school debating

[phagist_]

I'm a masturbator... oshi

[humph]

yes i'm a debater.. anyone adjudicating next year?

Yep. Although being in Canberra, I don't know how many dabates I'll actually be able to adjudicate. I asked them, and they said that's fine and also actually gave me the email of the Canberra debating organisation.

I debated in year 7, 8, 9 and 12 and was always first speaker until in my second debate in year 12, someone decided that they'd had enough of being 3rd speaker. I actually prefer third. If you do what they call 'thematic rebuttal' then the adjudicators love it. Basically, rather than bringing up every single point the other team made in the whole debate and saying why each point is bad, you just figure out the main strands of their argument (usually there's only one or two) and say why they're bad. Thirds get it easier than I thought!

I wasn't much good at secret topics though unless I wrote out my entire speech in that hour including rebuttal (which is eventually what I did). I seem to fall apart if I don't have preparation.

I don't know why I did it because beforehand I was always terribly nervous, but I don't know, I guess there was a geeky adrenaline buzz. And I got best speaker in all of my debates last year apart from one. It is essentially lying though, I couldn't count how many times I've argued for something I don't agree with, but the issues are hardly ever contentious, so most of them I didn't really care about either way. I'd like to say that it helped build my confidence and ability as a public speaker, but I don't know if it has. It has made me think about structure a lot more though and I'm sure it's intellectual stimulation. And it's something to put on my CV too.

there's an ANU debsoc (debating society), has regular debates throughout the year. one of my friends did it; he loved it.

you can also debate for your college in the interhall competition, though i imagine the competition to get in the debating team would be quite stiff at burgmat (everyone's into that kinda thing there).

[Eriny]

Yeah, I'm thinking of doing debating at uni. I was talking to someone who did it at Monash and even went overseas to debate!

[brendan]

Me and enwiabe were discussing the difference between argument and persuasion on msn, and I think there is an important difference that is worth sharing with my fellow FSNers:

You have to see the distinction between arguing and persuasion. You could very well argue endlessly but in the end persuade and convince no one. If i knew there was 0 probability of persuading or convincing anyone, then I simply wouldn't bother arguing. What is the point? If i simply like the process of arguing in itself, regardless of whether i achieve the objective of persuasion, then I would debate kopite personally and endlessly but I didn't, because my objective was persuasion, and I saw little prospect of that occurring if I debated him in private.

"I have distinguished between confrontation and persuasion, It is many years now since Dale Carnegie, a pioneer in public speaking and personal development training, made the important distinction between argument and persuasion in his bestselling book 'How to Win Friends and influence People', first published in 1936. His book is not so frequently read today but many of his points are worth remembering. He advocated avoiding arguments in one-on-one conversations because if you won you provoked, if you lost you were humiliated." Chester Porter QC, 'The gentle art of persuasion' (2005), pp. 8-9