Debate: 17th of Nov. '13

The venue of the final round

Courtesy of President University

My team won first place in this week's debate competition! I am so proud of my teammates and myself. I never imagined winning first place in a debate competition this fast. I learned and had a lot of fun. The final round was under the motion "THW ban all donations to religious organizations." After today's debate competition, especially after the final round that was held in a huge public room, I am definitely more confident in speaking. I now understand that besides having POIs to the opponent speaking, I can also have Point of Clarification to clarify what I said if the opponent gets it wrong. I also learned that all speakers should explain everything thoroughly because if we don't take a lot of time explaining our arguments, the adjudicator might not catch all of them and even maybe skip one whole argument we mentioned. This week's debate competition also made me realized more of my weaknesses as a speaker. In the final round, I was so nervous that I didn't use the whole 7 minutes to speak. I went down in the 6th minute. I felt that I could have spoken more and explained my ideas more thoroughly but I was so nervous that I forgot the things that I wanted to say. I should also learn to speak more aggressively so that I can intimidate my opponents

Me speaking in the final round of the debate competition

Courtesy of President University

and show that I strongly believe in what I say. I still need to improve my organization skill too. In some of the rounds today, I felt like I could have been more organized in the things I said. Even so, in overall, I think my team has improved a lot from the previous debate competition. We communicated pretty well and we had a lot of information to support our arguments. For me personally, what I think I did well was in giving factual data and feedbacks to my team. I believe that I should keep on doing that.