Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the effect of Academic controversy as a technique of collaborative learning on Turkish Teachers candidates’ success to effective speaking skills and its relationship with variables like gender and multilingualism. Therefore the experimental design based on the pre-test and post-test measurement with control group has been used in the research. SPSS program was used to analyze the pre-test and post-test data obtained by Turkish Effective Speaking Scale (TESS hereafter) used as a data collection tool. As a result of the practices carried out for 10 weeks on 62 (32 experimental and 30 control group) Turkish teacher candidates, it was determined that Academic controversy technique is more successful than conventional methods on candidates’ effective speaking skills in Turkish. In addition, it has identified that techniques of academic controversy reduce significantly the effects of “gender” examined variable on speaking skills, whereas it has no significant effect on the variable “multilingualism”.

Key words: Academic controversy, Turkish teacher candidates, effective speech, gender, multilingualism.