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"On a Point of Information!": Debating at AUA [November 14, 2005] For the past few years now, the Debate Club of the Department of English Programs at the American University of Armenia has brought together active groups of English-speaking students from different universities in Yerevan to participate in entertaining and informative discussions. Supported in part by the British Council, the Debate Club follows the Parliamentary style of debating, wherein four teams represent two sides of an issue - the motion at hand - and speak taking turns, expressing the upshots, downsides and even diagonal arguments to get their points across. Debating is an ancient art. Rhetoric, grammar and logic formed the staple of any education in classical times, and their relevance has not been reduced in our day. The motion presented may be clear ("Cloning is wrong"), or could be open to debate itself ("A man's best friend is his clone"), so one of the aspects of debating is defining the motion, which generally is done by the very first speaker. What follows is a series of arguments and counter-arguments, and also questions from the opposing team and the audience (the speaker's attention has to be caught with a demanding, "On a point of information!"), all within the space of seven minutes. The "Government" and the "Opposition" try to find flaws in each other's arguments, and, at the same time, bring forth more solid bases for their own points of view. Debating means making your point in a coherent, concise and comprehensive manner. In a debate, you are given an issue and told which side to argue, so you are compelled to defend that side, regardless of your personal beliefs, sometimes to the bitter end. Humor helps, and is often the only way out of a difficult question or weak argument. At the AUA Debate Club, students get to practice their English and also make new friends. It's surprising to see how many international and regional debating events take place all over the world (there's lots of information about them online); the students are looking forward to participating in one, hopefully sometime in the near future. Debating is fun, to be sure, but it is also extremely helpful in developing oration skills, critical thinking and logical approaches to issues, so that when life raises a point of information, we are ready to come out on top. Nareg Seferian |
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