How to Argue by Dan Shapiro (Video) (Advanced Lesson Plan)

ESL/EFL Level: Advanced (C1/C2)
Lesson Topics: negotiation, debating, societal issues
Skill Focus: Speaking, Listening, Vocabulary
Approximate Class Time: 1.75 hours
Lesson Plan Download: how-to-argue-shapiro-advanced-042023.docx
Lesson Overview:

  • After warm-up questions, students watch a short (4:30 min) YouTube video by Harvard negotiator Dan Shapiro. The video provides strategies for successful arguments and debates with the purpose of finding common ground and understanding each other (not necessarily winning the debate).
  • Post-reading activities include comprehension questions, vocabulary matching, and a pair-work activity in which students use vocabulary from the video to ask each other questions.
  • Afterward, students apply what they have heard by debating controversial issues. This section is followed by a focus on four fallacies used in arguments and a short activity. The final activity focuses on negotiation. In it, a mediator helps two people find a solution to their problems.
  • All lessons come with warm-up questions, vocabulary questions, and discussion questions.

Two people seated having a discussion.

ADVANCED (C1/C2) EFL Lesson Plan on How to Argue

Warm-up Questions

  1. Do you enjoy debating or arguing? Are you good or poor at it?
  2. What strategies do good debaters use to win arguments? Put differently, what are the features of a good argument (contrasted with a bad one)?
  3. In your home country, are people fairly politically divided (like in the United States)?

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-- Lesson plan on How to Argue written by Matthew Barton of EnglishCurrent.com (copyright). ChatGPT was consulted for help with the fallacy examples and some negotiation phrases. Site members may photocopy and edit the file for their classes. Permission is not given to rebrand the lesson, redistribute it on another platform, or sell it as part of commercial course curriculum. For questions, contact the author.

Possible answers to comprehension questions:

  1. He is saying that being frustrated in an argument is a very human experience. In other words, it is something that everyone experiences.
  2. A tribal trap is the situation (in the United States where Shapiro lives presumably) where we don’t believe the other side regardless of what they say because we view them as adversaries.
  3. The barriers are identity, appreciation, and affiliation.
  4. What we perceive as an attack on our identity, which is often tied to our values, can make us react much more emotionally because we believe “our sense of self is on the line” (as Shapiro puts it.)
  5. The idea is to truly listen to the other side and try to see the value in their perspective. Your adversary will appreciate this.
  6. Finding common ground is finding ideas that both sides can agree on.
  7. He believes these this could cause a positive revolution in relationships and society because it would allow us to understand and appreciate each other. This could transform politics.
  8. False: The video, entitled ‘how to argue’, explains how to understand each other better.

Vocabulary Answers: 1-b, 2-k, 3-h, 4-a, 5-d, 6-f, 7-c, 8-e, 9-j, 10-i, 11-d

Fallacy Exercises Answers

  1. Slippery Slope (as it suggests that legalizing soft drugs will inevitably lead to a chain of events (rising drug use, addiction, dropping out of school, etc.) without providing any evidence to support this claim.)
  2. Ad hominem (By suggesting that their opponents are racist, the speaker attempts to discredit their arguments without engaging with them.)
  3. Strawman (The speaker distorts the argument to make it seem like the suggestion is paying people $30 an hour as a minimum wage. The current minimum wage in the U.S. is around $7.25)
  4. Single Cause (The speaker reduces a complex issue (the impact of social media on society) to a single cause, suggesting that it is responsible for many issues in society today.)

Collocation answers: 1-f, 2-e, 3-d, 4-g, 5-c, 6-a, 7-b

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