Sunday STAR May 30, 2010
Battle of words
A TOTAL of 96 schools from all around the country took part in the Eighth National English Debate Competition organised by HELP University College (HELP) recently. The coveted prize – the Tan Sri Datuk Paduka Dr Saleha Debate Cup 2010 – saw teams put their analytical and oratory skills to the test in an intense battle of words over four days.
Receiving the largest number of participants since its inception, the competition began with preliminary rounds in April which saw 96 teams from schools nationwide pit their wits against each other.
A total of 16 teams then advanced to the next round with eight teams making it to the quarterfinals.

Four schools — SMK La Salle, Petaling Jaya, SMK St. Michael Ipoh, Perak, SMK Damansara Jaya, Selangor and SMK Kepong Baru, Kuala Lumpur — then met head to head at the semifinals.
Debating on the motion “This house would not allow testing of cosmetic products on animals” in the final round, the team from SMK St Michael, Ipoh emerged victorious over their opponents, SMK La Salle, Selangor.
The winning team comprised Forms Four and Five students Muhd Imran Abdul Razak, James William Foong Zhi Wei and Noel Anthony Mano.
They received a partial scholarship from HELP worth RM12,000 each, trophies, RM5,000 in cash, mobile phones, digital cameras and a year’s subscription to Doctorjob’s coursesNOW! magazine, as well as an LCD TV and desktop computer set for their school.
It was also a double joy for James, as he bagged the Best Speaker award.
He received a full scholarship worth RM20,000, RM500 in cash, a mobile phone and a trophy.
James said: “We spent long hours brainstorming, researching and writing speeches for the motions. Certainly, it was stressful but our preparation was the key to our win. Effective time management was also very important as we had to juggle between the preparation and our studies.”
“We would like to thank our teachers for tirelessly coaching us, and HELP for providing us the opportunity to take part in this competition.
“Not forgetting our friends who came to help us in our discussions even though they were not in the team,” he added.
Noting the overwhelming response in this year’s competition, the institution’s senior vice president Dr Khong Kim Hoong said: “Through this debate competition, we have seen more students with good English proficiency stepping up to take the challenge of debating, with some teams coming from Sabah.
In fact, the team cap was initially 80 teams.”
Dr Khong said the competition was aimed at honing secondary students’ oral and communication skills, as well as their reasoning and critical thinking skills.
“Debaters should have good general knowledge, and the ability to form opinions and make their arguments in a short period of time, no matter how thoroughly prepared they are,” said the competition’s head adjudicator Muhammad Abdul Latif, who is the trainer for International Islamic University Malaysia’s debate teams.
He added that although the students would know the range of motions two weeks prior to the competition, the debate competition was organised in such a way that the motion and drawing of sides is done 30 minutes before they were pitted against one another.
HELP chairperson Tan Sri Dr Saleha Mohd Ali presented prizes to the winning teams.