The spirit of wanting to do better got me into English debate. When I enrolled high school I knew that I want to join any extracurricular that could help me improve my English skills particularly speaking. I thought there would be some kind of English students club, but turned out there wasn't. There was only an English debating club. We called the club CODE stands for Cross-Over Debate Explosion. At first I had no idea what it was about. Later I found out that my high school was one of few high school in Malang that was actually famous in English debate. I mean we just dominated most of the competition that we entered. Lots of seniors from the club who graduated were accepted in big universities all around Indonesia. All in all we had pretty good image out there. 😎
The first club meeting was a surprise. Our coach was Mas Ari. He refused to be called "sir" or "pak". He also said that he was our coach, not our teacher. The he explained a little bit about what English debate was. He asked everyone to prepare a speech. We were free to pick any topic. After we finished writing down our speech, Mas Ari took us out of school and across the road to Alun Alun Tugu Malang. We made one row on the pedestal by the edge of the square facing the road while keeping the safe distance with the road of course. Mas Ari stood up in front of the school gate. So there was a couple meters of gap which was the road it self between us and him. In front of us were so many vehicles passing by. After Mas Ari was satisfied with our position he yelled, "Now speak!" We were shocked. What was happening? Then everyone started to speak at the same time. It was chaotic but comical. It got more dramatic when Mas Ari yelled again, "Louder!". We literally made a show for people out there to see. So that was how our first ever club meeting went. 😂
After the first meeting, there was decreasing number of students who came in second and third meeting. But it wasn't that significant. I think after a month, the club supervisor which were our seniors held an internal competition. Our school was about to enter a regional level competition and we needed representatives. Seeing how many students who joined the club and the fact that we only needed 3 students to represent, it was decided that a fun and fair internal competition was the best way to go.
Somehow I ended became a team with 2 other boys named Umar and Fauzi. I don't exactly remember how it went. Both Umar and Fauzi were classmates. They were also went to same middle school together. I joined the club by myself and when we formed teams I didn't have anyone to be partnered with. So I teamed up with Umar and Fauzi.
We won our first ever debate competition. Thankfully both stuck around throughout high school and didn't leave the club. When we were senior in high school, we entered our last competition together as a team and we also won. Even after we graduated we were still a team. We had strong bonds. Fauzi coincidentally went to same college as me and we became teammate again throughout our college debating career. Until these days they are still my very dear friends and we keep in touch with one another.
To be honest, I didn't think I had it in me to be a debater. The training was intense but very fun. It was just straight out debate. We also got some tips along the way regarding our delivery. We didn't think at all about our English skill at first. I can say it was magical experiences.
I will elaborate more specifically about debate in other posts. I will also share some training methods that I got from my coaches.
I'm going to jump way further here, but the bottom line is debate changed my life forever.
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