The Benefits of Learning Classical Debating Skills and Techniques
- Improved critical thinking skills through research and evaluation – Critical thinking skills help you understand and assess a situation based on all the facts and information available. With the help of critical thinking skills, you can sort and organise information, data and facts to define and solve a problem. You probably already possess various critical thinking skills to discuss during interviews and include on your resume, and you can work to develop them.
- Better poise, speech delivery, and public speaking skills – When debating, you learn to have confidence in the things you’re saying as you’ve prepared well for your topic and know it. As such, you learn to hold yourself well with poise. Having better poise and speech delivery means your public speaking skills will be greatly improved. This is because bad public speaking is often largely a result of poor topic preparation and practice.
- Increased information retention due to active learning – Active learning is a method of learning in which students are actively or experientially involved in the learning process. While interaction keeps things interesting it also increases retention of what is being taught.
- Improved listening and note-taking skills to enable rebuttal – Listening is a skill that should be taught since eighty percent of what you know is learned by listening. Note-taking is a powerful aid to communication, a way of summarising and retaining the key points from what you’ve heard and understood. Detailed notes are the key to making refutations and rebuttals during a debate, where speech is fast and filled with assertions, arguments and factual information. Succeeding at debate requires you take organized, informative notes during each speech to track the progress of each argument and prepare for the upcoming rounds.
- Increased self-confidence derived through practice and preparation – It is advisable to spend a good amount of time looking into the subject, doing your research and preparing your arguments. Feeling comfortable with the issue and your arguments can go a long way in keeping you calm during the debate. It is a plus point to research both sides of the argument.
- Enhanced teamwork and collaboration skills boosted through team discussions – Research tells us that cognitive diversity makes a group smarter. Two heads are, indeed, better than one, and many heads are even better, especially when everyone is willing to share their expertise and opinions. While diverse thinking and disagreements can be uncomfortable, they are more likely to lead partners or a team to make progress, innovate and come up with breakthrough solutions.
- Greater ability to state one’s point in a dignified and assertive manner while respecting the other person’s point – Respect in a debate is key because it shows value for the other person and keeps the debate fun for everyone. Respect maintains good discussion because it prevents the environment from becoming unsafe to be in. Even if you are close-minded on a topic, as long as you are respectful, you can have a great debate during which everyone has fun.
- Enhanced analytical skills acquired through assessing one’s own argument, this enables students to concoct more balanced arguments. – In order to improve, you need to be realistic about what is working, as well as what needs improvement. The key is being brutally honest with yourself about where, how, and why you tend to mess up. You want to diagnose, as specifically as you can, what is preventing you from winning debates. If you don’t know, you can’t fix it!
- Better structuring of thoughts using logic, objectivity and factual information rather than emotion – Debating helps you to develop essential critical thinking skills – the ability to make reasoned and well thought out arguments in addition to questioning the evidence behind a particular stance or conclusion. Critical thinking will help you become curious about new ideas while also retaining a level of scepticism and building a healthy attitude to questioning.
- A hands-on, interactive approach to educate, coupled with enjoyment – Classroom debate is a systematic instructional approach which has the potential to nurture the active engagement of students. Using classroom debate as a teaching/learning approach brings many advantages to learners, which include promotion of critical thinking skills, mastering the course content and improving the speaking abilities.
- More confidence to stand up for the truth when a discussion is promoting falsehoods or inaccuracies. This is the ultimate aim that homeschooling parents desire. We don’t just debate for debating’s sake – we debate to teach a skill.
