PEDAGOGICAL CONDITIONS FOR ORGANISING DEBATE-BASED INSTRUCTION IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

Abstract

Debate is widely recommended as a means of developing students’ thinking alongside their language proficiency, and the empirical case for it is broadly favourable [1; 2]. What the literature supplies far less often is an account of the conditions under which the format actually delivers those benefits. This matters practically: a lesson that carries the name of a debate but not its structure produces an ordinary discussion, and the teacher has no diagnostic by which to tell the difference. This paper sets out four conditions for organising debate-based instruction, identifies the observable symptom of each condition’s failure, and describes two organisational parameters — scaffolding and motion design — that govern the course as a whole.