The First SNA Debate Competition

SNA started its first time of intra-school debate competition from March 20th, and it lasted for two weeks, which is a festival for students who love debate or want to practice their English skills. The topic is whether UN is still important. 45 teams took part in the competition, and each team consists of 2 debaters, which is very impressive considering how many students SNA has now. Not only did students of the debate club participate, but also many amateurs who have no experience before joined. After 6 rounds of intense debates, Bella from 10-3 and Jerry from 10-5 claimed the title of championship. 

The form of debate used in the competition is called “Public forum debate”. Public Forum (or PF) style debates were first introduced in 2002, and was originally known as “Ted Turner” style debate, after the famous American journalist. Public Forum was created in response to the perceived inaccessibility and insularity of the other formats in American debating, which had seen a significant rise in the use of jargon, rules technicality, rapid rate of delivery, and increasingly obscure arguments. Making them increasingly removed from the sorts of compelling discussion they were supposed to model. 

The goal of the competition is three-fold: first, debates can greatly enhance students’ confidence and improve their English level, which is crucial for their future study abroad; second, this competition is deemed as a presentation of debate club’s achievement; last but not the least, this competition can prepare our students for the debate contest hold by NHSDLC in Nanjing this May. 

The debate competition also intrigued the interest of teachers. Many teachers volunteered to be judges in the debates, and they offered massive help to our debaters, and what’s more, in the final four of our fantastic teachers – Arshia, Tracy, Collin and Tom- presented a wonderful mock debate in front of the audience, which pushed the entire night to its climax. 

Throughout the entire competition, not only did students get the chance to practice, but also we found many new promising debaters from the spring classes. The competition has just ended, but all are looking forward to the next year’s competition already.