It's Debatable

In the last month or so, my JTE has given me the task of teaching students how to debate. At first, I was like, Yeah! This is gonna be so fun!, because, ya know, I did debate in college, and knew that the particular group of kids we were going to be working with were smart, good students, and had strong English skills. I had heard success stories of Japanese students doing terrific debates under the tutelage of ALTs with less experience than me, so I figured with some instruction my little chickadees would be able to soar proudly on their own!


And then we got to class.

I split the students into larger groups, because, despite my admittedly out-of-proportion-with-reality expectations, I was still grounded enough to know it was going to be a difficult task for them to speak in English and wanted to break them in slowly. I presented the topic and asked them to brainstorm reasons for their assigned positions with their groups.

Me: This is what we’re going to do. Okay, now talk about it in your groups.

Students: *silence*

Me: You can use Japanese if you want!

Students: *lookatpapersilently*

Me: Does…anyone…have any…ideas?

Students: *morepaperlooking*

Me: For God’s SAKE, say anything at all!!

Students: *moresilence*

After two class periods of pulling teeth to get anybody to say anything (mind you, this had nothing to do with them not understanding or not having ideas – when I asked them to write down their ideas by themselves, they did just fine), I realized something fundamentally obvious about the situation that I had missed before – the students didn’t understand what to do with debate. They had no cultural background in it, they’ve never seen one, it’s not really used in the Japanese political system and even less so in the Japanese educational one. Yes, speaking in groups is difficult for them in its own right, given that they are taught to be listeners in classes and not initiators and it’s using a foreign language, but moreover, they legitimately didn’t know what kinds of things they were supposed to be saying or what their end goal was.

Mostly, this was my fault. If I had spent more time explaining what the hell they were working towards and how to get there and why and basically everything that I assumed they already understood but didn’t, then I’m sure the outcome would have been moderately less noiseless. Fortunately, I have another shot. Next week I’m putting on a three day English camp for eleven of these same ninenseis, and using a six-class debate curriculum made specifically for Japanese students that I hijacked from the Internet, I hope that the students are able to learn what I forgot I needed to teach them. It will also allow them to generate their own topics to talk about, which I hope will also illicit more of a response, if they are given opportunities to discuss what interest them instead of what interests me. Always learning…here’s to second chances!