>Related to your announcement about the debate competition, what
>preparation do you normally organize for students?
Actually I bumped into a student and asked where she was going...she
invited me to the uni choosing debate team members competition, and 2
local teachers invited me to co-judge... and the new team, and debate club
invited me :-) to help, this was April, so we had an intense month,
running practise debates about 5 nights a week.
The following year, different uni, very little prep, the teacher who
should have, didn't...they crashed... only won 5 of first 6.
Practise debate is the only way to prepare, so the uni needs a club of
some sort. I thought they way over-prepared, becos in a 7 minute speech,
there's still only room for 3 or 4 points/policy statements, so they
didn't need pages and pages of info from the 'net.
Topics mostly came from
http://www.idebate.org/who I think help FLTRP organise the competition.
>In other words, even for teachers who can't get to the competition, what
>kinds of activities help prepare students to be good debaters in
English?
debating :-) but also research into the topics , and activities on the
website above. I notice they include Logic and Reasoning which would be
most useful.
Judges are told they should not judge on English speaking ability, but on
the quality of the debate so speaking not to important, but listening is
:-) cos some neglected to refute points made by the other team.
There were about a dozen FETs at the cup, so hopefully someone with more
experience will reply..
Dave Nevin
