Doha: The Qatar Debate Center, a Member of the Qatar Foundation has organised a virtual training workshop aimed at supporting and enhancing debate skills for students of Dar Al Huda Islamic University in India, recently.
The “Debate Skills” was held via Zoom online platform to follow COVID-19 precautionary measures.
A group of 47 young people, ages 17 to 23 years old, participated in the workshop as part of the centre’s plans to train students on the basics of debating and raising the level of debaters at Dar Al Huda Islamic University and its colleges in the state of Kerala, in India.
The programme takes into account the varying levels of participants, as the trainees were divided into two groups, supervised by the trainers of the Center Lotfi Baraka and Gaber Abu Hemid.
The agenda of the workshop included a number of skills and training activities on various debate issues and how to employ them in a correct way. It focuses on the various methods of analysis and the tasks of the two teams within the debate through applications that enhanced the theoretical content of building the position of the parties and the argument and the steps of refutation.
Lutfi Baraka said, “What distinguishes the workshops that are offered to students in the Arabic language as it is a second or third language is that it gives us a glimpse of the importance of the Arabic language as individuals from different countries of the world try to learn it. Not only that, but they also want to debate by it and express their thoughts and opinions through it.”
As for the students, their response and enthusiasm for the debate broke the barrier of lack of mastery of the language as its natives, as they were making great efforts to participate and express their opinions, and this gave the workshop a distinctive atmosphere.
At the end of the workshop, the students expressed their happiness to learn new concepts related to the art of debate in the Arabic language, and asked for more workshops to be held in the future.
The Qatar Debate Center continues to work with the aim of rooting and encouraging the art of debating locally and internationally, as a guide to engage young people in logical discussion on issues that are subject to controversy and debate in order to reach an accordant vision after presenting convincing arguments and clear proofs.
