Team Composition

Women’s has a number of restrictions on team composition and adjudicator participation; each team may only contain one ‘pro’ debater. You are considered a ‘pro’ if you have:

  • Debated twice at Worlds
  • Broken at Worlds
  • Attended two Australs and broken as a debater (i.e. competed in the finals, not being capped out) at at least one of them

These rules will be strictly enforced, so if you have any doubts about your eligibility or team construction, please email us at enquiries@awdc2011.com before you register your team.

Debating Style

Women’s is a British Parliamentary (BP) style tournament; for those unfamiliar with the format, there are four teams of two people, with two benches comprising the four teams. Before each debate, each team will be assigned one of the four positions; Opening Government, Opening Opposition, Closing Government or Closing Opposition. The debate will proceed with the both speakers from both opening teams speaking in sequential order, before then being followed by both closing teams. Opening teams present models and arguments, whereas closing teams are expected to provide ‘extensions’ to their opening teams’ material. While teams are scored individually, they are treated as being on the same ‘team’, so ‘knifing’ of your opening team is considered bad practice.

The other main difference with the BP style is Points of information (POIs). These are short questions that members of the opposing bench can offer between the first and sixth minute of the opposing speaker’s speech. Offers for questions can be accepted or denied by the speaker, but speakers should ensure that they accept between one and three questions in their speeches. Questions should aim to attack the weak points in a speaker’s speech or the team’s case as a whole; the quality and number of points offered will go towards calculating speaker scores. The questions themselves should be kept to no more than 20 seconds; any longer and the adjudicator may call them out of order and the asker will be forced to sit down. “Matter pushing”, or offering questions with a leading statement to push material into the debate, is extremely discouraged.

If you have any further questions about the style or the pro/am restrictions, please don’t hesitate to email us at enquiries@awdc2011.com.