CZOIC Attended World Scholar’s Cup Camp in Suzhou
Cherry, Ashley and Kelly - debate preparations
Our Teams, Preparation and the Camp itself
After such a great experience in KL last year we had some students already signed up to continue their WSC experience this year. A few of our students had been attending the WSC ECA since September and in December we recruited some more so that by the time we started preparations in January, we had 5 teams ready to take on Suzhou!
Ali, Erka and Juliana - debate preparations
The World Scholar’s Camp consisted of three days of training for our students in the skills required for the competition alongside the topic areas for this year’s theme, An Imperfect World:
Science: Disease and Public Health
History: A History of Cheating
Literature: Words to Light the Darkness
Art and Music: Flawed Visions, Broken Sounds
Social Studies: When States Falter
Special Area: Crime and Justice
Kenneth, George and George - debate preparations
Our students participated in a range of training activities alongside the teaching sections, such as presidential rallies which saw our own Cherry Huang and Kenneth Luk standing for President of Somalia, making presentations as health organisations to the WHO on how to best tackle the spread of Zika virus and debating the legality of the use of nootropics by students when preparing for public examinations.
Candidates for the preseident of Somalia
The 4 skill areas in detail
「Debate with the power of your pen.」
Each team was presented with six statements that came from each of the different subject areas for which they had to argue for or against. We had 25 minutes to collaborate with our team members and research about the topic. The actual writing procedure was a mere 45 minutes, the catch was that in this time we weren’t allowed to interact with our partners. A final 12 minutes was allocated for the teams to discuss and edit the essays to produce the most persuasive essays possible.
The Scholar’s Challenge might look like any other multiple-choice test, but it's not a test of what you remember: it’s a test of what you understand. We applied our knowledge of the different aspects of the theme to answer questions across all six subjects, from art to science.
The debate topics were impromptu and teamwork was essential to defeat the opposing team. Our debate proposals ranged over a variety of subjects, including whether the use of nootropics by students should be made illegal or the morality of lying in political rallies. Nevertheless, we were up to the challenge.
This event was the most enjoyable. Clickers were distributed to the teams and questions were proposed on the huge projector before us. There were clips from movies, trailers, pictures of celebrities, ancient artworks and you name it. It wasn’t all about speed. It was about accuracy and applying our knowledge in the allocated time (30 seconds per question). Hitting teammates with alpacas who got the question wrong for the team was also a large part of the Scholar’s Bowl!
All students - alpacas in the air!
The vast majority of the students we took to Suzhou had only started studying the topics and skills for World Scholar’s Cup in January and were up against world-renowned , well-established international schools such as Dulwich College and Shanghai United International School, which makes their achievements even more outstanding!
(Written by Catherine Dearden)
at bottom to view WSC Focus (part 1)