Debate: 24th of Feb. '14

Today is the last day of this year's debate club meeting. It is pretty sad that debate club has to end this early because less and less people are coming. Basically what we did today in debate club is evaluating the debate club meetings and the debate competitions we attended from the beginning until today. My friends and I thought that we did okay although we can now look back and point out some mistakes that could have been done better. My supervisors, Ms. Debbie and Ibu Stephanie, also asked for some feedbacks for debate club this year. My friends and I suggested that debate club should be more interactive. Maybe we can do different things in each meeting because this year's debate club seems to go in a cycle: talk about the technical aspects of a debate, research, practice debating and talk about potential debate competitions. Maybe instead of only focusing on debate, we can practice other skills that are crucial for school, like writing, being involved in a socratic seminar and delivering a presentation. That way people will not get bored so easily. Because in the first few meetings of debate club this year, there were actually a lot of people who were interested in joining. A lot of people came to the debate club but afterwards less and less people came. Despite all that, my friends and I believe that we have come a long way. We learned a lot of things about debate: how it works, what to talk about, how to deliver a speech during the debate, and about the technical aspects of debate. We experienced several debate competitions and we understand how challenging they are. We made new friends during the competition and everything that we have gone through is just something that cannot be exchanged. I am glad to have taken debate as my CAS activity.

Debate: 10th of Feb. '14

So today is the debate that goes under the motion: THBT the media should be prevented by law from intruding the lives of public figures. Darrell came late so eventually Mandy, Febe and I are the ones who debated for the opposition team. We were all very nervous. I felt like I forgot all of the things that I have learned in debate club before. At first I can't remember the technical aspects of a debate but thankfully my mind switched on again (phew!). I believe the affirmative team actually started the debate quite poorly because they didn't define the motion clearly and didn't explain the mechanism at all. They defined media as papparazzi and reporters, public figures as celebrities and intruding lives as taking pictures and interviewing celebrities that are walking down the street to go to a shop. When my team pointed out some flaws in the definition of the motion, especially for intruding lives, the second and third speakers of the affirmative team defined the motion differently. Each person in the affirmative team has different interpretations of the motion and my team made a very big deal of that. The biggest setback of my team is probably that we were too focused in arguing about the definition. We were so focused on that that we didn't completely rebut the arguments made by the affirmative team. We paid attention too closely on the definition of the motion that we didn't realized that the affirmative team has not set forth the mechanism to their proposal. As the opposition team, my team also didn't suggest a better way to solve the problem that is stated in the status quo. Thus, at the end my team lost. I believe that the debate is fair and my team still has a lot to improve on. Specifically myself, I did sign post and I feel proud that I can carry it out before but I still lack confidence. As echoed by the adjudicator, my tone isn't persuasive enough. I stutter a lot. Thus, I believe that to be a better debater I should increase my confidence and put my emotions into every word I say, just like the debater in the WSDC video I watched last week.

Debate: 3rd of Feb. '14

Next week there will be a debate under the motion: THBT the media should be prevented by law from intruding the lives of public figures. My team consists of Mandy, Febe and Darrell. My team and I are in the opposition team. I researched and developed some arguments today. I discussed them together with my team mates and they tried to give in some suggestions. I also rebutted some of my team members' arguments so as to make our arguments more in depth and not refutable. I believe we came up with quite a lot of strong arguments, which may be the strength of today's discussion but we haven't decided who will speak first, second, third and fourth as the reply speaker, which may be the weakness of today's meeting.

I am quite excited but also am quite nervous for next week's debate. It's been a long time since I last debated in front of a number of people. I have to make sure I remember to sign post this time so my speech will be organized and easy to understand.