Damascus-Sana
The final phase of the third national championship for school debates for 2020, held by the Syrian Trust for Development and the Excellence and Creativity Commission for secondary school students (10th and 11th grades) in the youth city of Damascus, was launched today.
Nine teams comprising 45 male and female students who qualified from the governorates qualifiers in which sixty teams who passed the school qualifications in which three thousand male and female students from the governorates of (Damascus, Rural Damascus, Quneitra, As-Suwayda, Homs, Hama and Tartous) participated in the final stage of the championship, which continues until the fifteenth of this month. Lattakia and Aleppo) to choose the team that will represent Syria in the world championship for school debates scheduled to be held in Mexico next July.
Rose Milona of the Organizing Committee of the tournament said in a statement to the delegate of Sana that every team participating in the competitions of this stage plays six games, two of which are being prepared for them in advance and the other four games are improvised so that two teams qualify at the end of this stage competing with each other to determine the winning team indicating that a segment was targeted Students between the ages of 15 and 17, as per the rules of the International School Debating System.
From the judging team, Ola Bishani indicated that the arbitration process takes place at three levels (method, content and strategy), considering that the contest is a contest that gains students new skills and knowledge in addition to refining their personality at the social level through forming friendships with their peers from the same age and from various governorates.
The referee noted that I am authorized to advance the level of teams from one match to another and the students benefit from their mistakes with the tournament reaching its final stage, stating that the debate is not only controversial, but it is a culture as it touches on several historical, social, legislative and legal issues that contribute to expanding the student culture.
Trainer Sandra Abu Al-Khair from the Damascus countryside team indicated that the preparation for the tournament started two months ago, where students were selected in the lighthouses of the Syrian Secretariat for Development and were trained on how to deliver and the art of public speaking and dealing with reactions and dialogue and ways to search for information and how to analyze it to communicate to the recipient in a correct way indicating to That the student can participate next year in the tournament and if he exceeds the age of eighteen he can participate as a coach or referee.
Coach Osama Al-Neamah from the Damascus team pointed out that the debates this year evolved from the previous year and include improvised sentences that make the two teams within an atmosphere of brainstorming to persuade the public and the ruling committee of their position according to studied scientific plans.
In meetings with SANA, a number of students emphasized the importance of the debates and their role in building their personality, skills and abilities, including the student, especially the student Daba from the Aleppo team that participated for the second time in the championship, considering that it is a beautiful experience that gives the student the opportunity to express his opinion in a logical manner and learn about new points of view.
The student Zina Ismail from Quneitra governorate considered that participating in the championship gave her confidence to express her opinion on the topics presented, whether political or social, as well as accepting the opinions of others contrary to her opinion, while the students Hussein Sharaf and Muhammad Omar Qaziz confirmed that the debates contribute to developing awareness of them.
The student, Judy Mohamed, from the Lattakia team, expressed her admiration for the contradiction of the ideas presented in the debates, which creates an atmosphere of competition, excitement and motivation, while the student Nada Al-Buqai from the Homs team pointed to the role of the debates by highlighting their skills in convincing the public.
The debate is based on a special mechanism of presentation called (the global school-style debate), where two teams compete in each debate, one of which supports the topic being discussed and the other denies the same topic regardless of the contestants ’personal opinion. Each debate consists of three letters, each speaker introduces a speech for four minutes and then presents each The two teams have a three-minute response letter. The last word for the support team is run by each panel. Four judges evaluate each team in terms of time, style, content and strategy.
Indian Hellanh