An Environment Topic and An English Debate Competitionby | 31-08-2015 11:56 |
|---|
   April 2015 was the time for my university English club to hold the annual debate competition. Since we have believe that debate is one of essential learning process for children and youth, so we set the wide age range of participant. We welcomed the junior high school students (11 – 14 years old), senior high schools students (15 – 17 years old) and university students (18 – 24 years old). Gratefully, we could fulfill that target. The oldest participant was 23 years old and the youngest was 13 years old. And, for making the competition became more challenging, we created it as open tournament. So, everything could happen. For that chance, my friends and I were trusted by the committee to be the adjudicators, because we had a lot of debating experiences. They also invited the experienced debater from other city to work with us. It was very interesting, we gave the participants various motions, from humanity, religion, economy until international relationship. But we saved the special one as the motion for final round. The motion was one of the trending topics and we were also so sure that it could help the participants to expand their knowledge. Environment motion was the adjudicators last weapon for the final round. It was quite surprising for the participants especially for debaters whom just began their debating career. It can be said that environment is quite rare to appear in our regional debate competitions. Because, environmental issues are not dynamic as political or economical issues. Environmental issues are usually available in certain spaces on newspapers. It is seldom to be highlight news unless there is a huge disaster or massive victims caused by environmental problem. That is why, environment was our main guest for that event, in order to remind everybody there that environment is also essential point to keep an eye of. Another reason was its difficulty level matched our expectation for final round. "In time of Economic Crisis, THW Significantly Cut National Budget for Environment Preservation Activities Included But Not Limited to Research, Forestation etc. " That was the motion. For winning over it, participants should analysis on how environment preservation activities which is assumed by people as tertiary thing can be upper hand than national budget efficiency. Meanwhile, another side should proof that in crisis time, feeding society, providing job vacancy, improving currency and getting trust from investor are the things the government should focus on because after economy has recovered, the government can take care of environmental issues again. The final round was very exciting since the committee had decided British parliamentary as the debate system and the four finalists were various. There were one team from junior high school, one team from senior high school and two teams from university. It showed that age and education degree do not limit capability of someone. The high school student teams had proved that they deserve to be the finalist after beating other senior teams in the previous rounds. Then, with this motion, senior high school team came as the second winner. The first winner goes to one of university teams and the youngest one came as the fourth winner. I really hope, after that event, the young debaters will explore more about environment and add it as one of their training material sets. I really hope in my region, there will be a special debate event for environment. Anyway, I always promote Tunza - Eco Generation in this kind of event and campaign for environment in the break time. Thanks for reading. |
