Presented by Julia, currently studying in Harvard, graduated from Gunn High School in the Bay area.



Today I'm going to talk about speech and debate: first, what I consider speech and debate to be; second, why I think you should learn speech and debate as well as my own personal experience and how debate helps me in my life; third, how I became a confident speaker, and the techniques, methods I used to train myself to become a better debater.



What exactly is speech and debate? 

Many think debate to be a formal, rigid type of activity, where a certain number of people stand up on the stage and, using different type of rules, combat each other through discussing certain resolutions or topics.
When you hear “debate”, you may relate it to official or invitational forms of debate such as national forensic league and all the regional/national invitational tournaments. That is one way to consider it, but it is not how I define it. I think debate is something that you can use on a daily basis. 

At the core, debating is about arguing and using the skills/techniques that debate teaches you to pursue the arguments. At the deeper level, debate is the art of persuasion - understanding how human being thinks, how they logically reason out to certain conclusion, and how you can intercept that process to persuade a person from inside out to believe what you wanted them to believe. It is not just on the podium or on the stage, it is a tool of analysis, a critical thinking ability, and the key to fast reaction skills. It is not just when you are in competition that these skills become useful; pretty soon, they become interlaced in just the way you are, the way you behave and the way you treat others. You will start to realize many things in your life will go across much more smoothly. For example, whenever I go to the interview, since I have done many years of debate, it is extremely easy for me to analyze what the interviewer is trying to ask me; then I can use subtle persuasive skill to have the interview turn out the way where I want it to be. The skills you learn in debate also work well on your parents :); for example, when you want to go out and enjoy the time with your friends, when you want new car, etc. You will find that it is very subtle persuasion ability that debate & speech teach you and that how you present yourself will go a long way. I regularly use the logical processes that I learnt from debate to battle with my parents; very regularly, I have the discussion like "No", I would like to go along the speech trend… "because so and so.. argument x, y ,and z…", more often (like 9 times out of 10, the 'arguments') usually turn out the way I wanted to be.



Why should you learn debate?


Beside the benefits of being able to thoroughly understand how people communicate with each other and being able to understand how their mental processes work, there are some factual, grounded reasons why people do debate: debate improves writing ability, speaking ability and thinking ability.



Writing - because of the extreme logical clarity that debate demands of you, most debaters that I know don't have to study at all for most English, history, and social exams; myself included. I never study for English, barely study for history (just some names and dates that need to be memorized), and never study for social. It’s just the things that I don't have to do. I spent most of my time studying math and something else. 

Debate helps you improve your writing ability tremendously. You will find that once you learn speech & debate, many things start to naturally flow. For example, the SAT essay might be stumping most of you right now, but it’s not a problem at all for debaters. For us, 25 minutes is already way more than we have to prepare for a parliamentary impromptu debate; typically, we only have 15 minutes to prepare for it. The way you prepare for debate is exactly the same as you prepare for SAT essay: 3 pillars, contentions, try to hit most sides/all sides of an issue, come up with interlacing case line or theme that ties everyone together, and then you come up with title, conclusion, and ending. So, writing an essay is usually just like debating except bringing the words down to paper. If you really spend time on speech & debate, you'll realize you don't need to prepare for writing at all, including for the Harvard writing exam they give you after you get in. The exam is used to help on placement of students. They gave 72 hours to do it; I did mine about 6 hours. Debate skills tremendously helps increase your writing ability.



Next, thinking ability. Debate is all about cognitive ability. Some of it is about how well you speak, but most of it is about mental battle with the other opponents. Essentially, you give a reason and they give a counter reason, you find a loophole in their reasoning, and the battle goes battle back and forth. You also need a sense of organization and a sense of key structure. The critical thinking skills that debate develops over time are extremely beneficial for you, especially in Parliamentary debate where it’s more impromptu so it tests your brain even more. You are required to come up with contentions on the spot. 

College demands a lot from you, and one of the things that college demands you is to think from both sides of the story, to see both of the contentions, the grey areas and the place of analysis. You are going to learn in your life that the fun stuff does not happen in the black and white zones. What is the fact in history is not really fun to do anything; white is white and black is black; there is nothing you can do about it. What is the fun is the gray area. But if you cannot see the grey area, which is where all the analysis can happen, you are missing out a whole section of your cognitive caliber. Debate lets you find that grey area, because as a debater you’ll understand always there is good and bad to every story; there is always a good and a bad to every contention, and your ability to work around that to find loopholes is going to help you a lot in college and in the work place later on. 

One very factual example: without critical thinking skill, there would be no way I can get into one of the best debate training programs in USA. When I was in that program, we read about 50-80 pages every day. No notes were taken, but reading gave us some ideas and then we had free discussions. All we did in class was to talk, debate, and argue with each other, so we could find our own reasoning for lots of the ways we can look at the world. Critical thinking skill is not just something that they select during the process, but something that they can help you to train it. Many graduates out of this program went to very good colleges, had very successful career, because of this capability.



And finally, speaking. Debates help your speaking skills: whether it is just actually being able to deliver something coherent rather than speaking with the proper demeanor, the manner, and the tone. All these subtleties you learn from debates. When you get past the argumentation level, you move into the next higher level. In that level, it is like one person talking to another person. The speaking skill you learn from debate will for sure help you no matter what you do, no matter where you are in the rest of your life.



So all three things tie together and gives you one huge reason why you should learn debate. It gives you self-advocacy skills, which means you know how to fight for yourself, how to advocate for yourself, move yourself forward, and achieve things that you want to achieve. Without the thinking, writing, and speaking skills that you get from debate, a lot of these would be impossible, or at least much harder. Even if you want to become a biologist, you still need to publish a paper, write an abstract, all of which which requires thinking skills. The skills you learn from this extra-curriculum will benefit you regardless.



Here’s another personal story: in Harvard, I wanted to check out what venture capital was. I've always been big on startups, and have been curious on what is was like on the other side of the table. So I managed to go to a competition, and got to know the judges that were in the circle. Slowly, introduction upon introduction, I moved my way in the circle, until I finally got my first venture capital internship at the Harvard business school. Through there, I managed to get into a pitch event that introduced me to one of the partners who worked in the company, which was also my dream firm. That day, I went straight up to the partner, shook hands, and gave him 30 seconds self-advocacy pitch about why I was there, why he should like me, why he should help me. He was extremely impressed. He asked me which company we saw that day he should invest in. I gave my answer. It turned out to be correct! He gave me his business card and the next day was the onsite interview. By the end of that day, I got the job. None of these would be possible had I not been able to present myself the way I wanted to and needed to present it. None of these would have happened without self-advocacy skills. That is one direct result from learning speech & debate.




Onto the last part - how I trained myself to be a debater. Debates are mostly two parts: knowledge base and skills. Knowledge base is built up over time; there is no way to speed it up; you have to read lots of things, including the books that challenge you, non-fiction books, books that span across industries, books that are on contemporary topics such as bitcoin. At the same time you also have to understand the general broad spectrum. Your history, your economy, your international relations, your philosophies, your ethics, your rights, your environmental cases and your country backgrounds. These are all general areas of debate that all debaters should know. Try to fulfill those knowledge areas. At least give yourself a basic understanding if you’re short on time. If time is not tight, please read about all areas. It is nice to know the world around you. Just read every day; you are going to learn a lot. Besides reading biography, read the news every day from sources such as "The Week", a very short news magazine, I also read about the Middle East, China, foreign policy, and economics. Some of my recommendations include Global and Mail, The Guardian and the New York Times. Make sure you are up to date on the current world issues; READ every day. There is no shortcut to building up knowledge.



The second part of how I train the skills. Theories regarding argumentation, regarding reputation, regarding different style and format… these skills can be learnt from the internet. There are a lot of resources there. But the most important part of skill is to practice. Spend lots of time debating, practicing the theories you read on paper and put them into action whenever you can: whether go to the competition, or arguing with other people, etc. You want to practice with people better than you; if you are nervous or afraid of talking to people, you can practice with your dog :). Just remember all the places they beat you, use the same techniques the next time you go against them or go against somebody else and see how they react. Really, it is just about a lot of practice over time. 

The third thing you can do to improve your skill is to find a good coach. Usually you can get a good learning curve and save a lot of time this way. They can immediately address what you should work on and practice. At the end of the day, debate is highly trainable. I started since sixth grade, made it onto team Canada at grade 10, and have since seen international stages and have met lots of different teams that go around. It is really cool to meet people and they are all very successful now: generally going the high places, doing the things they love, reaching their dreams.



I found a system in which to train people how to debate, a platform to teach kids how to debate. We launch the platform in China first. I am going to take leave of absence from Harvard and going to bring debate to China. If there is interest in US, I can also start the platform online.



We talked about speech and debate. A pursuit will be very beneficial to anyone.