Using Debates to Enhance Students’ Oral Business Communication Skills
Douglas M. Carroll

Abstract
Oral communication is often cited by employers, alumni, professional organizations, and accrediting agencies as an important skill for recent college graduates entering the workforce. The deficit of these skills among many recent graduates has placed an emphasis on educators’ efforts to more effectively teach oral communication. Continuing the rich historical tradition of teaching rhetoric in higher education, teachers from a variety of disciplines have successfully implemented in-class, student-to-student debates into curricula. Research demonstrates the effectiveness of debates in enhancing students’ oral communication skills. Debates have also been shown to increase critical thinking and when debate topics are carefully chosen, course content may be positively affected as well. The purpose of this report is to describe essential components of a student-to-student debate assignment suitable for implementation in a business communication course.

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