An achievement for Israel (and the instructor at the public speaking school) in the World Debate Championship
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The World Debate Championship ended this week marked by respectable Israeli achievements, led by the victory of Uri Merhav and Yoni Cohen-Idov (school instructor for public speaking) from Tel Aviv University in the championship for speakers who are not native English speakers. In the final, Yoni and Uri won a team from the University of Haifa (Lior Sapir and Hanka Berman) who also qualified for the final - the qualification that in any other year would have been considered a brilliant achievement in itself.
What is the World Debating Championship?
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For beginners / those who suffer from fear of crowds Hebrew course
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The World Championship is a competition held every year since 1980, each time at a different university, in which representatives from around the world compete in debates and speeches on various topics. This year the competition was held in Istanbul and 388 teams from 65 countries participated. During the competition, the participants not only have to give speeches and demonstrate political and economic knowledge, but also have to deal with official receptions, boisterous parties and lots and lots of alcohol.
The competition lasted 7 days in a row
during the Christmas vacation, during which there were 9 qualifying rounds, followed by 4 cross-over rounds that ended in the final won by the University of Sydney, which defeated Oxford, Harvard and the London School of Economics. At the same time, there are 3 crossover rounds for teams whose English is not their native language, which ended in the final where Tel Aviv University defeated the team from Haifa University, Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the National University of Malaysia.
A little explanation about debate
Each debate begins with the drawing of groups for the 'government' and 'opposition' positions, which are given 15 minutes to prepare speeches on the controversial topic (the topic of the final: the media should censor horrific images from wars). At the end of the preparation time, the groups present themselves for the discussion, with each participant getting 7 minutes to present their position and respond to the position of their opponents. Those opponents are allowed, under strict rules of etiquette, to throw him off balance with questions and interjections during his speech.
This is only the second time that Israel has won the competition, and this year's win, which also included qualifying for the finals of Haifa University, was a special certificate of honor for the Israeli Rhetoric League.
Yoni Cohen Idov
Yoni Cohen Idov, who won the title as mentioned above, is not only a talented debater (he qualified for the finals of the European Championships in the summer, and was ranked first in the Israeli Championships last spring) but also an instructor at the public speaking school and a partner in delivering some of the classes in the upcoming courses for speaking in front of an audience in Hebrew andfor speaking in front of an audience in English.
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