Students' experience of Cartagena mobility

Lithuanian debaters‘ team

During the first 3 days of learning and teaching activities at Colegio Miralmonte, Cartagena, we participated in debated-based lessons guided by the teachers from Italy, Slovenia and Finland. In the 1st lesson guided by the Italian teacher,  we had to use our knowledge about future technology and predict future inventions as well prove why we thought so. After the break, we participated in the second debate-based lesson where we met another teacher, this time from Slovenia. Our English language skills were highly used this time. Similar to debate format was used to help us understand ”wh’’ questions.

The next day we had our first mini debate practice with the Italian teacher. We were split up into six groups of three. There, we had to debate the pros and cons of whether it was better to send people or robots into space. Then, on the second lesson, we were taught by the Finnish teacher who gave us a children’s social app ad, which we had to advertise to the other groups.

On the fourth day of our mobility, we had our final debate. The debate topic was “Social media does more harm than good”. We were divided into six groups, three of which were arguing for this topic and three of the groups were arguing against it. The debate format was one proposing team against one opposing team. First, a proposing team member had to introduce the topic and talk about it in a proposing manner. Then, the first speaker came from the opposing team, they had to rebut the speaker before and present their argument. The debaters delivered their speeches in sequence until the final closing remarks and rebuttal. After debating the Spanish teacher led us up to the library where we gave our feedback. In the evening, we had a farewell party, where we said goodbye to all the participants we had met through all these days.

Overall, the debate-based activities during our mobility to Spain helped us to improve our public speaking, adaptation to a new environment, critical thinking and English speaking skills. We are so grateful for the opportunity not only to participate in learning and teaching activities but also to get acquainted with the history, culture and nature of Spain, to experience new things, meet new people and the ability to gain more confidence in ourselves. We are looking forward to using debate as a new approach to learning in our school.