Stars gear up for showdown
After seven rounds of vigorous debate, the two finalists of the Nesta-SCMP Inter-school Debating Competition are getting ready to meet for the final showdown next week. HKMA David Li Kwok Po College and Stewards Pooi Kei College will battle it out for the championship trophy next Friday at Baptist University's Shek Mun Campus in Sha Tin.
The contest is jointly organised by the Native English Speaking Teachers' Association and the South China Morning Post and is sponsored by the Jockey Club.
The debate motion in the final will be: 'Outsourcing is good for both developed and developing countries'. HKMA will argue in favour of the motion, while Stewards Pooi Kei will take the negative side.
The three debaters for Stewards Pooi Kei are Dennis Ng, Matthew Lo and Roxanna Li. The trio began their research on the topic as soon as they received it and used the Lunar New Year holiday to work on it.
Dennis said: 'We had been looking for real corporate examples to support our argument. We will find two or three strong examples that are from well-proved sources so as to convince the judges. Naming the source of information is something that judges had emphasised in previous rounds and we are definitely going to work on that.'
Apart from researching on the internet, reading the newspaper is also a key to success. Roxanna said the team checks out SCMP every day to look for information. 'Our team reads the news every day, and even on the day of the finals we will read the news to keep ourselves as up to date as possible.
'In the semi-finals we debated the motion 'Boosting green energy production is a win-win solution for problems in the economy and environment'. I remembered there was news from the Copenhagen climate summit that day in SCMP. Our team picked it up immediately and used it to strengthen our arguments. Reading the news and keeping updated are important winning strategies.'
Matthew said they knew very little about their opponents and had learned about them only from reading Young Post and visiting HKMA's website. 'From what I know, HKMA is a business school, so I think they will have some advantages as the motion is largely related to business. But we will do our best. We'll be satisfied as long as we have done our best.'
HKMA, meanwhile, has lined up Cherry Tung, Vivek Manglani and Virpal Kaur. The team, all business students, are excited as they think the motion is to their advantage. Vivek said: 'As business students, I think we have the knowledge to do well, but we need to do a better job with our delivery as there is huge pressure to perform in front of such a huge crowd.'
Cherry said they knew very little about the opposing team and were not concerned with finding out about them. 'Doing preparation work on our own is the most important thing. Our coach saw the Stewards Pooi Kei debate, so we know we are in for a really tough battle.'
HKMA coach Nalini Fernandes said the school's debating club only started last year and was very pleased they had achieved such good results contesting in open competitions for the first time. She said they would look to join more inter-school debating competitions in the future.
Nesta-SCMP debating co-ordinator Stan Dyer said the final would be a good chance for the many students from the 37 new teams joining the debates for the first time to see how the contest format worked.
'I think the debate allows younger students to build skills in a fun way [at a young age] so they are better able to handle heavier academic work later.'
