On March 4-8, MUST English Debating Team sent Zhang Ruohua, Liu Zhuopeng, Xu Mingcai, Su Shidi, Ren Shihao and Lu Yihan to participate in debating training and contest hosted in Zhuhai Campus of Beijing Normal University. The debating training and competition were held in the form of Asian Parliamentary Debate, and the organizer Guangdong Debating Association also invited the Associate Prof. Dr. Chandran A/L Somasundram from University of Malaya as the chief trainer. The participants were mainly from Sun Yat-sen University, Jinan University, the University of Macau, South China University of Technology, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou University, Zhuhai Campus of Beijing Normal University, etc.
The contest was divided into ranking and final phases. In the ranking rounds, MUST English Debating Team consisting of Zhang Ruohua, Su Shidi and Ren Shihao competed in four rounds successively against teams from Sun Yat-sen University, the University of Macau, Jinan University and South China University of Technology, achieving good results with three wins and one defeat. MUST got to the last four in ranking phase and approached to the final, but it lost to the champion of this competition Sun Yat-sen University.
Before the competition, debaters had made active preparations, utilizing their spare time to organize training and analyze motions with great efforts. In the competition, participants collaborated with each other, thought positively, took the contest seriously and tried best compete in each round. It was worth mentioning that only two Macau University Teams in this tournament successfully entered the final, namely MUST and UM, but MUST advanced with a relatively good ranking, from which people could learn that MUST has made constant progress in its English debating skills. The contestants harvested a lot from the competition which broadened their horizon, especially it involved many novel hot topics such as athletes without borders, the development of outer space, nuclear energy and surrogacy. All these topics are sensitive and controversial, providing debating teams with new directions.
In the workshop, MUST English Debating Team realized the wisdom and charm of English debate through competing with different universities and listening to the judges’ comments, and also were aware of their own shortcomings and deficiencies. Zhang Ruohua as representative expressed their determination of working harder in the following training and competition so as to make greater progress. Wish them the very best of luck and success!