Venue, Date and Schedule

 

The UK final is taking place in The Great Hall at Goodenough College on Saturday 12 May 2012. Participants and supporters are invited to arrive between 11:00am and 11:30am.

Refreshments will be available between 11:30am and 12:30pm. 

At 12:30pm, the participants will be taken to a private space where they will be told which chairpersons/questioners have been paired with which speakers; and between 12:30pm and 1:00pm, the students will have 30 minutes to prepare.

The competition will start at 1:00pm. Allowing time for the competition itself, for the adjudicators to reach their decision and for the announcement of the result, the presentation of prizes and feedback, the event should conclude between 4:30pm and 5:00pm.

Directions to Goodenough College can be found here: http://www.londonhouse.org.uk/location/.

 

The 30-Minute Preparation Period

The rules pertaining to the 30-minute preparation period are laid out on pp. 12-13 of the Speech and Debate Competition Handbook for Schools.

Participants and supporters are reminded, in particular, of the following two points:

(1) Teachers, coaches, parents and any other supporters may not be consulted with during the 30-minute preparation period. This time is intended to give the chairperson and questioner the opportunity to question the guest speaker and prepare their remarks. It is also intended to give all the participants a private environment in which to focus and gather their thoughts for a half-hour before the competition starts, so that they can give the best possible performance.

(2) Speakers are not required to deliver the speech or provide excerpts/quotes from their speech to the chairpersons/questioners during the 30-minute preparation period. Neither are speakers required to tell the chairpersons/questioners whether they are speaking for or against the topic as it is phrased (though they may do so if they wish). However, speakers must engage in the discussion with the chairpersons/questioners and cannot refuse to answer any questions. All participants should bear in mind that a good discussion during the preparation period invariably leads to a better Q&A session, which reflects better on both the questioner and the speaker (i.e. both competing schools).

 

Topics

A list of three topics has been allocated to each school, from which one topic must be chosen.

Some topics this year are quotes by well-known political, literary or historical figures. However, the authors of these quotes are provided for context only. Students are free to ignore the context of the quote if they wish to do so, and are not required to refer to the author of the quote in the speech. In short, speakers are free to prepare their speech based on a purely literal interpretation of the topic, as they would with any other topic.

All 8 competing schools have received the list of 24 topics. However, the topic chosen by each school, as well as which chairpersons/questioners are being paired with which speakers, will not be released until the day of the competition (at the start of the 30 minute preparation period). Once the topic has been chosen, schools should avoid releasing their choice into the public domain (e.g. posting it on Facebook or on the school website).