This article focuses on the lecture-room debates which have been the central feature of the first-year history course at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) since 1993. The UWC History Department takes the position that in first-year teaching the main aim should be to show students that the discipline is always contested and to introduce them to historical argument. The article makes a case for these lecture-room debates as a developmental sequence or series for the induction of first-year UWC students into historical argument in discussion, reading and writing.