The rhetorical model of debate teaching – a genre perspective

Debate is a genre that has gained popularity due to its educational value on different levels of the education system. The essential advantage of using debate as an educational tool is that it prepares students to participate in public debate outside the classroom environment. The available models of teaching how to debate are rules-oriented (showing students the rules of conduct valid in the debate) or argument-oriented (teaching the balance between affirmative argumentation and refutation and proper ways of building arguments). This article offers a new, genre-oriented model of debate teaching based on showing the relationships between genres that compose the debate. Exemplified by the Karl Popper debate format, popular in Central and Eastern Europe, four genres ingrained in a debate are depicted: affirmative speech, refutation speech, summarizing speech, and cross-examination. What has been also described is the intricate web of relationships and influences between those genres which build the educational debate’s ecosystem. Using the genre-oriented model in teaching debates and showing the relationships between the four genres will enable students to increase their understanding of the debating process and help them visualize how big impact their actions have on the course of the debate.