IT WAS SIMPLE but emphatic. 'We learn faster,' said Keith Leung King-ki, 17, 'in Cantonese.' Members of the audience nodded in approval. 'So, our school should not be an English-medium one.' The Form Six speaker, the third and final for the Opposition, sat back to congratulations from the other two boys on his team. The audience, adjudicators for the day, duly returned their verdict and the motion, 'Our school should use English as the medium of instruction', was quashed. 'I was nervous at first,' said Keith, who, like the other students watching, had never taken part in a debate before, in English or Chinese. 'But it wasn't as difficult as I thought.' The all-girl Proposition team accepted defeat gracefully. 'The boys did well,' said Joey Yeung Cho-yi, 18. 'But we enjoyed ourselves. It was very funny.' The 25 students of the Buddhist Fat Ho Memorial College, a band three secondary school in Tai O, the small fishing village on Lantau Island, were being put through their paces by Sam Greenland, the English Schools Foundation's (ESF) first full-time debating officer. Appointed earlier this year, Greenland has co-organised 12 debating workshops in local secondary schools since April, with more planned over the next few weeks. He also co-ordinates weekly open house competitions at King George V School, Kowloon, for students interested in fine-tuning their powers of rhetoric. These sessions, like the workshops, are offered free of charge. 'We want to prove that debating is not an activity for elite schools and universities,' said Greenland, coach for the Hong Kong national team which will be going to the 2004 World Schools Debating Championships in Stuttgart, Germany, in February What's more, he is getting pupils started on using the 'impromptu' style used at the championships. This style is relatively new to Hong Kong since teachers often give the motion to classes in advance to allow for preparation time. Greenland says the culture of 'if you can't say it well, don't say it at all' still exists in many top schools. But in the new ad-lib format, students are given little time to prepare extensive speeches. Instead, they get just enough time to formulate their own opinions and work out how to express their ideas. 'Impromptu debating encourages students to think 'on the spot' and put those ideas into their own words,' Greenland said. 'It focuses on students' ability to listen to others and argue with the points they have just made, rather than read out prepared speeches.' At Tai O, it worked like this: after a brief introduction to the nuts and bolts of a debate, students were divided into groups of four and given the motion to discuss for the first time. After less than 20 minutes, two teams of three speakers were selected, one group to defend and one group to propose. The participants coped well with the sudden pressure, considering it was their first time, and, by their teachers' admission, rarely had a prolonged opportunity to speak freely during lesson-time. All six speakers expressed their thoughts relatively clearly, although the Proposition group found responding quickly to the boys' arguments tough-going. Joey says her team had lots of ideas but they struggled with a shortage of appropriate words and expressions to convey their meaning. Clearly, without a fairly robust grasp of English, it is not easy mounting a decisive verbal challenge against more proficient speakers, but, that said, the audience did not seem to have any difficulty following what was said. Graham Young, an ESF officer who co-organises the workshops with Greenland, argues this approach to public speaking ultimately pays dividends. 'Debating can be useful for students in all types of schools because it gets them speaking English,' he said. 'It helps low and high achievers summarise their thoughts on issues and put them into clear and concise points, whether written or spoken.' In particular, listening skills and pronunciation are enhanced and students are encouraged to listen to each other, not just to the teacher. Students' reactions after the Tai O workshop appeared to bear this out, with many clearly having relished the experience. Marnie Evans, the native English teacher (NET) at the school, says her school plans to build on this introductory workshop by starting an after-school debating club. Other teachers agree more work is needed in this area. Perry Beyer, a NET teacher at St Peter's Secondary School, a band two school in Aberdeen, says debating helps students prepare for public exams, developing their skills for expository writing, data analysis and interpretation, for instance. Beyer, who coached his students to victory in a competition organised by the Native English Speaking Teachers' Association and sponsored South China Morning Post in 2002-03, has used both the 'impromptu' and 'prepared' style with equal degrees of success in Hong Kong and New Zealand, but he believes students need high-order language skills and near-native confidence to do an impromptu debate at competition level. Louise Law Yi-shu, principal of a band two school in Sha Tin, Ma On Shan Tsung Tsin Secondary School, was also upbeat. She says her students responded well to the challenge during the ESF workshop held at her school in July. 'As long as you have reasonable expectations, debating can be very useful. It instils a sense of success in the students and success breeds success,' she said. For more information about ESF debating workshops and Open House Debating held every week at King George V School, Ho Man Tin, contact Sam Greenland at debating@esf.edu.hk or tel: 2708 2239
