Assessing arguments: Population in Australia

There are two sheets: one presents 9 arguments for increasing the population of Australia and the other presents those for reducing it. The arguments are numbered and those sharing the same number are counter- arguments. Students should do the activity in pairs. They would first look at the two 'number 1' arguments. they would discuss their relative merits and then share 5 marks between them. (e.g. if the 'for' argument is strongly supported, but the 'against' argument has some merit, they might give 4 to the former and 1 to the latter) At the end of the exercise they will add up the total number of marks for each side (remember, the total of the two sides should be 45). By the end of the activity the students will have reached a conclusion and have a range of arguments they could use in a written analysis of the question.