The exercises presented are the basic exercises which you can use when training debaters in debate clubs, at workshops and in your regular classes.  These exercises were evaluated as the most usefull in the trainings of the last few years from a  number of debate trainers and coaches at international academies organised in Slovenia, workshops and different types of trainings in different countries.  There are exercises covering basic debate theory elements: public speaking, argumentation, building proposition case, opposition and refutation, points of information, motion analyses …. Some of the exercises were created specifically for the training program one or the other partner organisation was running, some of them were taking from somewhere else, but they are widely used and  were recognised as very valuable in different debate programs.

 

A lot of them are the result of work of a group of trainers, however we would like to recognise one person whose  contribution to the some of the exercises presented was really great – this is prof. Alfred C. Snider from World Debate Institute/University of Vermont whose partner with Za in proti, zavod za kulturo dialoga training programs for years. 

 

When doing the exercises the following guidelines should be respected to maximimize the effect: 

 

• exercises groups should be small - 1 trainer to 10 to 15 students;

• the instructions need to be short and clear; 

• all participants need to be actively involved in the exercises; 

• each perfmorance needs to be evaluated by the trainer; 

• evaluation needs to be short, precise and constructive offering the advice how to make it better; 

• very important – make sure you keep time also on you as a trainer – you want that each participant speaks at least once – it is essential that each student who prepare the exercises gets the feedback – there  is no excuse for you as a trainer that there was no time left – watch your time, control your feedback! 

 

We understand that  sometimes the group of students you are working with is bigger than suggested and you have more than 20 or even 30 students in the group. You can still do the exercises!  Here are a few suggestions how you can make it work. 

 

You divide students in group of three – they prepare exercise together and when speaking/reporting one person is doing it. However, you need to make it sure that for different exercises different people are speaking that it does not happen only one person is a reporter all the time.  

 

Some exercises can be done also in such a way that students are evaluating each other - this, however, requires a short lecture at the beginning with clear guidelines what they should focus on or it is easy to do it when you have a mixed group, like in a debate club, some students being more experienced than the others and the experienced ones can give feedbacks.