Currently, the effectiveness of using the debate method in teaching English is obvious. Since language is a mean of communication, debate contributes to the development of communicative competency, which plays an important role in the successful work of a specialist in various fields. This article focuses on the method of debate, as one of the communication activity types. The debate method can be used to improve students’ communication skills, allowing them to use linguistic knowledge as a functional competency in a structured (less structured) situation or in the context of a language education.

The purpose of this article is to describe the debate method as a productive strategy for teaching communicative competency while teaching English as a foreign language. This research is carried out within the framework of the Ministry of Education and Science of Republic of Kazakhstan grant project “Developing and implementing the innovative competency-based model of multilingual IT specialist in the course of national education system modernization”.