Are you good at debate skills?

Debate is more than just an argument. Students who have the ability to think upon an idea or statement from different perspectives are naturally skilled in the art of debating. You are a born debater if you can argue on a topic through critical thinking, critical speaking and critical listening.

Be it a student of Law, CAT, GRE , BBA , IPM or any school or college debating techniques are heavily used as a teaching strategy nowadays. Whether it is a school student or a college goer debating encourages students to form, develop, talk and discuss their opinions.

Ingredients of a good debate:

• Rationale and testify: Turn the facts and stats into a strong argument. Give a strong reason for your argument with supportive evidence to prove it.
• Verbalism and pitch: Mark your expression and delivery. Engage your audience. Convey your argument, speak your views in right tone and pace with right body language and language.
• Arrangement and prioritization: Structure and organize your speaking. One should know how to prioritize when they have to say the things they want to say.
• Heeding and reacting: responding according to what you listen. To develop a well-reasoned reply or respond, critically listen to other side’s argument and use what you hear.

Debating benefits you:

• Broaden students’ horizon to begin explore big ethical questions: Debating forces students to think about the content. Students start thinking independently and act according to their own knowledge or insight in an engaged and interesting manner. It broaden horizon of thinking enabling students to explore more about the topic.
• Builds confidence and self-esteem: Combined with panel of judge public speaking can be nerve-wracking even for an expert debater. Somewhere this challenging task builds confidence among students. When students get the opportunity to speak out their views in public and are able to present themselves and their ideas or opinions clearly to others they build their confidence and self-esteem.
• Develop research skills: During the debate sessions in colleges and schools students are constantly involved in research for the topics. As the topics changes in every session students create a special impetus to learn about current events. Changing topics encourages debaters to constantly research for topic throughout the session.
• Develop speaking and critical thinking skills: Public speaking is a great accomplishment to have in life. Debate emphasize on impromptu and extemporaneous speaking which teaches you to think on your feet and develop excellent critical thinking and communication skills.
• Develop persuasion skills: Students participating in debate sessions learn to persuade skillfully. To be able to persuade it is necessary to convey ones thoughts and ideas to another party clearly so that they accept it and can come to a common conclusion at the end.
• Group learning and teamwork skills: Apart from developing their individual speaking and critical thinking skills, debate sessions organized in schools and colleges promote group learning and teamwork skills. Students collectively participating in debates are involved in research process and discussions, this, somehow creates a positive atmosphere with increased interaction among them, thus, building team skills and group management.

At the very least, a debate session help students to see the power of deploying coherent, reasoned arguments and persuasive evidence in action. It drop by drop enters in debater, a great sense of confidence and poise.