English Debating Competition 2014

It has been a long time since I joined a language-based competition, and this one is actually is my very first English debate experience together with my experienced-well partner. English Debating Competition 2014 or simply EDCO is a competition held by BEMJ (Badan Eksekutif Mahasiswa Jurusan) Bahasa & Sastra Inggris in my campus, State University of Jakarta. EDCO was held on April, 19-20th 2014 at my campus with the participants was from every faculty or even majority in State University of Jakarta. Participants came from many background, not only from English Department, but also from other majority like engineering, economy, management and don’t forget about my team from Japanese language. One of the unique thing is that EDCO applied British Parliamentary style.

Me with my partner

EDCO started with registration of participant and also technical meeting that occurred on April, 11th 2014. I never thought that the participants would be as much as I saw that day, I really nervous since it was my first time to join this kind of competition. The real match then conducted on April 19th started from about 9 AM. It was a surprise that the competitor somehow increase compared with the technical meeting back then, and once again it makes me feel small and powerless LOL. 

My team first match was against the other team from management, biology and accounting (if I’m not mistaken) with the motion was about prohibiting victims, suspects and witnesses to give information to press. I got the 4th turn as the speaker of opposition team where my friend is leader of opposition team which got the 2nd turn. Well the very first debate was quite smooth since I could be able to deliver my argument fluently. And it was surprising and my team could be able to sit in 1st rank out of 4. The 2nd match wasn’t really different with the last one though. 

Next match was quite surprising because my team should “fight” against the top 3 team, oh my God it is really makes me frightened. And even the motion was a surprise motion that not stated in the paper which the committee gave to us earlier. At last my team got the 3rd rank since we couldn’t really convince the adjudicator to follow our idea. After the match over, the decision was announced that my team together with 15 other was pass through to the quarter final, what a relieve!. The last match of the day was also a great match and luckily we got the 1st rank again, yay! And it clearly state us to move to the semifinal. 

Semifinal day finally came on April, 20th 2014. I felt like I don’t well-prepared for this battle. Even though the motion was actually not that hard, but since my team was lack of idea and information, it makes us threw to the 4th rank. That was a very disappointing result that we couldn’t be able to join the final with the team from management, English department and other. 

Although my team could not be able to won EDCO, I felt really glad that I joined this competition. Many positive thing that I got such as train my critical thinking, knowledge about what happen in the world and new idea for better future. I hope could be able to join this competition again next time with full ammunition so I would be the winner!