Having a class debate can be a wonderfully flowing, creative activity. It can also end up being your worst nightmare if you don’t think it through carefully. Here are a few bits of advice on choosing topics that will go down a treat:

For the love of God, choose your topic carefully

You really have to avoid topics that are likely to be highly emotive to students. It can be unpleasant, painful and you’d rather not cultivate that atmosphere if you can avoid it. I knew that some of my Turkish students wanted to discuss the Kurdish situation, and so in the last fifteen minutes of a class I asked everyone to come up with topics they were interested in and, in small groups, to choose one each.  Surprisingly enough, some came up with that topic.  I’d only assigned five minutes to each group, so fortunately we had a limited time to fill.  It did get a bit heated for some people, but class time ended, I took steps to lighten the mood and they left happy.

Choose topics that you feel comfortable talking about

This is a good barometer of how appropriate the subject is. It seems unfair to ask students to give their opinions on a subject if you aren’t willing to give yours. I sometimes give my own opinion at the end (in part so students don’t feel like they have to agree with me), but stay neutral for the duration of the discussion and let students speak.

Be careful in how you word the topic for discussion

A topic like ‘nationalism’ is extremely broad and difficult to debate in the sense of taking making it a distinct two sided argument: ‘Is nationalism good or bad?’ won’t generate much interaction, but the two topics of  ‘Is affirmative action the best way to remedy past nationalistic discrimination?’ or ‘Compare nationalism elsewhere in the world to racism in your country’ leave room for several points of view. Some teachers advocate choosing a case study to discuss – and this can be great – rather than just debating a topic in general. This is particularly useful if you want to incorporate reading or listening, but with a well-thought-out topic and questions, it’s quite possible to discuss a topic without spending an inordinate amount of time reading a complicated text.

Here are a few sites that offer ideas on debate topics as well as activities:

  1. Tefl.net activities for a really good list of controversial statements.
  2. Political Nightmares is a well-developed role play where students act as politicians and journalists. What’s more, there are both British and US versions.
  3. 42explore offers a wide range of links to relevant sites about debate.
  4. Tefl-magic has an activity about technology which can be adapted for any number of other topics.
  5. ESL flow also offers a number of resources for everything from advanced International business English discussion topics to ranking activities to role plays.


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