Debate cycle | Chinese Debate Inter

練習賽 Debate Cycle

Week 1 & Week 2: regular discussion classes & debate topic selection

Week 1: Voting. Students vote on which topic they want to debate on from Wednesday to Friday . It will be clear over the weekend what the top choice is.
Week 2: Preparation. Student and coach research materials. Coach will place some materials online toward the end of the week. 
Classes will have regular session, with a different discussion topic each week.

Week 3 & Week 4: debate team formation

Review available debate slots based on dates and times (weekend 6, 7, 8)
Organize teams within each debate class 
Sign up all possible teams for all possible slots on week #4 (Monday-Thursday) 
Announcement of match list & debate side on Friday 9PM ET of week #4 
Matched teams start working on debate speech & strategy independently and with the coach as well during class after match list is released. Debaters should start meeting up online themselves for team meeting.

Week 3-8: debate preparation

The following is just a very crude and general overview of a team's tasks. 
Know your debate side: affirmative (正方） or negative (反方). 
Determine debate positions (ㄧ辯，二辯，三辯，結辯） 
Determine your overall strategy and arguments. What are your claims, evidence, and impacts? For your claim, present your arguments in clear statements. Cite the evidence that support your claims (statistics, references, quotes, analogies, etc.). Explain the impact of your evidence, basically how your evidence support your claims. 
Consider how your opponent will attack your claims, evidences, or impacts and write down your rebuttal. 
Consider how your opponent will stake their claims, evidence, or impacts and write down how you will attack their positions. 
Write the ㄧ辯稿（正ㄧ or 反ㄧ）. 
Write #5 and #6 in two columns, one for your team and the other for your opponent's possible arguments. So, now you know what to say if your opponent say something that you had expected. 
Keeping practicing reading aloud everything your team has written down. The more fluent and the faster you can speak intelligibly, the more "ammunition" you can release during debate. The more fluent and faster you can deliver your arguments, the more your Chinese improves. 
Make sure every member of your team is on the same page in terms of your team's arguments. A team works best when their arguments are cohesive and complementary.

Week 6-8: debate 練習賽

Matched teams submit names of their teams & debater positions (辯次) by Sunday of Week #5
Debate teams continue to work on their speech and strategy independently and with the coach and the rest of the class during class. 
Debates starts the weekend of Week 6 and continue the weekend of Week 7, & Week 8 
During debate, I encourage each team to have another line of communication (Google Hangout, 3 way calling, etc...) to make use of the 30 second 轉場時間 and the 2 minutes before 結辯 to strategize. 
Debaters who debate the weekend of Week#6 should try to debate again the weekend of Week #7 or Week #8. The more you debate on the same topic, the better you get. 
I will try to schedule debates to be 90 minutes to allow the coach adequate time for proper review, instruction, & commentary with the debaters after the debate. 
Classes without a competing team will practice debating within class for Week #6 & Week #7. Quickly going though a debate topic without actually preparing for and engaging in debates is a learning opportunity lost. The coach will help such class divide into two teams for practice within the class. Each noncompeting team should go through debate preparation as listed above to maximize their learning.

Wrap up: Week #8

Teams who wish to have more detailed review of their performance from Week #6 & 7 or who are competing the weekend of Week #8 can continue to work with the coach during Week #8. 
Classes who are done with the debate topic will have a regular discussion classes for Week #8

Cycle 1

Cycle 2