World Schools Style debate

World Schools Style debating (or WSS) is a combination of the British Parliamentary and Australia-Asian debating formats, designed to meet the needs of the World Schools Debating Championships tournament. Each debate comprises eight speeches delivered by two teams of three members, representing either the Proposition and the Opposition side. Each speech is eight minutes in duration, with each team giving a short Reply Speech after the conclusion of their case.

Speaking Order

1. First speaker of the Proposition
2. First speaker of the Opposition
3. Second speaker of the Proposition
4. Second speaker of the Opposition
5. Third speaker of the Proposition
6. Third speaker of the Opposition
7. Reply speaker of the Opposition
8. Reply speaker of the Proposition

Reply Speeches

World Schools Style includes an additional speech on each team, called the Reply Speech (sometimes known as the Right Of Reply). This is a short, four-minute speech given by any team member, and presented in the opposite speaking order to the rest of the debate (that is, the Opposition's Reply Speech is given before the Proposition's). The roles of the Reply Speech are to:

   * Outline one or more points of contention that the debate has centred around;
   * Evaluate the course of the debate.
   * Declare the reasoning of their team's victory.

Because of this third point, the Reply Speech is often said to be a kind of "biased adjudication": it's format is similar to an adjudicator's feedback on the debate, albeit with the purpose of convincing the audience that the speaker's team was victorious. [edit]

Points of Information

During any speech but the Reply Speeches, members of the opposing team may offer Points of Information to briefly interject a point that the speaker must immediately respond to. WSDC rules stipulate that these shall not exceed 15 seconds or three sentences.

Additionally, the first and last minute each speech as well as the entire duration of Reply Speeches are "protected time", meaning that no Points of Information may be offered.

See Also

• Debate for more general information
• Parliamentary_Debate for information about Parliamentary debating
• World_Schools_Debating_Championships for an international competition run along these lines