Eurasian Schools Debating Championships

The Eurasian Schools Debating Championships (ESDC) is an annual open English-language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

debating

Debate

Debate or debating is a method of interactive and representational argument. Debate is a broader form of argument than logical argument, which only examines consistency from axiom, and factual argument, which only examines what is or isn't the case or rhetoric which is a technique of persuasion...

tournament

Tournament

A tournament is a competition involving a relatively large number of competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses:...

for high school

Secondary education

Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...

-level teams representing different countries. ESDC is open to national and school teams alike, depending on team cap.

The first edition was hosted by the Robert College Debate Society in Istanbul with 50 teams from 20 different countries.

Format

Eurasian Schools Debating Championship debates use a special format known as 'World Schools Style Debating

World Schools Style debating

World Schools Style debating is a combination of the British Parliamentary and Australia-Asian debating formats, designed to meet the needs of the World Schools Debating Championships tournament. Each debate comprises eight speeches delivered by two teams of three members, representing the...

' as most of the teams esteem the tournament as a preparation for WSDC. World Schools Style is a combination of the British Parliamentary and Australian formats. In each debate there are eight speeches delivered by two three-member teams (the Proposition and the Opposition). Each speaker delivers an eight-minute speech; then both teams deliver a "reply speech" lasting four minutes, with the last word being reserved for the Proposition. Between the end of the first and the beginning of the last minute of an eight-minute speech, the opposing party may offer "points of information". The speaker may refuse these, but should take at least one or two points during his or her speech.

Teams in ESDC debate eight rounds before "breaking" into octo-finals. After first round, teams are paired with each other with power pairing. Team with the same number of wins play against each other. If there are more than one teams on the same point, then teams are paired randomly. Top sixteen teams with highest number of wins and speaker points advance into single elimination octo-finals.

The Eurasian Schools Debating Council

During the inaugural ESDC, teams participating decided to form Eurasian Schools Debating Council which will govern the championships in a democratic manner. The formation of the charter is still in process.

Principles of the Eurasian Schools Debating Championships

Openness: ESDC will remain open to all teams of any formation as long as the space allows
Flexibility: ESDC will seek to govern itself in a non-bureaucratic way
Innovation: ESDC will seek to try novel ideas in debating

Past championships

Year	Champions	Runners-up	Venue	Convener	Chief Adjudicator
2011	Singapore Singapore Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...	Greece C	Istanbul Istanbul Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and... , Turkey Turkey Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...	Cem Zorlular	Evanthia Giannakouri & Can Talaz

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.