The Arts Unit Unit Creative Teachers
Rebuttal
This page will take you through the steps to creating excellent rebuttal.
Types of rebuttals
Learning Intention: develop strategies to create effective rebuttal in a debate.
When you are rebutting an argument, you can respond from many perspectives.
This includes:
principled
practical
logical
contradictory
misleading.
Effective rebuttals
Duration: 06:54Thematic rebuttal
Learning intention: learn how to identify key themes and organise your rebuttal accordingly.
Thematic rebuttal is organising your responsive material into 2 or 3 main themes (also known as clashes/issues).
Themes will be debate-specific, but here are some common breakdowns:
stakeholders (for example, teachers, students, parents)
types of consequences (economic, societal)
long-term, short-term effects
principle versus practical.
Once you have your themes, organise your rebuttal under those thematic headings.
What is thematic rebuttal?
Duration: 05:13Suggested activity
Using 3 palm cards, watch a first affirmative debate speech and identify the key themes that come up during the speech. Write these 3 themes as succinctly as possible on a palm card each. Write a series of rebuttal arguments on A4 paper and sort these arguments under the themes you have identified.
Practising rebuttal
The following webpage link takes you to a collection of videos by experienced debaters who share tips and present a rebuttal to their former selves.
