This study delves into the correlation between critical thinking andinput ability skills within the framework of debate. While debateoften highlights spontaneous and responsive skills, the overlookedessential is the input ability, encompassing tasks like confirminginformation,summarizing,andcatchingdetails.These  skillsprecedeoutputabilityandarecrucialineffectivedebating.Drawingfrom sources spanning the past decade, this qualitative researchemploys the narrative inquiry method to explore the role of criticalthinkinginlanguageinputability.Datacollectioninvolvesquestionnaires targeting students with debate experience, focusingon the impact of input and output skills on their debating. Utilizinginterviews, the research reveals that a balance between input andoutputabilitiesisvitalforsuccessfuldebateperformance.Theresultis participants have different points of view in choosing whetherinputoroutputwhichaffectstheircriticalthinkingmostly,thestrategies they used, the importance of output and input abilities,andemotionalintelligence,itshowstheneedforstrategiestoenhance input abilities alongside output skillstogain maximumpotential in debate. Future research aims to develop methods forfosteringbalancedimprovementininputabilities,shiftingfroma sole focus on output proficiency.