- Student Success
The Global Chinese Debate Championship is a tournament that invites teams from High Schools and Middle Schools from all over the world, including from countries such as Singapore, China, the USA, and Australia. With 40 teams altogether, including our team from Hangzhou International School, more than 400 students were involved.
In this tournament, we are invited to participate in the Under 21 competition (students under 21 years old but older than 16). This was the first year for the HIS debate team to participate in this tournament, and most of the students in our team were just over 17 years old, which made us one of the youngest teams in the division.
The team included Preston R (G11), Gabriel L (G12), Oscar Z (G12), and Fedex X (G12), with two other students from Hangzhou and guided by our director, Ms. Vivian Zhang.
In our Chinese Debate Club, Ms. Vivian believes in fostering student leadership and agency, and encourages students’ independence.
The Global Chinese Debate Championship was hosted in Zhuhai during the summer holiday. Student leader Preston R from Grade 11 led the team effectively under Ms. Vivian’s remote guidance, which was a great success and showcased the students’ agency, success, independence, and leadership.
Initially, as we were joining for the first time, we expected to just gain experience. However, we did a great job in our first two games in the group knock-out session, only just losing out to the team who won second place in the tournament by 4-4.5, the Xin Bei White Crow Team from Taiwan (新北市白乌鸦辩论队), and beating Tianjin's Nan Kai School (天津南开中学) by 5-3.5.
Gaining confidence, we were excited to prepare for the following games, and made it to the semi-final, where unfortunately we lost to the High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University (北京师范大学附属中学), who ended up winning the championship in the final.
During the tournament, even though we secured fourth place, we gained valuable experience that is hard to acquire in daily life. Through competing against the eventual champions and runner-up, we gained valuable insights into how to convey our ideas more effectively.
That is the point of debate: to learn how to express yourself better. It is the most essential technique that debate can teach you. It is also a key lesson we learned from such a big event: debate is never about arguing against each other, which can make it seem like you’re quarreling, but instead about creating a scene with your own words of what you believe happened, and convincing others of its validity.