This series of classes, aimed at upper intermediate to advanced students, aims to open students’ eyes to different perspectives and ideas while developing debating skills. Students will learn about different global challenges or topical discussions as well as directly working on key debating techniques.
NEW: Scroll to the bottom of the page to check out our promotional materials, including parents’ PDF guides and social media content to help you promote your classes!
Example lesson
Each class is designed to last 45-55 minutes, uses our interactive slide format and includes downloadable worksheets for students to use in class or for homework.
- Designed for 45-55 minute lessons
- Interactive slides format
- Downloadable PDF worksheets for each lesson
- Debating and persuasive speech focus, developing advanced speaking skills.
- Suitable for teenage students with a B2-C1 English level
Curriculum structure
This 30 lesson course on debating can be completed in any order or with individual lessons used as one-off classes. The suggested order below is in increasing debating skill difficulty with a review lesson (bringing everything together and applying to a formal / competitive debating format) at the end of each level:
Beginner
- School uniform: second conditional [FREE]
- Zoos: modal verbs
- Phones in schools: structuring simple arguments
- Plastic bags: making simple counterarguments
- Space exploration: categorising counterarguments
- PE class: using anecdotes
- Religious education: pronouns
- Plastic bottles: strong conclusions
- Language learning: questions
- Celebrity salaries: Lincoln-Douglas debate format
Intermediate
- Vaccination: PEE structure [FREE]
- Religious clothing: signposting
- AI technology: relative clauses
- Animal testing: adding additional points
- Pets in rentals: using emotion
- Single gender schools: repetition
- Libraries: rule of three
- Homework: storytelling
- Fast food: using statistics
- Unemployment allowance: Mace debate format
Advanced
- Recycling: making stats relatable
- Minimum wage: adverbs of certainty
- Voting: adverbs of interest
- Social media: using rhetorical questions
- Reality TV: negative rhetorical questions
- Corporate environmental responsibility: anticipating counterarguments
- Smoking: modulating counterarguments
- Free healthcare: hyperbole
- Free higher education: identifying logical fallacies
- Life skills: impact calculus + Public Forum debate
Teaching tips
- Ask students to share their opinions/ ideas at the start of the class, then see if they have changed their perspective by the end.
- Look for opportunities to link topics into current events or students’ own experiences, to make the classes even more engaging for students.
- Be aware of culturally or politically sensitive topics, which may not be suitable for all students. Additionally, some cultures may be more conservative about sharing or challenging opinions.
Promotional materials
Feel free to use these materials to send to parents or in your marketing campaigns: