Post-16
French Debating Competition/Joutes Oratoires Interscolarires
Alliance Française
Belfast/NICILT
1–6 College Gardens
Queen's University Belfast
Senior Common Room
Belfast BT9 6QB
Person in charge of project: Colin Radford, Director of Alliance Française and Wendy Phipps, NICILT Executive Officer
This competition was organised by NICILT, Alliance Française Belfast,
and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland. It was run in parallel
with a debating competition organised by the Alliance Française Dublin
for schools in the Republic of Ireland. It was run as a pilot project
in Northern Ireland involving ten schools from all five education and
library boards.
The project targeted pupils in the 16–18 range. The topics chosen for the debates linked in with pupils' A-level French studies. The competition ran from November 1999 to March 2000. The winning team from Northern Ireland went into the final of the competition being held in the Republic of Ireland. This all-Ireland final took place on 6 May 2000 in Dublin.
Judges' comments
This project uses a tested intellectual exercise – the formal debate – to bring languages out of the classroom and into the wider domain of inter-school competition. The initiative provides a welcome focus on the use of language to communicate and exchange ideas, and to develop higher level thinking. The competition element meant that much prestige was associated with the event, by the teachers, pupils and organisers, and this enhances the image of language learning in the schools.
The contribution to the development of the European spirit of peace and understanding is particularly striking. The final brought together schools from two Irish traditions, who have a common language (English) but are divided by political boundaries, to debate issues of international concern, in the language of another member state, French. That the Northern Ireland School was a Catholic one and the Southern school a Protestant one, and that the event took place on the day when the peace process was brought back to life with the IRA announcement on arms verification, gave the event a special quality which the judges found deeply moving.
The organisers are
being encouraged to develop the competition further next year within the
context of the European Year of Languages.
