English Debate Competition

Ivan Chan 11C

 

Developing critical thinking and communication skills is central to education at CKY, and there is no better way to learn and apply these skills but through debating. Our English Debating team has participated in many competitions in the past three months and as a member of the English Debating Team, it’s encouraging to see how far we’ve come as a team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senior Hong Kong Schools Debating Championship

 

The HKSDC (abbreviated for Hong Kong Schools Debating Championship) adopts the World Schools Debating Style used in many other tournaments. Each team has three speakers, the first speaker, the second speaker, the third speaker, with 6 minutes’ speeches. A reply speech, given by either the first speaker or the second speaker, is 3 minutes long. POIs, Points of Information are allowed. Points of Information are questions, justifications or clarifications or simply bits of information that debaters from one team raise to the other team’s debaters during their speeches.

It is our third time participating in the HKSDC competition and we’ve progressed a lot since last year. The tournament was on the 7th of February, and we had several debates on that day. We knew the motions for the second and the third debates – the first debate, however, was impromptu, meaning we only had 45 minutes for preparation. We won the first impromptu debate, narrowly lost in the second prepared debate, and lost the third debate. Somehow we got into the Bronze Division, and we had two more debates on that day. Surprisingly our opponents for the fourth match did not turn up (this was the Quarter-Finals round) and we automatically got into the Semi-Finals round. We faced the same opponents from the second round, and despite having built a case that was pledged on an over-idealistic policy model, we had a narrow win. This is how we managed to get into the Grand Finals for the Bronze Division, which will be held on the 16th of March.

 

Hong Kong British Parliamentary Debating Championship

 

British Parliamentary style debating is a style of debating very commonly found in university debates. Although there is a Proposition (or Government in the context of BP) and the Opposition, there are more than two teams in a debate, as the Government bench and Opposition bench are split into two teams respectively, the Upper House and the Lower House, resulting in four teams: the Opening Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government, Closing Opposition, with only two people in one team. All debates are impromptu, preparation time is limited to 15 minutes, and debaters are allowed to speak for 7 minutes, with POIs allowed in the middle of speeches. Each team in a debate will be ranked from 1st to 4th, the team in 1st place gets 3 points, the 2nd 2 points, the 3rd 1 points, and the 4th 0 points. After five preliminary rounds (the last round a silent round where adjudicators do not give feedback), teams with the highest scores can break into the elimination rounds, where the two best teams can advance to the next round.

Because all debates are impromptu and we only have two people on a team, it is even more challenging.

We had five teams from our school participating in this tournament this year. One of the teams, Ivan Chan and Eunice Li, made it to the Semi-Finals.

 

Participating in these debate tournaments was truly a rewarding experience. Because a lot of the debating matches were impromptu rounds, it helped develop our quick thinking skills to come up with arguments and in some cases, a rough model (i.e. a government policy/mechanism to achieve certain outcomes). Quick thinking is also required when your opponents raise arguments you haven’t anticipated and you have to adapt your material accordingly. Communication skills are also important in that we learn how to communicate effectively so that our opponents and the adjudicators have a clear idea of your case and arguments. Of course, to excel in impromptu debates, we have to be knowledgeable about key concepts e.g. the separation of powers in a democracy, the four aims of the Criminal Justice System, the differences between Kantian ethics and utilitarianism, etc. Of course, being open-minded helps us explore different possible cases or lines of arguments in preparation time so that we have more options to choose from in order to construct the best case. Debating ultimately helps us become better learners and thinkers that are well-adapted to today’s fast changing society.