of gambits gave high contribution in debate structure to support debaters conveying introduction, rebuttals, arguments, and conclusion. Hence, the speech could be delivered naturally and structurally and the interpersonal meanings are delivered successfully.

Ways the students overcome the difficulties of using gambits in debate competition
To know how the debaters overcome their difficulties of using gambits in debate, we conducted interview to five debaters that became the participants in NUDC 2018 of West Java. To analyze the interview data, we used thematic analysis by Braun & Clarke (2006). Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analyzing and reporting patterns/ themes within data (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 79). We identified and analyzed the commonalities of the students" responses in the interviews after giving 12 same questions each to them.
Based on the interview above, the debaters answered similar responses. We could conclude that first, most students learned gambits naturally, not in the classroom. Hence, they used them in speaking English but they did not know that those were gambits. Second, to overcome difficulties of speaking English by using gambits in any situation is by learning and practicing hard to make the speech perfect.
Based on the explanation above, the findings extend the previous studies that focused on one sub-area only, such as the use of gambits in conversation (Soerjowardhana, 2015), textbook (Maesaroh, 2013), speaking ability (Nikmehr & Farrokhi, 2016), teacher's talk (Dufon, 2010), game (Faizal, 2016), debate competition (Herlinda, 2016), and ego depletion (Jr. et al., 2012). While the previous studies focused on the use of one sub-area of communicative competence, gambits (strategic competence), this study combined two sub-areas of communicative competence, gambits and debate structure (strategic and discourse competence). According to the results and discussion, the combination of two competences made the students debate speech became more natural, well-structure, well-manage and understandable to achieve the students" communicative competence.

CONCLUSION
There are some conclusions that can be drawn from the present study, as follows: The discussions above showed that the debaters used variety of gambits from opening, linking and responding gambits to support them in delivering their speech in the debate competition. Gambits can help the debaters as a strategy to speak English naturally and fluently to achieve communicative competence. Furthermore, most of them used gambits appropriately based on the theory while some of them did not.
In applying debate structure, most of debaters followed the rule of British Parliamentary style that there should be four parts in delivering debate speech, namely introduction, rebuttals, arguments, and conclusion. By applying the debate structure makes the students" speech systematic, wellstructured, well managed, and understandable from the beginning until the end of their speech.
The use of gambits gives high contribution to the students" debate structure. They support them to open the introduction, make rebuttals to attack the opponents, make their own arguments to support their own team, and summarize conclusion in the end of their speech. Hence, the interpersonal meanings in the debate are delivered successfully.
Based on the findings from observation and interview with five debaters in NUDC 2018 of West Java, we could conclude that first, most students learn gambits naturally, not in the formal forum. That"s why they tend to speak freely without following the rules since they did not know the theory. Second, to overcome the difficulties of speaking English by using gambits in any situation is by learning and practicing hard to make the speech perfect.