Thursday, 12 March 2015

Year 7 Debate Reflection

            On the past few weeks, my classmate and I were learning about the topic “Debate” on our English class. We were studying about the 3 basic components of debates, which are Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. We also studied about the art of persuasive text & speech and how to create a well argument for our debate. After we learned some basics of debating, we moved on to try out a debate with some fun topics. There were two topics that were chosen for these debates. They were “Dogs vs Cats” and “Apple vs Samsung”. I myself chose the topic Apple vs Samsung with the other 7 guys and Radi and I were the ones who rebut this topic. After the debate, evaluations and comments were given to each of the participants. We’ve decided to debate one more time but this time with more serious topic. This time the topics that were chosen were “One world, One currency” and “Drug traffickers = Death penalty”. This time, the other 7 people and I chose the topic “One world, One currency” and Albern and I were the ones who rebut this topic.

            On the final debate, which is the serious topic debate, I think that my group and I were pretty organized in planning and dividing jobs for each person in the group. We were planning the topic and arguments from the beginning of the time that were given for us to work on our debate. On every meeting of the English lesson, we were trying to ask our teacher (Ibu Megan) some advice for our progress in creating the arguments. I think if I would rate my group out of 10 in this area, I would rate it around 8.5/10 as there was a huge turn around where several of our group members change their arguments in the middle of creating one.

            As I was the one who will rebut the affirmative side of the topic “One world = One currency”, I didn’t really create an argument as I need to know what the other team was talking about and rebut them. But, I had created a prediction of what things that they will say to support their statement. During the debate, I need to quickly create a argument, find evidences, and organized them and I think, I did pretty okay in this aspect. I think that my arguments are pretty good but the structure in my grammar is a bit wrong and sometimes weird.

         For the evidence, I think that my group and I have pretty good and enough supporting evidence as we do a lot of research through the Internet and by interviewing. We also research them through books and articles from magazines. In researching for the backup evidence and the supporting evidence, we always look for advices from our teacher (Ibu Megan) on how to find the best evidence in opposing the one currency idea. I think If my group out of 10 in this are, I would rate it around 8/10 as there were some back up evidence that were not really back upping the argument.

            I think that my group used the time given to research, plan, and organize the argument pretty well even though sometimes we were struggling at some parts in planning and finding the evidence but I think that my group and I did pretty well in this aspect. I think that my group also uses the Aristotle’s persuasive techniques, which are Ethos, Pathos, and Logos pretty well. Just like our 3rd speaker. He uses one of the techniques to touch the audiences’ hearts and attract them to agree with his argument. For me, I think that I might use this techniques as during the debate, I directly created an argument and search for the evidence to rebut the statement from the other group. So, I might use those techniques but I might realize some of them and I also might not realize some of them.

            Overall my group did a pretty good job in this debate but there are still some aspects that we need to improve to be a better debater. I think I did well in rebutting through the statements that were stated by the other group and I think that I use the right evidence at the right time. But, I also need to improve in organizing the argument and the structure of the sentences. I also need to fix some grammar on my rebuttal statement. In conclusion, even though I think that I did pretty well in this debate, there are still some aspects that I need to improve next time to be a better debater. I think that the group that argued the best from each debate is the opposing side from the “One world = One currency” topic and from the opposing side of the topic “Drug traffickers = Death penalty”.


            For this debate, I think that I deserve the score of 18 out of 21 for the overall grade, as there are still some aspects that I need to fix and improve.

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