STUDENT VOICES IN NATO ENLARGEMENT: AN ENGLISH LESSON AS INTERACTIVE DEBATE AND CRITICAL THINKING
STUDENT VOICES IN NATO ENLARGEMENT: AN ENGLISH LESSON AS INTERACTIVE DEBATE AND CRITICAL THINKING

Summary/Abstract: This paper explores the English lesson as debate on NATO Enlargement developed within the NATO English. Functional Key Concepts course organized at the Romanian Naval Academy of Constanta as a first in 2024, and continued in 2025. As Blended Intensive Programme module within the Erasmus+ mobility, the course succeeded in bringing together international students from partner military academies from six countries (Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, and Romania- in the first edition, and Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Latvia, Poland, and Romania in its second edition). The activity is intended as an example of good practices in teaching military terminology in English and fostering intercultural competencies. It also aimed at integrating language, political and militaey, and analytical dimensions in an interactive setting by involving Romanian and international students in it. Specifically, this paper showcases the methodological structure of the activity/lesson, its thematic contents, the application of NATO terminology, the debate dynamics and the contributions to multicultural environments. Equally, it includes recent literature review regarding the use of debates in language and military training with positive impact on the development of communication skills, as well as critical thinking and multinational cooperation; the feedback from the international students emphasizes the relevance and efficiency of such metods.

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