 |
 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
||||
      |
 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
 |
Secret Topics  |
||
| The last three rounds of A Grade and last two rounds of B Grade are secret topics. This means that the topic for the debate won’t be released until one hour before each debate. This means that you have to prepare an entire case in an hour – so it’s “battle stations” as soon as the topic is announced. We try to select secret topics so that the issue is quite topical. So to ensure that you get into the preparation room knowing something about the debate, we would recommend that you spend a little time in the weeks before the debate scanning over the newspaper to get a feel for what the major issues of the day are. The opinion pages of the Age and the Australian are particularly useful for this. Watching the ABC or SBS television news as often as possible will give you a good overview as well. Get together as a team a few days before and discuss a few of the important issues. We try our best to select topics that are on subjects that we think you will know something about. When you get the topic – DON’T PANIC. Even if your first reaction is to think “I don’t know anything”, chances are you probably do if you really put your mind to it. You can have up to five of your teammates in the room – hopefully the collective knowledge of all five of you should be enough to come up with a few decent arguments and examples. Using printed materials in a secret topic debate By Catherine Dunlop Teams preparing for secret topic debates are allowed to take any printed or written material into their prep room with them. What type of information might you use? How do you ensure that you take the right type of books in with you and will you get a chance to look at them? We answer these questions in this article. Useful resources We recommend that you take a dictionary in with you to check up on the meaning of any important words. There are also a number of other texts which are very useful reference tools which you might ask your debating co-ordinator to purchase for you. These books however are only useful if you have read or skimmed them before your debate. They include: a good dictionary of Australian politics; any good school level international-local politics text book; the SBS World Guide, which lists all countries with a brief history of historical and political events; The World Affairs Companion by George Segal. These books can help you back your arguments with additional facts or give you a few ideas for arguments. Only use them if you know where to find the information. If you know that the SBS World Guide has some interesting up-to-date material on East Timor and the debate is about human rights in our region then use it. However don’t spend your precious preparation time reading up about an area that you don’t really know anything about. Newspapers We suggest that you and your team members scan the newspapers for a week or so before your debate. In fact, we suggest that you always read the newspapers but this might be too much to ask for. If you don’t want to read the whole paper then allocate areas to team members, eg: Jane - Victorian issues and politics, John - US politics including the latest on Bill Clinton and sport, Anne - World issues and Paul - Australian issues and entertainment. Bring along copies of the Age from the last week to the preparation so that you can check information and get ideas. But don’t spend all your prep time reading the paper rather than thinking of arguments. Using information in your preparation As we have stressed above don’t spend too much time pouring over books. Once you and your team have brainstormed the topic you might refer to your materials to discuss arguments and relevant background information. This should take no more than 20-25 minutes. If you are still writing down facts 45 minutes into your preparation you are in trouble. Be disciplined. Using information in the debate Don’t fall into the trap of collecting plenty of information and then reciting it during your speeches. Information helps you to develop your case or to back up arguments but it does not win you the debate in itself. Reciting facts, dates and names usually makes for a boring debate. Use information to support the debate not overwhelm it |
|
|