Teacher Discussion Forums

anyone have any tips on how to effectively teach a debate esl class to advanced high school girls in Seoul, Korea? i'm doing ok, but could use some pointers. do you suggest putting them in teams opposite to their actual feelings on the topic? so they can kind of detach their emotions from the argument. some people suggest this. what else can you suggest?? how do you do it? what have you tried? any online resources you can point me to?

thanks.

Although I've taught a debating course for high level adults in Japan, I'm currently creating one for lower level high school students.

So far, I've identified the following good references:

Discover Debate, by Michael Lubetsky, Charles LeBeau and David Harrington
The Non-stop Discussion Workbook, by Charles Rooks

Online:
www.hs.reitaku-u.ac.jp//english/ic/falldebate.html (10-year-old debating class, author has started a thread on www.eltnews.com)
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krieger-Debate.html (nice article by Daniel Krieger, and even tho this describes university debating, many of the points are going to be included in my own class)

I think you have to define some terms before you throw debating at your students, even if they are high level English speakers. Culture plays a role in resisting some debates, especially in Asia. Have them start by working on what an opinion is vs. a fact. How can you defend it, with a weak reason or strong reason? How do you support those reasons, with examples, statistics, expert opinions, or other means? Once you've described and defended your own opinion, how can you find ways to rebut another person? Then, how do you wrap things up in a conclusion? These will be compiled in my approach.

I saw an excellent demonstration lesson in Mongolia for grade 8 students who are really grade 10. The teacher got them to work in groups and think about all the good things they could about their topic. He got them to debate silly things like whether they should give balloons or flowers at birthdays. Because the topics were silly, they didn't get emotionally upset at defending them. He had the best speakers present the findings of the group. But the next time when they were finding faults with the other groups findings, he called for another speaker so that everyone had a turn by the end. He changed the topics frequently. After each part of the lesson, the group talked about what they thought were the best ways of presenting the materials and who had the best arguments and why. It was all a lot of fun but they learned many valuable points of debating. IThe teachers entered into debates as well as a kind of contest between schools which was fun for the students to go and watch. Their topic that year was whether the school should teach the students a practical skill or more theoretical. I didn't understand it as it was in Mongolian but it sounded great. Unfortunately our school lost.