A couple of weeks ago, my father is visiting me in Bogotá. As a career diplomat and academician, I felt it would be valuable for my father to pay a visit to my students at UNAL where I am teaching an elective on oral communication.
In his visit to my class, we conducted a debate. Here is a summary of what we did:
I established rules and format of the debate.
I randomly divided students into two sides, for and against. This was done before giving the topic and at random because the objective was not to assess knowledge but rather, the skill of argumentation.
I gave the topic of the debate; The best way to build relations between India and Colombia is through culture.
My father provided context by speaking briefly on how two countries can build relations with each other.
I conducted the debate which included 4 parts: opening statements, rebuttals, cross examination and closing statements.
The students had an interaction with my father, where he asked a few follow up questions based on what he heard in the debate.
It was an interesting session because the topic was one that most of my students were not completely familiar with. My students at UNAL are students of philology. They study language and linguistics. The topic of the debate was on international relations. But that didn’t matter. The objective was not to develop knowledge but to develop skills. It was about the ability to use persuasive language and build an argument, irrespective of the topic.
Students made several different arguments including the role of hard power vs soft power, India’s growing economic trajectory, Indian film (a student mentioned the successful Telegu film, RRR), yoga / spirituality and even the changing world of global manufacturing.
The lesson was an interesting way to get students to use language topics that they may not always talk about. I enjoy this debate class that I often do because of this reason. I will post the debate lesson in a future post.