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Writer's pictureCaia TAM

DEBATE

If you had read the one I previously wrote on debate, you would know that I had yet to win a competition. Which was true. So why don’t we find out if practice really does make perfect?


Debate is something that I decided to try once, and have been hooked ever since. (OK well to be fair I did quit for a couple of weeks to try MUN, but that didn’t exactly work out, so here we are, back again.) In the end, the truth is the only way to success is to refine until it finally works. Working on strategy, speeches, and how to structure them. But most importantly, teamwork and research.


The most perfect example, would be the recent debate competition I did with my teammates, Lucas Mooney, Esme Lam, Maxence Hung and Jayden Leung. The competition we did was the JSDC, also known as the junior school debate competition. This was one of the biggest events of the year, which is why it really was one of the most important events in my debate learning “career” yet. But, it would not be easy, especially since we were the youngest group by far, and also one of the least experienced, but it was still needed.


While we did a lot of research, we did not do enough. The realisation only dawned on us when we saw the senior debaters help us edit our research. It was sort of amazing, in just minutes they were able to produce points reasoning and know the background knowledge on it. I really hoped that at some point we would be able to do something at that level as well. 


So what was the one thing I learned? It’s sort of complicated. This experience was more eye-opening than anything, but in the end, I learned what I want to be able to do. While I may have a lot. I mean a lot, of work to do, but at least now I know what standard I want to set.


To answer the question, yes, practice does make perfect. Evidently, as we were finally able to win one of our rounds in the tournament, one of my most treasured achievements, out of the 8 which I did, I finally won 1. I am happy about this one win, and to me, it far outweighs my losses. But I hope this is just one of many, and I will be able to join my team into more and more victories.



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