What is Debate?

Do you know what debate is? Have you seen that? Wanna learn about it? Alright, guys.  So, today I wanna share about debate, based on my experience when I was been one of the committee of English Debating Championship in my college, Tanjungpura University.

According to Wikipedia, debate is contention in argument; dispute, controversy; discussion; especially the discussion of questions of public interest in Parliament or in any assembly. In Parliamentary debate, there are some styles of debate, such as Australasian Parliamentary ("Australs"), Asian Parliamentary ("Asians"), British Parliamentary ("BP"), American Parliamentary, etc. But in my college, we used Asian Parliamentary style.

Before I talk about debate deeply, I wanna give you some terms that always be used in debate, such as:

·   Affirmative team (who agreed to a motion) is often referred to Government. It is also called Government team.

·         Negative team (which opposes the motion) is called Opposition team.

·         Motion is the topic of debate.

·         Parameter is limit of the motion.

·         Points of Information (POI) is an interruption by the opposite team (affirmative or negative team).

·         Rebut is to prove that the statements of the opposite team is false.

·         The first speaker was called as the Prime Minister (Prime Minister), and so on.

·         Leader / referee debate (chairperson) is called Speaker of the House.

·         Audience / jury is summoned Members of the House (Honorable).

·         Time keeper

In this format, there are two teams who consist of three members for each team; they are Affirmative team (Government) and Negative team (Opposition). This is the sequences:

·         The first speaker of the affirmative team-7 minutes

·         The first speaker of the negative team- 7 minutes

·         The second speaker of the affirmative team-7minutes

·         The second speaker of the negative team-7 minutes

·         The third speaker of the affirmative team-7 minutes

·         The third speaker of the negative team- 7 minutes

·         The reply speaker of the negative team-5 minutes

·         The reply speaker of the affirmative team- 5 minutes

Reply speech) is characteristic of this format. Closing speech delivered by the first or second speaker from each team (third speaker should not). Closing speech by the Opposition started first, and the Government.