ESS debate
On November 20th and 21th, an ESS Debate Meeting was held at Ritumeikan University in Shiga Prefecture. Only freshmen were allowed to join it. Many universities participated in this meeting, and I was surprised to learn that there are a lot of debaters at other universities.
The topic of the meeting was “should the Japanese government oblige every full-time worker to take child-care leave?”
Let me explain the debating rules. One team consists of two students, and five people participate in a debate game: there are two teams of two students coming from the same university and there is one judge. The two teams have to argue the affirmative side and negative side of the topic, respectively. The two sides debate the topic and then the judge decides which team is the winner.
There are four freshmen, including me, in Mie University’s debate section, so we could make two groups. In two days, I did six games. The result is … my team won four games! I was very happy about the result, particularly since I couldn’t win during the first meeting in October.
Through this meeting, I managed to improve my English skills and came to realize that debate is interesting. Preparation for debate games is very hard but I’ll keep on doing it. On December 11th and 12th, we’ll participate in the third meeting.
Lastly, I want to say that ESS is lots of fun!
Comments
I prepared for evidences that our opinion can be supported. For example, when my opponet team said “if government obligates men to take child-care leave, companies will go bankrupt”, my team read evidence that says “companies won’t go bankrupt because the government has a lot of money and can support them”.
I also prepared for speech that defeats the opponent team and confirms our opinion. These preparations were very useful because we had to state our opinion as quickly as possible.
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Congratulations!
Here’s a photo of Pekochan preparing for the debates by Akiko-san.
What exactly did you do to prepare for the debates?