After school on 9/29 (Tue), we held the second PDA Practice Lesson. This time, 11 members came for the extra practice.

First, students reviewed the flow of a PDA debate. They have participated in two debates now, so they are growing accustomed to it. To review this, each participant was given a part of the debate, for example, the Member of the Opposition or the Prime Minister's reply. Then, they had to get into the correct order.

Next, they talked about news stories they have read recently. Debate topics are often connected to current issues, so reading the news regularly can be very helpful to debaters. Some of the topics they had read about included brain-eating amoebas in the US, protests in Thailand, and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It was interesting to see what kind of news they had been interested in since the first practice two weeks ago.

Finally, they did the main activity. Today, the focus was identifying "stakeholders." In debate, these are people or groups of people who are connected to the debate topic. Either they are affected by the topic, or they affect the topic. For this activity, each of the groups used one of the debate topics from the PDA debates they have participated in. Then, they made a list of stakeholders and noted how they were connected to the topic. For example, for the topic "Homework should be abolished," some of the stakeholders found were: students; teachers; parents; and textbook publishing companies. For instance, students are connected because having no homework would give them more free time, which might make their lives less stressful. However, no homework could also negatively affect their grades.

In this way, the PDA lesson encouraged the students to think more deeply about the debate topics. By doing so, they will be able to make stronger arguments to support their ideas and they will be better prepared to attack the other team and defend the other team's attacks.

Well done to everyone who joined! The next PDA練習会 will be on 10/27. See you then.