As the coach of UM\u2019s Mandarin Debating Team who has won\nsix Best Debater Awards himself, Liu Jingjing has watched and participated in\nmany debate contests over the years, and many of these events have stayed in\nhis memory for different reasons. But his first experience of watching a debate\ncontest stayed in his memory for a really interesting reason\u2014because the\ndebaters looked so \u201ccool\u201d on the television to a five-year-old little boy.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI was only five, and there was something about the\nway those debaters carried themselves on the stage that fascinated me,\u201d says\nLiu. \u201cMy father was watching that televised debate contest with me, and he\nsaid, \u2018They are really good.\u2019\u201d Perhaps it was that casual comment that set Liu\non the path to becoming a polished debater. Liu\u2019s father is not the only\nsupporter of Liu\u2019s passion for debate though. His mother has unwittingly played\nan equally important role in his early training. \u201cWhen I was in middle school,\nmy family used to have this habit of watching news during dinner,\u201d recalls Liu.\n\u201cAnd I would often discuss hot topics with my mom, which I think has trained me\nto respond quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Over time Liu graduated from his \u201cmock\u201d debates at\nthe dinner table with his mother to real debate contests at college, although\nthose were still just internal events. His first participation in an international\ncontest happened after he joined UM for master\u2019s studies after getting a\nbachelor\u2019s degree in medicine from Peking University. \u201cI came to Macao, not\nexpecting I could continue to debate. I joined the debate team in 2003, two\nyears after it was founded,\u201d recalls Liu. \u201cOur coach Yin Degang and our team\nleader worked with us, and gradually we became known in the Chinese debate communities\nfor our sincere debating style without sophistry, and we did very well at\nseveral major events.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
So well, in fact, that the team won the championship\nat the Macao Varsity Debate Contest for five consecutive years. The winning\nstreak didn\u2019t last though. As the competition intensified with the emergence of\ndebate teams from other universities, the team missed the championship at the\nMacao Varsity Debate Contest 2009 for the first time in six years. Learning the\nnews, Liu, who had completed his master\u2019s studies and was working in Beijing as\na journalist for three magazines, wrote a 3,000-word article to encourage the team\nnot to lose heart. In 2010 when he returned to UM to pursue a PhD degree in medicine,\nhe re-joined the debate team, this time as a coach. \u201cDuring the off season, I\nmostly help to train their basic debating skills; when there is a major contest\ncoming up, we do mock contests and work on building arguments.\u201d The team\u2019s\nefforts paid off. Just a month ago, they regained the champion status after a\ngap of four years. <\/p>\n\n
The year 2014 has just started, but the team already\nhas their event calendar marked until November (Nanjing in March and April,\nMalaysia in September, and Macao in November). \u201cI hope everyone does their\nbest, so there won\u2019t be any regrets,\u201d says Liu. \u201cI won\u2019t give them too much\npressure, but the record set by the old members is definitely something we could\nlook up to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
Liu\nJingjing\u2019s Best Debater Award List<\/b><\/p>\n\n As the coach of UM\u2019s Mandarin Debating Team who has won six Best Debater Awards himself, Liu Jingjing has watched and participated in many debate contests over the years, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":116000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n