2022年度第１回即興型英語ディベート

Another year of online English debate has started! After three meetings to learn the flow of a parlimentary debate and practice some basic debate skills, the students took part in their first two debates in front official judges. Before the debates started, the main judge gave the students advice about explaining the status quo (SQ) and after plan (AP) when making arguments in debate. SQ means to explain the current situation and AP means to talk about how the situation would be different if your team's idea was enacted. For example, if the debate is about abolishing homework, the government team (肯定チーム) might say, "We should abolish homework because now students don't have enough time. If students didn't have homework, they would have more time." With extra details and examples, this pattern of arguing can be very powerful in debate and we hope the students use it throughout the years' activities.

For the first debate motion was "Grade-skipping should be introduced in compulsory education" (義務教育での飛び級を導入すべきである。) and the second was Companies should encourage employees to wear a skirt at work.
(スカートで出勤することを推奨すべきである。). Although it was only the first online debate meeting, the new students did very well, especially in their verbal delivery. Many students spoke in strong, confident voices, and tried hard to use gestures and maintain eye contact with the judges and other team. Also, there were a number of points of interest (POIs), where students interrupt the current speaker to ask questions to clarify or challenge their ideas. Using POIs requires quick thinking and confidence, so we were happy to see so many.

Overall, this was a great start to the year's debates and we are excited about the next meeting in July. Well done, everyone!

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