Teaching Advanced Language Skills through Global Debate: Theory and Practice [Pehme köide]

Instructors are increasingly interested in using debate to develop advanced competency in a second language. Through debate, students learn how to make hypotheses, support their conclusions with evidence, and deploy the rhetoric of persuasion in the target language. While interest in this topic is strong, there are few materials available for instructors who wish to plan a curriculum focused on debate. This digital short provides both the theoretical argument for using debate in the foreign language classroom as well as practical advice for developing reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills through debate. It discusses task-based language learning and helps instructors design debate-related tasks for the classroom. The digital short can be used by any instructor who is working at the advanced level, and it could be used in courses for future language instructors. It can also be used by instructors who adopt one of our forthcoming Mastering Languages through Global Debate textbooks.

Using debate to develop advanced competency in a second language is a method that is finding increased interest among instructors and students alike, whether in synchronous online teaching or the individual classroom. Through debate, students learn how to make hypotheses, support their conclusions with evidence, and deploy the rhetoric of persuasion in the target language. Though this method provides an exciting pedagogy for moving students from the advanced to the superior level, there is a paucity of materials available for instructors who wish to plan a curriculum focused on debate. Teaching Advanced Language Skills through Global Debate: Theory and Practice provides teachers with both the theoretical underpinnings for using debate in the foreign language classroom as well as practical advice for developing reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills through debate. It discusses task-based language learning and helps instructors design debate-related tasks for the classroom.

Teaching Advanced Language Skills through Global Debate will be useful for any instructor working at the advanced level, and particularly for those training future language instructors. One of the new digital short publications available through Georgetown University Press, it is an ideal complement to the press’s new titles on mastering languages through global debate.

Georgetown Digital Shorts—longer than an article, shorter than a book—deliver timely works of peer-reviewed scholarship in a fast-paced, agile environment. They present new ideas and original texts that are easily and widely available to students, scholars, libraries, and general readers.

Using debate to develop advanced competency in a second language is a method that is finding increased interest among instructors and students alike, whether in synchronous online teaching or the individual classroom. Teaching Advanced Language Skills through Global Debate provides teachers with both the theoretical underpinnings for using debate in the foreign language classroom as well as practical advice for developing reading, listening, writing, and speaking skills through debate. This digital short will be useful for instructors teaching at the advanced level or those training future language instructors, and it is an ideal complement to the new titles on mastering languages through global debate published by Georgetown University Press.