WSDC 2011: Key Results

The 2011 World Schools Debating Championships ended yesterday in Dundee with no top awards going to the old power - countries that won past WSDCs, which interestingly are all predominantly Anglo-Saxon. Indeed, Singapore, an Asian city-state that was once a British outpost, had reached the grandfinals and taken the best speaker award home before. But the 2011 success in double scooping the top team and individual prizes is still an important milestone for Asian debating.

While WSDC postings on this blog come from various sources, a special appreciation should go to Paul Lau, whose blog is a superb fountain of information on high school debating. 

Here are the key results from the world's most prestigious high school debating tournament. The numbers in the brackets after a team follow this order:  post-tournament rank, rank after 8 preliminaries, pre-tournament seed and level. WSDC uses a 3-on-3 format but each team can have up to 5 members and rotate their turns. Only speakers who debated at least 4 times in the preliminaries can enter the top individual lists.

Champions: Singapore (#1/#15/#5/A) -- first champion from Asia
(Teoh Ren Jie, Ashish Kumar, Benjamin Mak, Adil Hakeem, Liki Ng)
Finalists: Australia (#2/#4/#2/A)
(Bo Seo,  Tyrone Connell, Emma Johnstone, Ned Lis-Clarke, Beatrice Paull)

Best New Nation: Barbados (#41/#41/#46/F)
Best ESL Team: South Korea (#12/#6/#11/B)
Best EFL Team: Netherlands (#10/#3/#14/C)

Best Speaker: Teoh Ren Jie (Singapore) 74.7
Best ESL Speaker: Chun Ye Eun (South Korea) 72.9
Best EFL Speaker: Kim Chan Keun (South Korea) 73

((ESL stands for English-as-Second-Language, supposedly a level higher than EFL, which means English-as-Foreign-Language. The distinction between the two is pre-set but may change from year to year. It is also individually based, enabling one team to have multiple levels of speakers. Length of time in an English-speaking country and use of English in a debater's school are key components in setting the distinction. All members of an EFL team must be EFL speakers. All members of an ESL team must be ESL or EFL speakers. An EFL team/speaker cannot vie for the ESL award eventhough their scores are higher than any ESL team/speaker. In WSDC 2011, EFL winners scored higher than ESL counterparts))

Indonesia (#37/#37/#27/E)
W-L: 2 wins, 6 losses; Judges: 8; Score: 5832.5
Best Speaker: Nudzran Yusya (SMA Modal Bangsa Aceh) 69 -- #20EFL