Debate competition

During the weekend of 20-21st January, a debate competition took place. Various schools from all around Finland participated, Mattlidens Gymnasium included. One of the participants from the group representing our school was interviewed and these were the results:

The debate consisted of 4 rounds in total, two of which were previously prepared while the students had to come up with an impromptu answer in the other 2 rounds, which means they got the topic and they did not have time to make any preparations, they simply started debating. The first round’s topic was ‘this house believes that international sporting events should remain depoliticized’, the second was ‘this house believes that the EU should implement qualified majority voting  in all decisions, where individual member states currently hold a veto’, the third represented ‘this house would ban all generative AI (e.g. ChatGPT) in schools’, and finally, the last round was on ‘this house believes that plea bargains should be implemented in Finland’. 

The Mattlidens students, Siri Nandikonda, Colin Backman and Aston Heino, debated on the opposing side all rounds except the first, in which they debated in proposition. From all the debates they took place in, they won rounds 1,3 and 4, however, the criteria to win the debate was ranked depending on the round that each group won and speaker points from each team. They also had to control their skills as speakers, as points were granted regarding their style (40%), content (40%) as strategy (20%).

One of the participants claimed that the tournament was good overall, however, one of their teammates was feeling sick that day, therefore it was harder for them to organise themselves, but they still managed to rank between the top 5 groups. She was also asked the ways her and her group could improve for the next tournament, to which she answered: ‘Looking at the results of the competition, we need to improve in the way we speak and improve on speaker points.’ Moreover, they had a practice debate before the National tournament in the English School, contributing on their skills and they had a great improvement after that. Finally, when she was asked about her experience, and what she was taking home after the tournament she said ‘I learned how to improve my skills on writing speech, as well as things from the judges like advice which I will apply in future tournaments’.

This competition definitely served our school mates to develop new skills, meet new people and, more importantly, to realise their strengths and weaknesses, and being aware of those that they need to improve.