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12 January 2009

Dear Father Pathickal

Congratulations!

I am delighted to inform you that your school has successfully qualified for the
National Finals of the Debating Matters India competition. The National Finals will be
held in the British Council New Delhi office from 15-17 January 2009. For more
information regarding the National Finals kindly refer the attached timetable
regarding the timings of the pre debate programmes and the debate timings.

The National Finals will have the eight winning teams from different regions divided in
groups of two, who in turn are placed in subcategories of the same group thereby
having two teams in each sub group.

Each school will participate in the preliminary debate which is the first round of the
National Finals. The topic for your school is “Free speech is not an absolute right” the
debate team will have to speak “for” the motion.

Following the preliminary round the teams will move on to the Semi Final debates
where the sub group winners will debate each. The semi final winner of one group
will then compete with the semi final winner of the other group in the finals of the
National finals for bagging the India Champions position.

The India champions will travel to UK to participate in the Debating Matters UK Finals
in the month of July, 2009

Following the regional finals we would like to offer the Finalists some tips of our own:-

• Go through your speeches before the debates and work as a team :-


decide upon a clear division of labour between speakers, setting out who will
be dealing with which aspects of the debate. Your argument will be more
effective if it is consistent with your partners! It was also noted that students
sometimes failed to act as a team, with one speaker dominating the
discussion. Debates work best when teams have a coordinated response
and balance content between one another.

• Listen to one another: - all of the teams reported that debaters, and the
audience, often failed to listen to one another during the debates and
therefore sometimes missed some of the key arguments. Taking the debate
seriously means listening, and then responding, to the comments offered by
the judges to both sides, by challenges laid out by your opponents and the
audience.

• Consider the Political and Social context of each of the debate: - all of
the Regional teams reported that some of discussions tended to get bogged
down by the more technical aspects of the debate. All of the Debating
Matters motions are chosen because they reflect arguments that are being
had in the real world, you must therefore make sure that you are familiar with
the contemporary nature of the discussion (read newspapers!) and
understand why it is politically significant.
The debate coordinator accompanying the school should note that if disciplinary
issues arise related to students from their schools, the teacher coordinators will have
to deal with the issue directly and promptly. We had mentioned in the terms and
condition form that the duty of care of the students rests firmly on the teacher
coordinator. Should any disciplinary issues arise related to students from your
schools, the teacher coordinators will have to deal with the issue directly and
promptly.

Accommodation has been booked for schools at the Hotel Vikram, (Ring Road,
Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi 110 024, Phone: 91-46515151,
http://www.hotelvikram.com/) from 15 January - 17 January 2009 on a twin sharing
basis for students and single occupancy basis for teacher coordinators

We wish the schools travelling for the National finals to New Delhi a safe journey.

Warm wishes and regards

Dr Debanjan Chakrabarti
Head Intercultural Dialogue (India)
British Council

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