In the third post from her series on teaching Business English, Natilly Macartney takes a look at getting your students to participate in a debate and why this skill can be useful (and fun!) speaking practise.
Debating in class
In one of my classes called ‘Professional Speaking Skills,’ students practise using English for different purposes, for example, using English to deliver a presentation, take part in an interview and participate in a debate. Interestingly, debating is not part of the curriculum in Austrian schools, so for a majority of my students this was the first time they had participated in a debate. As this was an entirely new skill for the students, I began the class by discussing what debating is. I taught the students important vocabulary, such as motion, the statement that sets the topic of a debate, and proposition and opposition, the two sides that participate in a debate. I also explained the phrase “this house believes in…” which is often used to preface the motion in formal debates.
Cambridge Union Society Debates
After giving the students a basic introduction to what a debate is and how a debate is structured, we watched a short 15-minute video of a student debate at the Cambridge Union Society. The topic of the debate was the use of politically correct language. Whilst watching the video the students made notes on the arguments that the different teams made, the language they used and the organisation of the debate. We then discussed the topic of the debate and what the students’ own opinions were.
Ayes and noes
In the video, the students noticed the doors in the chamber (where Cambridge Union debates takes place) with the words ‘ayes’ and ‘noes’ above them, similar to the division of assembly in the House of Commons. I explained to the students the process of choosing which team you support and walking out of their door to show your support at the end of the debate. Coincidently, our classroom also has 2 doors, so when we had our own debates, the students also voted by choosing either the ‘ayes’ or ‘noes’ door.
Debate language
To prepare students for their small in class debates, I gave them a handout, put together by my colleague, which listed different phrases they could use to preface their arguments, for example, phrases they could use to emphasise a point, disagree with a point and interrupt politely. The students had small debates on topics such as, ‘this house would donate to charity’ and ‘this house would increase tuition fees in Austria’; I found some excellent debate topics here.
Students changed their own opinions
What the students didn’t expect was that I would randomly assign them to a team, so some students had the challenge of thinking of arguments that they did not personally agree with. However, the feedback from the students was positive, in fact, they said they preferred being on a team they did not agree with personally because it made them think about a topic or issue in greater depth and from a different perspective; some students even said their personal opinions changed after the debates.
Overall, I was impressed by the debates the students had in class, and from a teacher’s perspective they were very enjoyable to facilitate. The students were not afraid to disagree with one another, and their classmates enjoyed being in the audience just as much as being on a team; sometimes the debates became quite intense. The students thought of strong arguments and researched facts and statistics to support their claims. I was also proud of how well they managed to integrate the debate phrases they had learnt into their debates. I think debating is a skill that the students will take away with them, and hopefully, they will use it throughout the rest of their studies, whether it be to help them write better argumentative essays using counterarguments, or further develop their own opinions and ideas.
Make sure to catch up with Natilly’s previous article on writing a business plan in English.
Handout written by Lauren Alva, Koç University, Istanbul.