FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What does a student gain from participating in Chinese debate classes?
-
Reasoning and decision-making skills
-
Abstract reasoning and empathy
-
Presentation skills
-
Confidence
-
Oral communication and advocacy
-
Leadership and teamwork training
-
Practical life skills
-
Social interaction skills
-
Reducing communication apprehension
-
Basic research skill
-
And Chinese language application, of course!!
Is there a big time commitment for Chinese debate?
Yes, there can be if a student wants to compete. Students compete as a team and depend on each other to do the best they can for the team. Like all things, including other extracurricular activities, how much one gets out of it depends very much on how much one puts into it.
What if my child wants to quit Chinese debate?
That’s perfectly fine. Students come and go. We don’t expect every student to stay in the team. We understand there are a variety of legitimate reasons for such a decision, ranging from time commitment elsewhere to inadequate Chinese proficiency level. Team members who choose not to compete at a particular debate competition can still learn a lot through topic discussion and debate practices within the team.
What kind of competitions are there?
At this point, for our 8-10 and 10-13 debate classes, each class learns to debate age-appropriate topics in a 6 week topic cycle. Then, students can form teams of three to debate teams from other classes in intramural debates (練習賽). After the students learn the rules of debate and get more proficient over time, the coaches are looking into organizing more formal debate competition for our students, possibly with the participation of other Asian teams.
With the pandemic, there are also occasional international online secondary school or high school Chinese debate tournament opportunities and our coaches actively seek out those opportunities for our students.