The next evening we were to visit a Toastmaster’s club to give a demonstration debate in parliamentary style. The club is considering starting a debate portion of their activities, and wanted some introductory training. Professor Ayabe conducted the demonstration debate, then split the group up into 3 rooms to have practices on the same motion judged by the Americans. My group was fantastic, and made many good arguments. They also all ended perfectly on time even without the use of a timer. Toastmaster’s is good for training in time management as well as introductions and conclusions to speeches. The only element that needed more work was refutation, as well as argument and impact development. Many of them ended arguments with an open question rather than a concrete impact.
Overall it was a great session, and I think that the Toastmaster’s club will have a lot of future debates where they can quickly learn how to make well developed arguments.