Debate as a Teaching Strategy
Cinthya Alicea
Keiser University

Debate as a Teaching Strategy
Communication is the most crucial part of human interaction. There are many benefits to effective communication which enhance aspects of our personal everyday lives. There is also misunderstood communication which results in a vain outcome and can lead to embarrassment or even more serious results in an adult’s life. Public speaking today is not rare, we go on about our daily lives communicating with people throughout our day whether it be work related or just speaking socially for recreational purposes. Public speaking promotes communication for important messages or simply for teaching purposes. When we combine communication and teaching we can create great lectures but when we involve our listeners and interact with one another we create a debate. This paper is going to promote the benefits and applicable use of debate as a teaching strategy.
There are many teaching strategies used today. Each is specifically distinguished and with its own discipline. Teaching strategies break off into braches to create types of lectures that fit with the learning styles of the students. There are a number of teaching strategies, some are: Role playing; where simulations in class can be an excellent way to engage students. Case studies; these have been used for actively engaging students in problem solving applicable to their discipline. Effective discussions; engage students in thinking and analyzing or in defending one side of an issue, rather than listening to lecture. Debates; where students are forced to deal with intricacy and gray areas and are rooted in rich content. Alongside these teaching strategies we have lecture types which consists of: Informal oral essay; a type of persuasive lecture. Expository; which explains the ‘what and why’ of the subject. Provocative; this lecture type raises challenge and question assumptions. Demonstrative; presents the ‘how to’. Last, there is lecture, which is more of a discussion based lecture type. Each of these are essential not only for effective output when trying to teach a class but also because every student is different and we all learn in different ways, whether we be visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learners.
Debate as a teaching strategy is most useful because it teaches in a different way rather than passively absorbing information from a formal style lecture. When teaching through debate students are more likely to learn more by critically thinking. Critical thinking breaks off into a set of skills that involve arguing, integrating, applying, evaluating, and analyzing. These help give a different prospective to certain topics and illustrate the complexity of each one thus making it an important skill. Learning debate can be a milestone for students who want to pursue a degree in teaching; students who acquire the art of critical thinking can both read and write it, which is a valuable skill. This is accurate in the sense that if an individual has the ability to write effectively, it can influence success.
Debate has been classified to have a groundbreaking characteristic in student’s critical thinking. Debate is used in many different fields and for numerous amounts of different themes from politics to health, culture to education, religion to science, etc. If we take a small business as an example; a small business would need employees who can communicate well, if these employees have respectable public speaking abilities, they could create a message for various types of audiences, thus in time, establishing growth. Using debate as a teaching strategy gives an ability to fortify and enhance a student’s knowledge and awareness in the given topic areas. This engages them into the learning process and works their mind to better analyze and memorize the discipline. Aside from building knowledge, debate somewhat forces the competitors to consider the facts of circumstances but also the allegations they may impose. This in return generates efficiency to think on your feet if a certain blocking, contradicting question, or opposing argument is thrown at the debater. Key elements also play a big part in debating. Aside from conducting research the competitors must ensure well listening and oratory skills. Debating works both as a critically and strategically point of view for the debater and this is what classifies its competitive aspect.
Another setting debates can be used are in an online class. Online classes present both negative concerns as well as advantages. It is quite transparent to both the teacher and the student that without face to face communication, there might be a lack of engagement and enthusiasm, there is no one to really share emotions with and some students might get discouraged. On the other hand, many students find online classes work best for them due to the self-paced nature, some may use it as a challenging tool when learning new material or a new class because there is no one there to physically teach them. (Can also be a con). There are many varied students whom may choose to take online classes and all with different real life situations, this orients their class time to cause odd, irregular hours. In an online classroom, most schools have developed weekly or a certain amount of discussions per semester. Discussions is as close as students get to debating without being face to face. Online, students are usually provided a provocative topic. Following research, they are appointed to discuss their views on the given topic. Follow up discussion posts are required with other classmates to express their point of view in either another student’s post or what a student might have posted on their initial post. Due to the nature of online class, there is a lot of self-teaching taking place. Students are exposed to conduct research on their own and look deeper into the material to better understand. To take an online class the student must be devoted to wanting to learn and be self-driven because there is no one there to remind you of your next assignment.
Digging deeper into debate as a teaching strategy, there might be some questions such as ‘How do I do it?’ or ‘How can I participate in a debate competition?’ Let’s take the following scenario; a student is taking Economy as a major and Speech as a minor and this class participates in debates country wide. Debate does have rules that each participant must follow. Debates fluctuate by region and reflect parliamentary course of action to a certain type of degree. Guidelines might be different in each competition attended while in a classroom there would be more flexibility. An instructor might start preparing their students by helping them familiarize first off with the concept of debate. While using debate as a teaching strategy the instructor should discuss the meaning of debate and that it is simply a way to argue ones position. While being exposed to debate the student will be exposed to new vocabulary, expanding their own use. Debating is nonetheless an instructional strategy whenever the situation is open to an opposing point of view, this makes it education from both the debater’s and the opposing challenger’s side. Debating is not always used as a method to determine who is correct or who is ‘right’ in the discussion, in teaching it is rather used to expand knowledge and project individual views. When in a debate one must always remember to not veer off from the topic or lose the point of purpose of the discussion.
If education is built on a debate foundation then I think true learning will take place. Debate helps express and idea, this idea is defended and in many ways can change the views of another individual. Dating back to classical education, a groundwork for education was created called The Trivium. The Trivium pertains to mind and consists of three parts which are necessary for debate and other learning and teaching techniques. The first is general grammar which discovers and orders facts of reality, compromises basic and systematic knowledge. In other words this is where understanding definitions, language, sentence structure, etc. take place. The second, formal logic is where developing reason in establishing valid relationships among facts take place; systematic understanding. The third is rhetoric, it is where we apply knowledge and understanding, it expressively comprises wisdom.
So why debate? Students need to be engaged and eager to learn, this is why debate is a great way to challenge them and bring out creativity. Debate is a highly effective skill for developing argumentation for persuasive speech and writing aside from granting evocative listening, speaking and writing practice. Professors need to acknowledge that not all students learn the same way, some learn the material quicker than others therefore all types of teaching styles are promoted. Debate is a powerful tool that can be used to educate new generations. Although teaching debate requires tremendous effort from both the professor and the students it can be a very rewarding skill acquired for a successful future.

References
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