S5L2 English: Enrichment Debating Competition
In the English department, S5L2 students from the enrichment groups have spent the year working on improving spoken production skills. Alongside this, the students have been partaking in a debating competition which was organised by Ms Strovs, the subject referent, and Mr Costello, the department coordinator. Students have spent a number of months working with their dedicated and enthusiastic enrichment teachers, Ms Smolcec, Ms Bleile and Ms Verelst, all of whom have been meticulous in teaching them how to argue effectively, respectfully and convincingly. As you might imagine, this has led to a thought provoking, engaging and overall enjoyable year in the S5 enrichment groups. In June, the students who were selected as the top debaters in each group went head-to-head in the final event.
S5 ENRICHMENT DEBATE TOURNAMENT
With the end of the school year approaching, the S5 enrichment English students were glad to take part in the final project. For the first time, an enrichment debate was held to reveal the most persuading team. The initial eliminations held in late May were preceded by intense rhetorical skills training in months prior to the event by Ms. Agnes Bleile, Ms. Emily Verelst, and Ms. Marijana Smolčec. The final debate with the topic ‘Should TikTok be banned in Europe’ was scheduled for Thursday June 22nd.
As the bell rang at the beginning of p4, the government, made up of 3 students including Constanza Bernier Palomino (S5ESA) and Julien Tonon (S5FRD), the opposition, composed of Alexandra Dudka (S5FRA), Sonia Nigge (S5DEA) and Niklas Behrendt (S5DEA), and the panel of judges Ms. Bleile, Ms. Strovs, Ms. Künster, Ms. Lovens and Mr. Costello, took their places and were ready to start.
The debate monitor, Larisa Velikonja (S5ENA), then introduced the teams and the panel of judges and explained the procedure. The time keeping position was held by Anteja Puš (S5ENA). The opening statement was made by a student from the government team and mentioned the risks of using TikTok as well as no age restrictions and spread of homophobia, racism, misinformation, and suicide thoughts. The opposition joined in with Sonia Nigge establishing crucial keywords (TikTok, to ban) and later mentioning that they are in favour of data security and are aware of problems with social media, but they trust Byte Dance’s claim to not giving user data to Chinese government. Constanza later went to contradict this argument by talking about Byte Dance being forced by Chinese law to share data which related to December data leakage and credit card data being collected. At the end she stated their main goal as the government team – Banning and being wrong about it is better than not banning at all. Niklas from the opposition responded by saying that age restrictions do exist on the app; it is parents’ responsibility to keep an eye on their children’s activity on TikTok. Another issue raised by the opposition team is that people only pay attention to TikTok without acknowledging the flaws of other media platforms – YouTube or Facebook. The government’s closing argument, raised by Julian Tonon, summarised their team’s way of thinking by stating that TikTok possesses mental health threats to our society. Alexandra Dudka contradicted that by mentioning that TikTok is not a news platform and that there is freedom of choice to use social media in first place. The opposition wanted to solve the problem, not ignore it.
After intense discussions in which many great arguments were presented by both motions, it was time for the panel to make a verdict. The decision was surely hard to make as the government and the opposition tried very hard to persuade the audience, but after careful consideration, the panel announced the winners of the first S5 enrichment English debate – Alexandra Dudka (S5FRA), Sonia Nigge (S5DEA) and Niklas Behrendt (S5DEA) from the opposition team!
By Helena Domańska S5PLA
