Romania Teachers’ Training 2024
Parliamentary Debate Personnel Development Association（PDA）
Date：January 27th, Saturday, 2024. 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. (EET). (3 p.m. to 9 p.m., JST)
Place：Online (Zoom)
Participants：22 Teachers
Judge：Dr. Chihiro Nakagawa, PDA Staff, PDA Certified Educational JudgeFirst, PDA Founder and Director, Dr. Chihiro Nakagawa introduced herself, explained
the significance of conducting English debates in class, and explained the rules of PDA
style.

Lecture by Dr. Chihiro Nakagawa

POI PracticeAfter the lecture, we had four debate practices. Teachers were divided into teams
composed of 3~4 members, and the matchups were arranged so that each team would
experience Government side, Opposition side, and judge practice at least one time foreach role.
The motion for the first round was “Homework should be abolished.”Through the first practice of PDA style English debate, the participants understood theflow of debate and the characteristics of each role. PDA staff were assigned as judges at
all tables, and after the debate were over, they gave reasons for the decision of theverdict as well as their personal comments to each speaker.

Preparation Time

Debate RoundThe motion for 2nd round was “Death penalty should be abolished.” Following the firstround, in which the teams struggled with the use of the speech sheets, the teams showed
their efforts to use their preparation time more efficiently by deciding on their roles inadvance. The judges' team divided their roles into a chairperson and a timekeeper tofacilitate the debates, and they made comments to the debaters.

Judge Team

Shaking hands after the round

The motion for 3rd round was “Being single is better than married.”
While each of the participants held the opinion that it depends on personal preference,
they logically explained their opinions in support of their assigned side.

POI!!
dShaking hands after the round
The motion for final round was “Politics is better done by AI than by humans.”
Each team could compare AI and human characteristics in their analysis.

Debate Round
After four debate rounds, participants shared
their impressions of the day and theddifficulties they encountered.

Share impressions and commentsd

Participants' voices (excerpts from questionnaires)・I enjoyed it very much. We learned something new, useful and we could practice it aswell. I appreciate the Japanese ladies, who took their time to teach us something new,they explained the 'game' very well.
・It put my mind to work. It has been empowering for me.
・I have learned many new and interesting things about how to run a debate and bepart of one. It was an interesting, relaxing, and refreshing class!
・I learnt how to support your ideas, how to convince others of your opinion. I would
like to have more PDA activities.
・It was very useful, educational and inspirational. I learnt once again that every
opinion is a good one as long as you support and argument it correctly, and with theright examples.
・I have learnt a lot about debates and about how to judge them. I have also enjoyedworking in a team and discussing different opinions. This class has confirmed for me(again) just how important debates are for the development of both language andcritical thinking. I have also learnt that practice is very important!
・I feel that it has been well used time and I feel that I have learned so many things.
The information has been made very clear and it has been very accessible. The practicehas facilitated the understanding process. It has definitely been time well spent. Thankyou very much.
・I found this class engaging and I loved the learning-by-doing approach, although it
seemed confusing at the beginning. This was an interesting and useful endeavors
which I intend to use in order to improve my teaching. I look forward to using it inclass. I have the feeling that today was merely an introduction to a very complex
teaching and practice speaking technique.
・I learned that we need to follow a structure in order to be persuasive and not messy.
Great job!
・It was a good training session, offering a lot of new info. In addition to being very
useful, it was an interesting opportunity to spend time in the company of colleagues I
can learn from.
・It was highly educational and it cleared a lot of questions I had about the format. It
was informative, methodical, well organized, inspiring.
・I enjoyed the challenge of debating against my beliefs! But it was enriching as there
are always 2 sides of the same coin. Really challenging and entertaining, butenriching!!!
・I enjoyed it very much because I have learned a lot of useful things that I can hardly
wait to share with my students. It was a useful and great experience. It was quite
interesting and challenging especially as it was the first experience of this kind. It
made you get out of your comfort zone and feel confident about speaking in public.