Senior Debaters Shine at ESF Debate Competition
Huge congratulations to Charlie Lam (12E) and Sam Hui (12W) for achieving the Top 10 Speakers Award in the ESF Senior Debate Competition held on Saturday, 6 November 2021.
Beating some members of the winning teams, Charlie and Sam achieved fantastic speaker results of 3rd and 5th place overall out of all the participants. They were commended highly for building their cases well, providing strong rebuttals and summarising their team’s points clearly.
Sam said, “I am very thankful for the result! Thank you so much to Mr Hood and Mr Forse for their continued guidance. This experience has really stretched my debating skills, and I gained a lot of valuable insight from the detailed feedback provided by the adjudicators.”
Held annually, the ESF Debate Competition brings top senior speakers together to engage in fierce and heated discourse over a variety of recent, prevalent and challenging issues. Through a range of prepared and impromptu motions in the World Schools Debate format, students are provided with the opportunity to showcase their talent and passion for speaking. This year, the following topics were debated:
- offering NATO membership to all former Soviet states (excluding Russia);
- making casinos and bookmarkers liable for the debt of problem gamblers;
- holding comedians to modern standards of political correctness.
The Island School team performed outstandingly, with judges praising the team’s speeches as “well developed” and with a “good flow of logic and mechanism”.
Mr Darryl Hood, Head of Debate and Public Speaking Club said, “Once again Island School students have excelled in one of the most challenging Inter School competitions. Well done to all, and we now look forward to the Inter House Debate Competition in the second term”
The Island School team: Sam Hui (12W), Charlie Lam (12E), Isabelle Woo (10W), Hannah Wu (11D) and Alexandra Lai (10W).
Debate & Public Speaking Club is held every Monday online by Mr Darryl Hood, Charlie Lam (12E) and Sam Hui (12W).
