Debates added to topic-based materials section

Further to my recent post about staging class debates, I’ve just uploaded two more to the topic-based materials section of this blog: one (on whether some art can be better than other art) here; the other (on whether private schools should be abolished) here. You can read some ideas about how to use them, and about ways of holding debates more generally, here.

The debate about abolishing private schools

I highly recommend introducing debates to interested classes of adults or teens of about intermediate level and upwards: they’re great for generating discussion; students can practise using a lot of functional language about expressing opinions, agreeing and disagreeing, and so on; and they can provide useful vocab-building preparatory homework opportunities as well!

Please remember to check the language used in my debating sheets and consider whether to pre-teach any of the vocabulary used. I’ve tried to use language relevant to the topic being discussed, and otherwise to simplify the text with VocabProfile, but some of it will still be complex, as it’s condensed.

I’ll be adding more debates over the next few days, and hope to update (and add to) those topic-based materials more widely, too.

The debate about the value of art