The debate project helped me to gather evidence and form logical arguments in the interest of proving a point. It helped me to put myself in another perspective as to anticipate counter arguments.
The debate project could be improved by the removal of time requirements. Arguments should be easy to follow and therefore succinct. Rather than being graded by the amount of time taken, we should be graded on the use of the time we took. I’d say redundancy weakens an argument.
During the debates, I thought my contribution was certainly sufficient. I directly countered all the points the opposition made as opposed to meandering around them and stating my own points. Prior to the debate, I enjoyed discussing the arguments the opposition would make with Camillo. I don’t believe my argument would have been nearly as strong without those discussions.
As a public speaker, I believe I’m in development. I learned a lot from a summer camp in which I had to give a ten minute presentation. I employed some of what I learned from the camp. It’s better to take a pause than to constantly use fillers such as “uh” and “so”.
The strongest speaker during the debate was Skylar. Despite being a closing argument, he addressed the opposition’s points directly which enforced our rebuttal. He was dynamically changing his argument while the other team was speaking.
One thing my debate group did well was speaking to the other teams points. Of the other teams I saw in addition to our opposition, nobody spoke to the other’s points as well as we did. We referenced what the other team said and had arguments prepared against it.