Hello readers and welcome back to Maximus the Greatest!
In today’s post I’ll be telling you all about our recent project in PLP, and what connections I made during this process. This project is called “the Great Debaters”, and was all about speeches in debate. Our eventual final product was a debate against a classmate, which we presented at the yearly PLP Winter Exhibition. My debate was against Dana, our driving question was: “How can we use a formal debate to convince an audience we’re right?” We can use this process by combining knowledge and vocabulary to make a persuasive argument. Also, we can use this as an opportunity to degrade the opponents points and further legitimize your own.
The first thing we did in this project was watch a movie called “the great debaters”, which features Denzel Washington and many more. This movie was about a school of black students and it detailed how they went unbeaten in debate and pushed beyond racial barriers. Watching this film gave me some preliminary ideas on debate, and what should be included in a formal debate. It was also pretty fun to watch a movie in class…..
The next step was to choose our debate topic as well as our opponent. We were able to choose whatever we wanted for our debate topic, and at first I had no clue what to debate. After a few days of brainstorming we landed on a topic: “Does social media do more harm than good?”. I chose to argue the negative in this case, so I believed that it did more good than harm. What followed next was the long and brutal research process, which took many hours of reading and note making. It was important that I took my time with my research so that I could craft clear and concise points for my argument. My main points in my initial speech were the positive benefits of social media, and how the negative impacts can be easily avoided. To improve my debate skills, I did some work on the side with our teacher Ms. Madsen. I also engaged in lots of critique with peers and my teacher to enhance my speech.
Finally, exhibition day came. We all had worked super hard to get to this point and I was excited to get it over with. I’m telling you, the nerves are always the worst when it comes to public speaking, especially a debate. For our debates, we had 2 rooms set up with chairs and podiums. For dinner at the exhibition, we had some white spot, which was alright. Burgers were amazing but the fries were soggy sadly. Nevertheless, the exhibition began and so did the debates. I found it pretty cool to watch all my classmates in debate, some even got a little heated. Once the clock struck 7 it was time for my debate to start. The room was packed, there was like 30 people in the audience. I went second since I was the negative, and I delivered my speech. I thought I did well in addressing the audience and being concise with my delivery. Where I was lacking a bit was in my rebuttal, Dana had presented some points that caught me a bit off guard so I had to think on my feet for half the time. In all, I lost by 16 votes to 10, which sucks. But, I learned lots and had a good time in the process.
In summation, this project was fun and it tested me in a good way. It developped my public speaking abilities, research skills, and my ability to think on my feet. It was a demanding project to say the least, as there was lots of moving pieces and deadlines to meet. Which was for the best, as it made me use my time wisely and get work done in class.
Thanks for reading!