For Jairo Andrés Cortés Torres and Mauricio Alexander Yandar Paz from Colombia, this WUDC is the first English language tournament. Thanks to the scholarship program, they were able to represent the Universidad Cooperative de Clombia. [caption id="attachment_14108" align="alignleft" width="150"] Jairo Andrés Cortés Torres and Mauricio Alexander Yandar Paz from Colombia.[/caption] Achte Minute: Jairo, Mauricio, how are you doing here at the WUDC in Berlin? Jairo: For us, this is our first English competition, so debating can be very hard sometimes. But we like it a lot and we are full of new ideas now! Maybe now we will be able to organize ...

The WUDC Berlin 2013 are officially over, and the debating world has three new World Champions, one new coming WUDC host and a lot of other prices and winners. But first of all, congratulations to the winners of the EFL-final, Porto A, as well as to the winners of the ESL final, Bangladesh A, and Here is what we would call a preliminary overview - no guarantee on results being complete for the moment. In the EFL final, the teams from Porto A, Freiburg A, Tokyo A and Bucharest A debated the motion "This house welcomes the decline of the ...

Things were going fast during the second to last day at the World Universities Debating Championship 2013 in Berlin. So many Knockout rounds took place that we had difficulties following all announcements and breaks. But now we tried to sort everything a bit and present you here the break into the day of WUDC Finals. In the Open Break, we have a break into Semi-Finals. They will take place at 10:15 on today's Thursday. In the Open Semi Final 1 there will compete Monash B, Otago A, Sydney A, St Andrews A. In the Open Semi Final 2 we have Sydney ...

Today, Achte Minute had the chance to talk to Alfred Snider, called Tuna in the debaters’ world. Tuna is a debating veteran, having served on many many tournaments as adjudicator and trainer throughout the world. In his normal live, he is a professor of Forensics at the University of Vermont. We talked with him about his WUDC Berlin experience.  [caption id="attachment_14071" align="alignleft" width="320"] Alfred "Tuna" Snider answers the questions of Philipp Stiel, President of the VDCH.[/caption] Achte Minute: Hi Tuna, thanks for your time. How are you and your teams doing here at WUDC? Snider: Unfortunately, none of my teams broke. But ...

After debates, food is probably the second to most important thing here at Worlds - making sure that no participant goes hungry. This is not an easy task, in the face of the diverse dietary requirements that participants have due to cultural, religious, personal or health reasons. [caption id="attachment_14040" align="alignleft" width="294"] Reuben Thomas is a catering volunteer at the WUDC.[/caption] With a tight budget and no dining hall available, the catering team has had to find creative solutions. “First of all, we try to handle questions, problems and crises with care as soon as they arise”, says Christian Zimpelmann, head of the ...

“Echo Whiskey to Flo,” that’s the one phrase Elina Siivola will dream of after three days of working at the WUDC. Elina, from the University of Helsinki, Finland, is a runner at Berlin Worlds. She is part of the machinery behind the tournament: distributing ballots, guiding debaters into rooms, reminding judges not to go over time and bringing ballots safely back to the tab room. And while getting ballots in quickly is the top priority, Elina still strives to be friendly and helpful to judges and participants. [caption id="attachment_14037" align="alignleft" width="266"] Elina Siivola is volunteering at WUDC in the running team. ...

This morning, WUDC starting with round 1 - a tiny wee little bit late due to missing teams, but with goose bumbs on our arms when the first motion was announced (which read "Round 1: This house would create public housing for the poor in wealthy areas." - see our Facebook page for all three motions of today.) On twitter, you could also feel the emotions: Due to a delay of more than an hour, some debaters poured out their emotions on twitter, while other defended the tab team for doing a great job in a 100 rooms tournament. We then ...

It is impossible to find out when the first participants of WUDC 2013 arrived in Berlin – too many have already been around and have spent some days in Europe, Germany or Berlin. But just from a glimpse into the WUDC accommodation, Hotel BerlinBerlin, it is clearly visible: today was arrival day! Dozens of participants dropped into the Hotel each hour and stopped at the registration desk in order to check in to their “Worlds” 2013. And in less than 24 hours, Patrick Ehmann, Convener of WUDC Berlin 2013, will open the 33rd World Universities Debating Championship officially. Thus, the biggest ...

[caption id="attachment_13898" align="alignright" width="275"] Anna from Paderborn, boarding the train.[/caption] Today, more than one hundred WUDC volunteers left their cozy Christmas homes in order to get the big WUDC Berlin 2013 project running. During the day, more and more volunteers arrived and added massive manpower to the crew that already ran the WUDC scholarship program since the 25th of December. In order to prepare WUDC novices from countries that would not have participated in WUDC 2013 otherwise, a core volunteer team already started its work on Christmas day. Most of the other volunteers then left their home or university towns today ...

Is there debate beyondcompetition? The World Debate Forum believes there is. There is debate in education, advocacy, nation building; on the internet, TV, Radio; in a hundred languages among a million people. On the 5th and 6th of January in Berlin, we are creating a space for those of you who agree or want to find out, to share your perspectives and ideas. We hope it'll be the TED talks of the debate world, but that will only happen if there are interesting people with interesting topics. Is there a better way to allocate judges to debates? Does debate increase tolerance? Has ...

[caption id="attachment_12607" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Strahlende Sieger: Valerio Morelli und Marco Witzmann aus München (c) Foto: Debattierclub AFA Wien"][/caption] Valerio Morelli und Marco Witzmann haben für den Debattierclub der Münchener Universitäten die Meisterschaft im Deutschsprachigen Debattieren in Wien 2012 gewonnen. Sie siegten im Finale der Hochschulmeisterschaft gegen zwei Teams der Berlin Debating Union (Annette Kirste und Julian Ohm sowie Georg Sommerfeld und Johannes Häger) und ein Team der Universität Hamburg (Kira Lancker und Barbara Schunicht). Der 24-jährige Valerio Morelli, Mathematikstudent und gebürtiger Südtiroler aus Bozen und der 24-jährige Maschienenbaustudent Marco Witzmann sicherten sich mit ihrem Sieg den Titel des Meisters im Deutschsprachigen Debattierens. [caption ...

 

 

 

 

;

 

 

;

;

"Ein guter Jurist muss deutsch sprechen, nicht juristendeutsch!" - Roughly speaking, good legal practitioners need to know a language everybody understands. This is a claim by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Wulf who works at the ministery of law in the German state of Baden Wurttemberg, he also is an honorary professor at the University of Tubingen. Some years ago, he established soft skill courses dealing with law debates, something which is neglected in German jurisprudence curricula. Philipp Stiel, editor of the VDCH newsletter for a culture of debate in Germany, talked to Prof. Wulf. Currently the interview is not available in ...