Debate is an effective way for students to develop critical thinking and communication skills. It teaches students to identify controversies, construct positions, research support, listen to counter-arguments, and develop responses. There are different debate formats commonly used in competitions in Indonesia, including Australasian, British, and Asian Parliamentary styles. Effective debating involves presenting a clear motion, theme, arguments, and rebuttals of opposing positions. Teachers assessing debates should focus on the quality of arguments, delivery style, and argument structure when determining a winner. The chapter outlines a five-stage process for teaching debate, involving approaching the topic, research, preparation, the debate competition, and reflection.
Debate is an effective way for students to develop critical thinking and communication skills. It teaches students to identify controversies, construct positions, research support, listen to counter-arguments, and develop responses. There are different debate formats commonly used in competitions in Indonesia, including Australasian, British, and Asian Parliamentary styles. Effective debating involves presenting a clear motion, theme, arguments, and rebuttals of opposing positions. Teachers assessing debates should focus on the quality of arguments, delivery style, and argument structure when determining a winner. The chapter outlines a five-stage process for teaching debate, involving approaching the topic, research, preparation, the debate competition, and reflection.
Debate is an effective way for students to develop critical thinking and communication skills. It teaches students to identify controversies, construct positions, research support, listen to counter-arguments, and develop responses. There are different debate formats commonly used in competitions in Indonesia, including Australasian, British, and Asian Parliamentary styles. Effective debating involves presenting a clear motion, theme, arguments, and rebuttals of opposing positions. Teachers assessing debates should focus on the quality of arguments, delivery style, and argument structure when determining a winner. The chapter outlines a five-stage process for teaching debate, involving approaching the topic, research, preparation, the debate competition, and reflection.
Debate is an effective way for students to develop critical thinking and communication skills. It teaches students to identify controversies, construct positions, research support, listen to counter-arguments, and develop responses. There are different debate formats commonly used in competitions in Indonesia, including Australasian, British, and Asian Parliamentary styles. Effective debating involves presenting a clear motion, theme, arguments, and rebuttals of opposing positions. Teachers assessing debates should focus on the quality of arguments, delivery style, and argument structure when determining a winner. The chapter outlines a five-stage process for teaching debate, involving approaching the topic, research, preparation, the debate competition, and reflection.
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CHAPTER 8 (TEACHING DEBATE)
Debate is a powerful way to develop student’s skill in both critical thinking and self-expression. Through debate, the students learn to sense controversies in topics, construct defensible positions, and research and find support for those positions. In addition, debate also trains the students to listen carefully to counter-arguments, think of responses to them and develops the students’ communication skills.
Debate usually involves two sides (teams) debating about a topic (often called a motion). The teams of debaters attempt to show the adjudicators that they have the best debating skills through the process of argumentation that is the process of explaining why a point of view should be accepted.
The formats of debating, Australasian, British, and Asian Parliamentary formats are three popular models commonly used in many debating competitions conducted both regionally and nationally in Indonesia.
In educational debating systems (Australian, Asian, and British parliamentary systems), there exist some elements that every debater needs to know. They are:
- Motion : A full prepositional statement that determines what the debate should be about. - Theme Line : The underlying logic of a team’s case. - Team Split : There is need to decide on how the arguments should be distributed among speakers. - Arguments : The process of explaining why a point of view should be accepted. - Rebuttals : The process of providing that the opposing team’s arguments should be accorded less weight than is claimed for them
Assessing debate is a challenging activity for most teachers acting as a debating adjudicator. Theoretically the role of an adjudicator is to give constructive criticism and advise to debaters; to provide an explanation of the reasons for a decision and to decide which team has won the debate.
The focus of the assessment should be centered on what the debaters said (Matter) and how they say and structure their ideas (Manner and Method).
Matter refers to the quality of arguments delivered which include facts, illustrations, examples etc
Manner deals with the delivery of speeches which includes the eye contact, use of notes, language, gesture, etc.
Method has to do with the structure of argument. This usually follows the A-R-E-L pattern (Assertion, Reason, Evidence and Link back)
There are many ways teachers can do in teaching debate. What follows is an alternative strategy of teaching debate in the classroom which are divided into five stages: Approaching the topic, Researching the topic, Preparing to debate, Debate competition and Reflection
- Approaching the Topic
In this stage, the students learn about the topic, examine it for potential controversies, and consider its terms - Researching the Topic Students read from various sources (books, newspapers, magazine, internet, etc) to gain more information and to review about the topic. - Preparing to Debate The students practice activities like critiquing, formulating, and responding to arguments in their own group. - Debating The students perform their debating skill. - Reflection The teacher and students review the arguments and counter-arguments that arose in the course of the debate
This chapter has presented the teaching of debate in the classroom of English
