Debate: 9th of Sept. '13

Today is my first debate club meeting. I learned about the technical aspects of debate, including its terminologies and how much time each speaker gets. At the end of the meeting, I had to prepare for next week's debate with the proposed motion "Capital Punishment is Justifiable According to the Degree of Crime Committed." In my first meeting I have learned a lot of things. I learned that case building is when both teams formulate what they're going to say. I learned that there are two sides in a debate, government and opposition in which the government is the one that proposes and defends the motion while the opposition is the one that counters and opposes the motion. Each team has three speakers and each speaker talks one time except either the first or second speaker who will have to deliver a reply speech, which is a biased summary of the whole debate. I learned that the speaker's manners during the debate also affects his or her score. Each speaker has to give some arguments and rebuttals if necessary. Rebuttals counter the arguments that the opposite team has mentioned. It is also expected that each speaker uses the sign-post technique in which the speaker should state how many main points he/she will deliver his/her rebuttals and arguments in. After today's meeting, I look forward on joining the next debate club meeting. I am interested in learning more about debate because after today's meeting, I realized that I know nothing about debate. All the things I learned today are new to me. I look forward to use the new knowledge I learned and will learn about debate to improve my debate and speaking skills.