top of page

Debate Overview 

​

Logistics of the Debate Tournament

​

The Madrid School Debating Tournament 2017, organized by Cánovas Fundación in cooperation with the Consejería de Educación de la Comunidad de Madrid, intends to be an educational meeting place for secondary education students from high schools involved in the bilingual programme of the Comunidad de Madrid. The aim is to help pre-university students develop their communication and research skills, foster debating as an indispensable tool for dialogue, consensus and the pursuit of truth. It is also designed to promote the active and dynamic use of the English language in an educational and participatory environment.

​

The competition will take place on May TBD  (Thursday and Friday) at CRIF Las Acacias, Madrid. The final round will take place at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas de Madrid ICAI- ICADE campus (Alberto Aguilera, 23) on Saturday May TBD.

Topic

​

TBD

 

DEFINITION OF KEY TERM

 

The question involves many different and complex areas -- economic, environmental, legal, and is also related to consumers and shopping habits, marketing strategies, cultural patterns, political choices and decision-making.  I encouraged my students to try to develop wide-ranging, far-reaching arguments by covering most of these fields while not forgetting to use logical arguments and evidence.

 

I also encouraged my students to defining in their own terms what “penalize” and “excessive” means will be essential.  For debate one must remember that it is a very specific question affecting the whole real world and your everyday lives. The more examples one can give, the more effective his or her position will be. 

 

Rules

​

This debating tournament follows the rules established by the Organizing Committee appointed by Cánovas Fundación, giving preference to educational aspects over competitive ones.

​

Every team will consist of four members, plus a teacher (that's me!) or trainer, who will be the person responsible for their students. For each debate there will be two teams standing for opposing positions (For/Against). As a whole, there will be four turns for each debating team: one opening speech, two rebuttals and one concluding speech.

 

Each team will be free to decide the order for their speakers to intervene in each debate. It is compulsory for all the members of the team to speak in every debate. All speakers will be standing up during their speeches, except when this is not physically possible for the speaker. All the debates will be in English.

​

Every debate will be assessed and judged by an expert jury of judges. Judges (also known as adjudicators) will be assigned by the organizers, choosing panels of judges made up by people with good knowledge and experience in competition debating, particularly in English.

Turns ​

​

Turns to speak will be closed and will proceed like this:

​

  • Opening Speech (Team “for”) 3 minutes

  • Opening speech (Team “against”) 3 minutes

  • Rebuttal 1 (Team “against” ) 4 minutes

  • Rebuttal 1 (Team “for”) 4 minutes

  • Rebuttal 2 (Team “against”) 4 minutes

  • Rebuttal 2 (Team “for”) 4 minutes

  • Concluding speech (Team “against”) 3 minutes

  • Concluding speech (Team “for”) 3 minutes

​

The approximate time for each debate will be 28 minutes. Complying with the assigned time is absolutely essential, and will be one of the guidelines used by the jury to assess the quality of speeches.

​

Questions

 

During rebuttal turns, the members of the opposing team not speaking may raise their hands and make questions to the debater taking the floor. Questions must be real questions demanding a straight answer, not comments or digressions. Questions cannot be longer tan fifteen seconds.

 

The speaker will be free to answer the question or not. Both questions and the speaker ́s answers will count as a part of their turn time (that is, the stopwatch won ́t stop).

 

bottom of page