To be a Debater

李之端

I would like to thank Mr.Loke Wing Fatt for giving me the chance to debate in Korea because real matches are far more worthy than the practices in our school club.

As a third speaker，it's often more difficult to practice because I need a whole debate to make conclusion while the 1st/2nd speakers can make progress by doing individual speeches.Luckily，during the 2 days in Korea，I made my own progress.

The most remarkable ability that I learned is precisely persuading the judge with several comparisons.I used to ignore the importance of persuasion---I thought judges would always notice our arguments and rebuttals and if they are better than those from the opponents，we should win.However，judges don't have the privilege to compare the arguments by themselves but need you to clearly point out the results.I found the final step of all the judge's comments（both on us and our opponents）were questions like"Why saving soldiers' lives is more important than avoiding wrong shootings？"and "Why the strong willingness shown by women can affect more on feminism level than their maybe successful performance in famous films？".Definitely the win would go to the side who persuaded the judge by more convincing comparisons.That is to say，the analysis made by the third speaker is really possible to save the whole team from a terrible situation at the last moment and strongly rebut the opposite side.I am fond of being a whip.

Then we made a serious mistake--we believed what our opponents said without challenging their information resources and their comprehensions of online news--especially when we had an absolute advantage on understanding the whole affair.Yes，I am recalling the shameful experience in the prepared round 3 when we discussed about the introduction of social credit system in China.We were the opposition side.We spotted that the comprehension from our opponents was not exactly true and the right understanding was beneficial to our side.So we immediately rebutted them but all forgot to tell the judge what the right explanation should be like--we forgot that the judge knew nothing about China and we just used a very obvious theory（in China's view）to rebut without mentioning the necessary background in China.Finally we lost.And when the judge admitted that he subjectively didn't believe what the government side said was true，we all dropped into the depth of regret.Interestingly，we Chinese students were defeated by the Koreas when it came to the debate on a Chinese policy.And even more confused，we were questioned by an American judge when he asked us what the characteristics exactly is in our previous claim that China is a socialism country with its own characteristics so that it can establish policies efficiently.At that moment，I realised how ignorant I was and how weak the theories without deep explanations in our text books were.

Studying in school provides us with boundary memory of basic knowledge on the text books.Unfortunately，we rarely get in touch with living news and deep discussions or analyses are even less.Someone may claim that this is a failure of Chinese education while I am on the contrary.The evidence is clear：students in NFLS and HFLS，who also study in China，did very good job---two teams successfully broke into the finals.It is ourselves instead of any other factors that are to be blame.Attending more competitions，discussing problems more often with our friends and teachers and trying to systematically obtain some financial，political and legislative knowledge are all helpful to our step-by-step growth of becoming a real debater.

I have to say，I hate Korea because we didn't break.However I also like Korea because it reminded me of how ignorant and stupid I am.As the core member of CFLS debate club，I feel it my duty to let more students acknowledge their distance to being a good a debater and an excellent student.

I believe CFLS with us can carry on the mission of spreading debate spirits in Sichuan and even the whole south western China.