ABSTRACT
This final project discusses the communicative competence in terms of how debaters cope with problems during their speeches in the case of debate. This competence is called strategic competence. There are two problems discussed: 1) what are strategies employed by debaters when facing communication problem as to maintain their speeches; 2) how those debaters construct the strategy.
The data were obtained on April 16, 2006 through recording the speeches produced by debaters in the final round of English Debate Competition. In analyzing the data, I employ descriptive and explorative approach. Small quantification in the form of percentage is made to support the analysis. For the sake of newness and specifics, I highlight the model of strategic competence proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995). The analysis starts from the process of recording, transcribing, identifying, re-transcribing, classifying, verifying, quantifying, drawing conclusion and giving suggestions for readers.
Research finding tells us that the appearing strategies are avoidance or reduction strategy (3.56%), achievement or compensatory strategy (11.57%), stalling or time-gaining strategy (71.81%), and self-monitoring strategy (12.76%). There is one strategy found within the whole speeches that I cannot classify into any kind of strategies proposed by Celce-Murcia et al. (1995) nor the previous theorists. And so I name it miscellaneous strategy (0.3%). The biggest percentage of stalling or time-gaining strategy is not surprising since time-management is very crucial in this kind of Australasian debate system.
I finally conclude that only four of five strategies proposed by Celce- Murcia et al. are employed and the use of the strategies depends on the communication problem each debater encounters whether be spontaneously or on purpose. Nothing is more valuable than providing the suggestion that the use of strategic competence is somewhat helpful. Nevertheless, too much use of this competence will finally ruin the speech itself and so the mastery of the four other communicative competences is automatically required.
