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Grade 9: Online Assembly(5)

April 28, 2020

On April 17, Chloe from 9(3) gave an Assembly demonstration to all the students in the grade and shared her experience in debate.

Chloe has been debating for about three years, and it changed her entire personality. She went from an "awkward" introvert to a less "awkward" extrovert. Moving on to the principles of debate, Chloe shared that: Debate, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary, is defined as a formal discussion on a particular topic in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward. This definition could be synthesized as “arguing formally”. The three main forms of debate that people do are British Parliamentary (BP), WSDC, and Public Forum (PF). BP and WSDC are essentially more impromptu forms of debate where debaters get the topic they’re about to debate 15 minutes before the round starts, while PF is more focused on research and preparation. Debaters would spend up to months preparing for a topic in PF.

The reason why Chloe got into debate was not because she wanted to—as an introvert, she was terrified of public speaking and wanted nothing to do with arguing with people. She only went to her first debate tournament because her friend forced her into it. Ever since that first tournament, Chloe became addicted to the rushes of adrenaline that comes with debating, and she started participating in more tournaments. Debate made her a more outgoing person and helped her cope with social anxiety. Chloe also found that she has become better at working in a team after working with a lot of different partners. Why should you debate? According to Chloe, first of all, debate makes you smarter. A lot of debate topics might seem biased or unbalanced, but once you find a loophole in the topic that allows you to argue in another way, you still have a good chance at winning the round. Thinking in such a way trains your brain to think critically, which makes you smarter. Critical thinking skills are also very useful in schoolwork. Secondly, debate makes you better at working with a group and communicating with other people. Thirdly, since a good debater needs to be well-informed, you’ll have to push yourself to learn about some really interesting things—information you need to know ranges from global affairs to the newest scientific advancements. Therefore, debate requires you to be more aware of things that’s going on in the world, which pushes you to broaden your horizon.

(Written by Chloe Wu Pictures byChloe Wu Supervised by Menglei Wang )