VietTESOL International Convention 2026

Debate has long been promoted as a productive task for developing oral communicative competence, argumentation, and higher-order thinking, yet its systematic integration into Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher-education programmes remains uneven and under-theorised. Despite a growing body of research on debate in EFL contexts, few studies have examined scaffolded debate pedagogy as an integrated framework that simultaneously addresses linguistic, cognitive, affective, and procedural support, and almost none have compared lower-year and upper-year preservice teachers in Vietnam. Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, this study is conducted on approximately 150 English-major whose major is English Language Teacher Education. Quantitative data will be collected through a five-point Likert questionnaire adapted from the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale, Willingness-to-Communicate framework, English Debating Self-Efficacy Scale, Facione's critical thinking framework, Toulmin's argument model, and existing EFL scaffolding perception instruments. Qualitative data will be drawn from 20 semi-structured interviews and 6 classroom observations. The findings revealed that preservice teachers perceived scaffolded debate positively overall, with the strongest perceived gains in interactional competence, academic vocabulary, and argumentative fluency, but with weaker outcomes in real-time rebuttal and evidence evaluation. Notably, freshmen and sophomore students reported significantly higher debate anxiety and relied more heavily on linguistic and procedural scaffolding, whereas juniors and seniors demonstrated stronger benefits in critical thinking, counterargument construction, and pedagogical reflection. Teacher and peer scaffolding were found to significantly reduce anxiety and enhance willingness to communicate. These results underscore the necessity of integrating debate into EFL teacher-education curricula as a developmentally differentiated, scaffolded, and reflective pedagogy rather than a one-off speaking activity.
Keywords: Scaffolded Debate Pedagogy, EFL Preservice Teachers, Critical Thinking, Foreign Language Anxiety