The Erasmus project will give young people the opportunity to develop their skills and competences such as merit-based discussions, formulating logical arguments and reasoning, as well as to advance their ability to find and select relevant sources to back up their opinions. They will meet students of the same age from other countries and confront their opinions about various current issues, which Europe is facing at the moment. The idea for this project arose already two years ago. We noticed that our students had trouble with having merit-based discussions, formulating logical arguments and isolating their emotions when they spoke. Furthermore, they lacked skills in using and finding reliable sources. At the same time, we wanted to connect this project with one of the priorities, which is effective foreign language learning. Oxford style debates in English seemed contributive to efforts in fast track to fluency in English, which we undergo right now. As we have been successfully running the International Oxford style debates project since January 2017 with partners from Italy, Spain and later also with Germany and Croatia as an online project (since September 2017 on the eTwninning platform ) we decided that the logical consequence would be to continue this as face to face experience with the same, reliable partners. The idea was to meet and present their skills to a larger international audience. Furthermore, attendance in foreign partner schools allow our students to get acquainted with European cultural heritage which is Oxford style debating as well as with the region where the debate takes place. Our plan includes organizing meetings in every participating school with the participation of teams consisting of 5 students and 2 teachers. During each visit there will be five debates conducted with an audience present. The topics of the debate will be proposed and voted on by the students earlier via video-presentation and appropriate applications. One teacher will take a role of a Chairman, one of a Secretary, the rest will become judges. The judges responsibility will be to evaluate the teams as well as the speakers individually using specially formulated evaluation sheets. The participants will receive feedback highlighting the aspects which they should improve and master. In between the meetings, the teachers will intensively work on teaching students skills, which need improvement. We believe that the opportunity of direct meetings, allows improvement of rhetoric and public speaking as well as persuasion, which are essential to Oxford debate. As all the debates will be hold in English, participating students will improve their English language skills. In addition, they will enhance their research and arguments preparation. Students will also be given an opportunity to write short speeches and reflect on the current issues in the world. The debaters will have a chance to improve their critical thinking skills and focus on merit of the debate, not on their emotions, which may arise discussing controversial motions. Moreover, working together in an international environment will allow students to share and observe different points of view of intercultural environment of partner schools. What is of great importance, Oxford style debate teaches tolerance and respect to different points of view with its sharply framed motion that is proposed by one side and opposed by another. Thanks to this format students focus on argumentation and reasoning not on the first opinion that come to their mind. Between the meetings we plan other activities like surveys in order to measure the initial and final competency level of the students involved, presentations and quizzes to increase the knowledge about involved countries and cities and their cultural heritage and a variety of disseminations actions i. e. exhibitions, live-broadcasting, ready to use lessons plans based on Oxford debates. All of this will be conducted tomake our project and the idea of international debating more popular among other schools. Thanks to the planned dissemination activities, we hope to spread and promote new ideas for the acquisition of skills and competences. We believe that our Erasmus project will give young people the opportunity to develop their skills and competences such as merit-based discussions in foreign language (English), formulating logical arguments, respect cultural differences and cherish the value of European cultural heritage.
Thanks to the Erasmus project, young people had the opportunity to develop their skills and competences such as conducting informed discussions, formulating logical arguments and reasoning, as well as improving their ability to search and select appropriate sources to support their opinions. They met students of the same age from other countries and confronted their opinions on various current issues facing Europe. The idea for this project was born two years ago. We noticed that our pupils had problems with conducting substantive discussions, formulating logical arguments and calming down their emotions while speaking. Moreover, they lacked skills of using and finding reliable sources. At the same time, we wanted to combine this project with one of our priorities, which is effective foreign language learning. Oxford-style debates in English seemed to us to be helpful in the effort to fast-track to English fluency. Since we had been successfully running an international Oxford debate project since January 2017 with partners from Italy, Spain, and later also Germany and Croatia as an online project (since September 2017 on the eTwninning platform), we decided that it was a logical consequence to continue this as a face to face experience with the same reliable partners. The idea was to meet and showcase their skills in front of a larger international audience. In addition, participating in foreign partner schools allowed our students to become familiar with the European cultural heritage of Oxford-style debate. At the same time our participants had the opportunity to learn about the culture of the country and region where the debate took place. Our plan was to organize meetings in each participating school with teams consisting of 5 students and 2 teachers. During each visit there were also debates with the participation of the audience. The topics of the debates were chosen and voted by the students beforehand using the tricider application. During each visit 14-16 debates took place with the participation of students. The role of chairman of the jury was each time performed by one of the teachers, 2 others acted as judges. During the debates of national teams, we also made sure that the judges were teachers from a country not participating in the debate, in order to maintain maximum impartiality. The task of the judges was to individually evaluate the teams and the speakers with the help of the previously prepared evaluation sheets. After the first mobility with the participation of students we modified the evaluation sheet on the basis of the newly acquired experience. Each time, the debaters received feedback highlighting the aspects they should improve and master. In the breaks between the meetings, the teachers worked with their groups on eliminating the mistakes and correcting the deficits that the previous debates had shown. On the last day of the meetings we organized demonstration debates in teams of mixed nationalities, with the participation of the best debaters from each team. This allowed the debaters with less experience or skills to learn from their better colleagues. We found that the opportunity for face-to-face meetings allowed us to improve our rhetoric and public speaking skills, as well as the art of persuasion, necessary in an Oxford debate. Since all the debates were held in English, students participating in the debates improved their language skills. We also observed a huge increase in motivation to learn the language among the participants. Our debaters also learned how important the stage of preparing an argument is and improved their research skills. The students had an opportunity, often for the first time in their lives, to test themselves as speakers in front of an international audience and to reflect on the problems of the modern world, often confronting their own point of view with a diametrically different one. Our students learned the crucial skill of focusing on the substance of the debate rather than their emotions. The Oxford-style debate taught them critical thinking, tolerance, and respect for differing points of view. In between the meetings there were other activities such as surveys to measure the level of competences of the pupils involved, presentations and quizzes to broaden their knowledge about the countries and cities involved and their cultural heritage. We carried out various dissemination activities such as exhibitions, live broadcasts, invited some local authorities and mass media. Based on our experiences partner schools introduced debate as a method of conducting lessons in different subjects, not only humanities. We believe that our Erasmus project gave young people the opportunity to develop skills and competences such as substantive discussion in a foreign language (English), formulating logical arguments, respecting cultural differences and cultivating the values of European cultural heritage.