2019-Debating Skills Workshop and Competition at NWS
Aiding students to learn and thrive to the best of their skills, NWS, Ghaziabad hosted the ‘Debating Skills Workshop and Competition on 29th November 2019. This event was intended to introduce students to the World Schools Debating Competition (WDSC) format, which encourages active engagement between different teams through the rebuttal of opposing arguments.
Ms. Susan Holmes (Head Teacher, NWS) accorded a cordial welcome to the 5 participating Schools and the esteem judges for the event. The gathering was addressed stating that the objective of hosting such events was to provide the students an opportunity to develop and demonstrate their ability to clearly communicate and defend their ideas and opinions. Through such opportunities, the members would develop and present strategies for addressing issues of concern.
The workshop was conducted and the event was judged by Mr. Amil Bhatnagar and Mr. Chandratitya Raj. Mr. Amil Bhatnagar as the Vice- President of the Hansraj Debating Society has participated in more than twenty five tournaments, including international events and amassed a number of Best Adjudicator prizes. Mr. Chandratitya has been involved in training students in debating skills.
With this workshop, NWS proposed to introduce an approach of debating to local schools so that they are better able to develop their debating skills.
Following the workshop, the teams were given half an hour to prepare on the assigned topic. The 3 topics for the debate were:
1. ‘Social media platforms like Whatsapp and Facebook present a great challenge to democracy!’
2. ‘Hindi should be declared as our national language.’
3. ‘Kashmir problem is a creation of our unwise policies’.
It was indeed a proud privilege for NWS to provide a platform to the young learners to deploy rational and reasoned arguments in an amicable way advancing them for effective speech delivery. The Schools which participated were:
1. Uttam School for Girls,
2. Delhi Public School, Ghaziabad
3. Silver Line Prestige School,
4. Sun Valley International School
5. Parevartan School
5. NWS, Ghaziabad
Hershit Chaudhary from NW, Ishani Chauhan from Sun Valley International, Anirudhh Singh from Silver Line Prestige and Disha Verma from Parevartan School stood as ‘The Best Speaker’. The best teams were NWS and Sun Valley International. The winners of the Debate were awarded with Kindle, a series of e-readers were awarded to the winners.
A vote of thanks was presented by Mr. K.P. Singh (Director Administration, NWS) who applauded the participation of the candidates and stated all are the winners in their own way of learning through such events.
It was interesting to witness the participating teams engaged in an impressive exchange of words and reasons where they not only defended but also expressed their opinions on the topics.