How will debates improve quality of classes?

Nowadays, there is a need for enhancing the quality of classes and breaking the traditional method of knowledge delivery from lecturers to passive listeners. Therefore, debate is becoming a preferred solution to improve the efficiency of scholars’ studies.

First of all, students can learn more and better when preparing for a debate. For the occasion, they are required to build a system of convincing reasons to support their opinions. This task must involve critical thinking to come up with arguments and researching for possible evidence. Scholars can not just learn through the materials (scientific articles, news reports, surveys, statistics, etc) that they encountered, but also develop their own way of understanding the problems. Thus, the knowledge is absorbed naturally and actively, resulting in a higher interest of the students towards the subject.

Secondly, while protecting their opinions, students have a clearer and unbiased view towards a typical problem. Convincing and being convinced, one could realize the variety of opinions among the fellow classmates, such as the misinformation about COVID-19 or an extraordinary but unique way to tackle air pollution. As long as mutual respect is presented, everyone is free to express their arguments and create a competitive but positive atmosphere.

But for such debate to function well, teachers need to encourage their students to speak out while highlighting the necessity for being respectful to each other. Teachers should sometimes give a hint to further extend the conversation and trigger some hidden thoughts that could be critical during the talk.

In conclusion, it is worth noticing that debate could be the new style of teaching that is capable of bringing attention and interests of the students. Teachers, however, still play a significant role in this process.

Author: Le Tran Huy, Foreign Language Specialized School