WDI Asia winding down
 
PHOTO: Logan Belavigendran (crouching next to me) and I pose with a group of students we have been working with at WDI Asia The one week workshop is drawing to a close as the tournament starts today, Saturday. Thursday was a day of lectures and small groups, and then in the evening a lively session was held on the “Psychology of winning” that covered a broad spectrum of issues, including the different sort of psychological forces and pressures concerning Asian women in international debate and women in debate in general. The panel discussion included Kevin Massey, chief adjudicator of the upcoming WUDC in Vancouver, Irma Nasarah of International Islamic University Malaysia, Hea Eum of Ehwa Women’s University in Korea, Logan Belavigendran of Multimedia University in Malaysia, and myself. Friday was composed a day-long adjudication seminar. Many of these students are the leaders of debating in their nations and thus need to know adjudication skills so that they can train judges as well as judge high school debates as an act of debate promotion. Kevin Massey and Logan ran this session. Students watched a video debate (an exhibition at last year’s WDI Asia) and then had a long discussion about scoring and decision. The evening had ben planned as a baseball game, but when rain broke out in the late afternoon it was decided to change the plan. The same thing had happened at WDI USA when rain disrupted beach day (http://debate.uvm.edu/wdiblog/wdiblog/Blog/70A750A5-72E7-43AB-9F50-DFE0727DCB11.html ). Instead, Jason Jarvis reserved a popular nightclub in Itaewon (the Spy Club) and gave everyone beverage tickets and had food supplied. It was a nice rebound. Today there are elective sessions (faculty proposed topics and students chose the ones they are interested in) and there will be nine different sessions in two different time-slots. Topics included: note taking for beginners, counterproposal workshop, analyzing current events, preparation strategies, disadvantages, teamwork, using humor in debates, law and legal issues in debate, analyzing controversial events, points of information workshop, government strategy skill session, analyzing underlying meaning in motions, improving fluency in speech delivery, saving a sinking ship as the whip speaker, introduction to critical theory, advanced beginner workshop, developing a strong model, forms of support, British Parliamentary debate for beginners. Then the tournament begins, with two preliminary rounds. Tomorrow there will be two more rounds, a semifinal and then a grand final. I will be reporting from there and I hope to make a video of the grand final debate. http://debate.uvm.edu/wdiblog/wdiblog/Blog/70A750A5-72E7-43AB-9F50-DFE0727DCB11.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
WDI Blog
Monday, September 4, 2006