Teaching Effective Thinking: Game – Devil’s Advocate

This is a good activity for critical thinking, it helps when practicing or reviewing discussion language. You will need cards with discussion expressions on them. In a previous activity you could get students to classify these according to function (see below).

Put students into groups of three or four. Ask each student to choose one expression from each box which they would like to use. Then give the students a topic e.g. In a civilized society medical care is a human right and should be free at the point of use for all. Assign roles, with one student making this point and one making the opposite argument, the others can take either side. But actually once the initial points have been made, everyone is free to argue any side. As the students discuss the topic, they should try to use each one of their phrases. As a follow-up activity they can discuss whether anyone contradicted themselves or who had the best arguments etc.