As well as past years, KUEL/fall and ESUJ debate tournaments had finished successfully. But, through those events, I have several questions and worries to myself at this moment.(Even though I've been adjudicating parliamentary debate in Japan for a long time...)

I want to focus on issues in 'adjudicating', specifically "Adjudicating consensus in debate", and "Doubts in educational effects by debating".


Adjudicating consensus in debate

We're in bad circulation continuously, but nobody seems notice about it, and tells that.
For example;

　-Do adjudicators need to find fairness in motions through adjudicators' perspective when the motion are possible to become one side game?
　-Where can we put standard in adjudicating according to estimates of debaters' average?
　-Don't we need to have mutual understanding about each adjudicator's philosophy or rating?

Getting people for adjudicators is mostly dependent upon business people or seniors at university, so we don't have opportunities to confirm those things, even once. We usually have time for confirmation of tournament rules or adjudicating itself, but it is just like a ceremony which doesn't contain substantial content. Although I don't want bring confusion or large gaps in adjudicating for students, but that is a fact.

For that reason, I think it is very doubtful that we're really contributing to students from educational aspect.

From my perspective, it is very hard job for students to specify or modulate their speeches according to audience, I mean adjudicators. At first, they should be given opportunities to learn how to organize and present their speeches under the same condition of audience.

I think we need a adjudicators' list which is filtered with several conditions to have adjudicators with good quality or enough experiences. And it should be provided for each tournament staffs, plus continuous updates through those events. I heard KUEL had ones for parliamentary debate tournaments, but it wasn't updated and work at last tournament.

And also, it's better to have a mailing list for adjudicators or adjudicators candidates only. It is like a virtual community on the net, and we can share ideas or questions adjudicators have. I think there are several mailing lists among students now. Then why not for adjudicators?


Doubts in educational effects by debating

-Is there any clear purposes in students' mind? And can they get enough feedback for improvements through those experiences?

-Debating, of course, should not be like 'playing with words and phrases'.

Debate for students is treated as 'one of club activities' in school. And one of the purpose in debate for students is to learn communication skill with a foreign language. If it is true, we need to know and ensure its advantage. But how? How are contributions from adjudicator reaching to students in tournaments? Probably it is only by ballot sheet. Then, what if comments were blank? What if no communication between adjudicators and students after tournaments? What if no excellent debaters who can teach or feed back to  young stars in their own club? It is questionable that students can get sufficient feedback and benefits from debate competition.

Different from debating society in US, most of students or debate organizations do not have coaches for activities. Elder students are teaching. It is also hard for them. It might be caused by lack of understanding from schools or society, so sufficient environment are not given to them. I don't find any solutions now, but I think we should keep human resources in community for helping students in tournaments, practices or any other. Even after people graduated from school.

In a speech contest, judges usually are sitting at a sheet alone and contestants are in a queue. Judges give contestants advice or comment for improvements. It is not good for adjudicators of debate, but good for students. I don't think we should do same thing in debate competitions (or impossible physically), but I think we need to have time for reflection more in tournaments.

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