Yeah i know i’m already behind in my studies, but this is my last year in high school, so what the heck. I might not have the opportunity to participate in debates when i go to college or university, where they have debate team members who are highly experienced, who are trained since they’re young.

Me? I only started this year, my Form 5 year. It’s like my last chance to give debate a try.

Our school had a debate society once, but it only lasted for a few years. Then the education ministry made Kelab Setia compulsory and there weren’t enough teachers to manage the debate team. Only this year, a particularly enthusiastic teacher started a debate team once more. It’s not a society yet. Best to take it easy, our teacher said.

She will start training the young ones from Form 1/Form 2 for when they’re older they’ll be able to represent the school. For now, we have a couple of Form 3 and Form 4 students who have experience in Malay language debate. They basically know about debate stuff since a long time ago when they were still juniors. Then there’s this Form 4 girl who only came to our school this year. She was a substitute on the debate team of her former school. She’s pretty good. Better than most of us anyway.

So there’re just 3 Form 5 students that are in the running for the debate team. Me and another two girls. We’re older but what the heck, we know absolutely nothing about debates when we first participated in the debate practices our teacher just started this year. Dad says i don’t sound confident that i’m going to make it on the debate team. Well, yeah. Hello? I’m competing with people who have years of experience and a good foundation in Chinese. I myself only a month ago knew that Chinese debates exist, and can only stutter in Chinese, being more fluent in English.

So here’s our schedule.

12/04: A debate to choose a team of 4 who will represent the school on
26-27/04: A debate competition with other school.

That’s how long we have to prepare. Not to mention we only started basic training a month ago while those ‘other school people’ started since they’re in From 1, trained by highly accomplished, qualified and outstanding former debaters who have represented the country in the past. They bagged the National Champion last year, if i’m not mistaken.

By the way, the debate competition at the end of this month is a parliamentary debate, (国会式辩论) which is fairly new in Malaysia. I don’t have much past debates to refer to, which is a problem for a newbie like me.

Basically, a parliamentary debate round has two teams with three debaters each. One team represents the Government, while the other represents the Opposition. The Government team is composed of a Prime Minister, and two Members of Government. The Opposition team is composed of a Leader of the Opposition, and two Members of the Opposition.

That’s the rule in Malaysia anyway. I googled it online and saw that it is slightly different in America and some other countries.

It’ll be highly entertaining if they come out with topic like whether Luke Skywalker should have joined the Dark Side of the Force. Too bad that ain’t gonna happen.