Sharpening their wits for a “classy” debate

The students in the Pacific Rim Asian Studies class in the American Degree Transfer Program (ADTP) at Sunway were given a unique assignment: to prepare for a Grand Debate, by pitting all they had learnt in class into a war of words. The marks for this went towards their final year end mark.

The 24 students of the class came from Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, USA, Kenya and Korea and were divided into debating teams of 6 students per team. There were three frontline debaters and three “backup” researchers. The debate was in the British parliamentary style and there were two rounds. The top two best teams of the preliminary round went on to the final round which was held recently at Sunway. The debate motion in the final round was “This House believes that the 21st century will be the Pacific Asian century”

 

The two groups drew lots 24 hours before the debate to decide on their positions, if they were the proposition or the opposition. This stretched the teams to sharpen their arguments in a short time which made the debate edgy. The audience was made up of Sunway students and staff who came eagerly to watch the verbal banter delivered by the students.

All the proposition team debaters were from Malaysia and the opposition was made up of two Indonesians and a Kenyan. There was a rose among them, the only female debater, Nurfizny Ramdhani, who was from Indonesia. The chairperson was Nigerian student Nwankwo Alexander Chiedozie who awed the audience with a crisp delivery of his thoughts on the debate. Fellow classmate Diana Udodirim Nwakanma, also from Nigeria was a lively Mistress of Ceremonies.

It was a debate which allowed the unique style of each debater to show through. This was followed by a 40 minute Q&A session between the audience and the debaters. The Chief Judge was Datuk Professor Dr Khoo Kay Kim, Professor Emeritus of the Department of History, Universiti Malaya. Professor Khoo shared “I was impressed with the standard of the debate and also the multinational flavor of the ADTP which made the faculty vibrant and lively” He added “The Pacific Rim Asian Studies course here is a good starting point for an Asian Studies Centre. We need to understand Asia from the perspective of Asians and not necessarily from a westerner’s viewpoint”

The winning team was the opposition team and the best debater was Mark Nathaniel Barki from Indonesia. The winning team was unanimously decided hands down by the team of three judges.

Dr Anindita Dasgupta, the senior lecturer of the Pacific Rim Asian Studies said “This testing of the students’ knowledge in front of a live audience encouraged analytical thinking and boosted confidence. More importantly, the students learnt to defend their arguments which will come in useful as they will be expected to do so in real life”.