Some upsets today
Hi folks,
Rounds 5 and 6 took place at the Korea International School, the same venue as yesterday and much closer than the 2 hour bus journey some debaters, coaches and judges had to make to Gimpo Foreign Language High School on the first day of competition. Thanks to JUSTIN RESNICK who has been patiently arranging rooms at the KIS, co-ordinating volunteers and ensuring all goes smoothly. Without him, there would be chaos!
Unfortunately, there are few audience members for the debates, usually none unless the teams have supporters like the 4 Irish parents who flew in last night. This is because the championship is taking place during Korean students' exams...
Anyway, there are 3 new nations at the Championships - JAPAN, INDIA and MONGOLIA. I hope to have a few words from them for this site over the next few days.
Tomorrow, we are going to the DMZ so watch this space for news and photos about the border tour. Hopefully none of the students will point at the North Korean guards (we've been told not to point!)and we'll have a great time.
But in the meantime..... here are today's results.
Drop us a line or two saying what you think of the results or the debate topics.
ROUND 5
THBT that the United States should withdraw from its military bases in Asia
Germany 1 Ireland 2
Hungary 0 Hong Kong 3
Israel 3 Mongolia 0
Korea 2 Czech Republic 1
Slovenia 0 Pakistan 3
South Africa 3 Bermuda 0
Sri Lanka 0 England 3
United States 3 Japan 0
Bangladesh 0 Philippines 3
Estonia 0 Canada 3
Netherlands 0 Kuwait 3
Singapore 3 Romania 0
Slovakia 0 Wales 3
Argentina 3 India 0
Indonesia 1 Greece 2
Malaysia 1 Peru 2
Scotland 3 Lithuania 0
Australia had the bye
ROUND 6
Impromptu: THW legalize all drugs
Bermuda 3 Hungary 0
Czech Republic 1 Germany 2
England 1 Israel 2
Hong Kong 1 South Africa *
Ireland 2 Korea 1
Japan 0 Slovenia 3
Mongolia 0 Sri Lanka 3
Pakistan 1 United States 2
Canada 1 Netherlands 2
Kuwait 1 Australia 2
Philippines 1 Estonia 2
Romania 2 Slovakia
Wales 1 Singapore 2
Greece 0 Argentina 3
India 0 Indonesia 3
Lithuania 2 Malaysia 1
Peru 0 Scotland 3
Bangladesh had the bye.
Unless I'm mistaken, the unbeaten teams are:
Australia, Ireland and Scotland.
Signing out from Seoul,
Kiwi Claire
posted by Kiwi Claire @ 10:27 am
8 Comments
8 Comments:
Round 6 motion looks really opp-weighted, especially in WSDC where prop teams have very little leeway to set up debates strategically.
It shows in the results.
GO ON IRELAND!!!
The topics I find to be a little harsh on the debaters. Personally I find that issues regarding weight are a difficult one for younger people to debate as they find the issues difficult to deal with as it can cut a little close to the bone.
As for legalise all drugs - I personally think it's a great debate, but again for it to really work there needs to be an extremely strong understanding on the part of the speakers both of the deep philosophical issues involved and the detail regarding the real medical, psychological and social effects of these drugs. seeing as how they are blatantly misunderstood by most people, I think that considering the blanket 'drugs are bad -mmkay' approach that is used by most countries in their schools, I would be concerned at the average level of the debate.
But then again, I am notoriously bad at picking motions.
This are little things, overall quite solid.
Ross McGuire
Ireland
I've got a question about the teams that come from non-native-speaking countries. Do all or most of those debaters seem to be non-native speakers, or are there some who are fluent?
I would really like to see this tournament grow to where, at least for the beginning rounds, native-speaking countries are paired with other native-speaking countries, and non-native-speaking countries are paired with other non-native-speaking countries.
It's really sad to see some of these non-native-speaking countries get beat up time and time again.
I don't know if you've seen the round 1 results, but Hong Kong gave the US a run for their money in the first round.
The panel of judges unanimously gave the debate to Hong Kong.
The Philippines was also able to convince one judge in their debate against Australia.
These are non-native speakers, able to debate toe-to-toe with native speakers.
Pakistan has historically done particularly well at WSDC too.
thanks for the blog's clair makes me feel I'm there with you keep up the good work
What you're suggesting, Anonymous (comment #3) is a form of 'long-term' power-pairing, where teams are given opponents based on their results (or language ability, which may not correlate!) in previous tournaments. This has been discussed a few times by the World Council but rejected in the past because:
(a) A team from a 'non-native' country might have totally different ability in English to the team from the same country the previous year - if for example some students come from international schools.
(b)Some EFL teams have said in the past that they prefer the experience of debating strong native-language teams, even if they lose, rather than being restricted to a 'separate' EFL tournament.
There are however EFL awards made to the best-performing non-native teams.
Oh good lord. Why don't we just ban native English speakers altogether. That will be the only way to keep some people happy. But then again I suppose they will complain that some students have a better standard of English and that's not fair either.
also as far as i can see a fre non english speaking teams beat english speaking ones- the most obvious example is Israel beating England.
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