The World Schools Debating Championship is about to begin in Seoul, Korea next week. Convened and hosted by Joshua Park of the Korea Debate Association, this is the premier event in international high school debate competition. As many as 35 nations are expected to field teams.

Mark Gabriel, WSDC chair, announced the motions back in May, 2007, by writing:

The Motions Selection Committee for the 2007 World Schools Debating

Championships has finalised its selections for the prepared motions to be

debated by the teams at this year's championship is Seoul. They are as

follows:

PRELIMINARY ROUND PREPARED MOTIONS

  -  This House believes that free trade harms the developing world

  -  This House believes that Holocaust denial should be a crime

  -  This House believes that the United States should withdraw from its

military bases in Asia

  -  This House would make the development of clean industry a condition for receiving non-emergency aid

GRAND FINAL MOTION

  -  This House would abolish the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Teams should arrive in Seoul prepared to debate both the Proposition and

Opposition sides for each of the four preliminary round prepared motions.

The draw (listing which teams will be debating each other in each round,

which teams will be in proposition and opposition for each debate, and the

order in which the prepared motions will be debated) will only be released

shortly before the start of the championship.

Whilst preparing for the debates, teams are strongly advised to read through the WSDC Guidelines on Defining Motions & Constructing Cases, which can be found at the 'Rules & Guides' section of the WSDC website (www.schoolsdebate.com).

OTHER ROUNDS

All teams involved in the championships will participate in eight

preliminary round debates - four of which will be prepared debates on the

motions listed above,* and four of which will be impromptu debates for which the motions will be released only one hour in advance. The octo-finals, quarter-finals and semi-finals will also be impromptu debates.

(* Note: If the total number of participating teams is an odd number, one

team will sit out each preliminary round and instead participate in a

'bye-round', so four teams will debate only three of the prepared motions if that is the case.)

For impromptu rounds, the team members will be kept in preparation rooms during the hour running up to the debate, and will not be allowed to consult with their coaches during that hour. Under the WSDC Rules, teams may not bring any published or handwritten materials into their preparation rooms for impromptu debates, except for one English Language dictionary, one bilingual dictionary, and one single-volume encyclopaedia or almanac. They are also not allowed to bring in any devices that are potentially capable of accessing information from outside the preparation room, such as mobile phones, laptop computers, pagers, PDAs, BlackBerries, etc.

Motions for all rounds of the competition are selected by the Motions

Selection Committee, which consists of five members elected by the World

Schools Debating Council and two members selected by the host organising committee. For 2007, the members of the Motions Selection Committee are:

Mark Gabriel (Singapore), Andrea Coomber (Australia), Albert Fornis

(Greece), Noel McGrath (Ireland), Christopher Bishop (New Zealand), Jumin Lee (South Korea) and Joshua Park (South Korea).

The website for this edition of the WSDC is http://www.wsdc-seoul.com/english/main.php

Claire Ryan will be keeping a regular blog for those of us not there at http://www.schoolsdebate.com/blog/

We will also keep you updated.