The Arena; Singapore TV Debate Series

Dear all,

The Arena is a debate-style television show produced by Mediacorp Channel 5 in Singapore. It was broadcast from January-March 2007, and ran for 11 episodes. In each episode, teams from two secondary schools in Singapore debated against each other. The topic for debate was different for each episode. Ten schools competed in the first round, from which the five winning teams and the best-scoring losing team progressed to the quarter-finals. The semi-finals were contested by the three winners and the best-scoring losing team from the quarter-finals. In the Grand Final, telecast on 27 March 2007, the team from the United World College of South East Asia defeated the team from Hwa Chong Institution to win the competition.

The Format

Each team had three speakers. The first speaker on each team spoke for 3 minutes and 30 seconds, the second speaker for 4 minutes, and the third speaker for 4 minutes and 30 seconds. Each set of two speeches was considered to be one 'Round' within the debate, and each 'Round' was judged separately. Speakers stood in the middle of the room, and spoke directly to one opponent from the other team (rather than facing to the audience and the judges as in most other debate formats). This opponent was allowed interrupt the speech with points of information (POIs – a feature of both the World Schools style and British Parliamentary style of debating). However unlike other debate formats which use POIs, the speaker was not allowed to decline to hear a point when it was offered. Each team had a 1 minute and 30 second POI 'Rebuttal Bank', which they could use over the course of the three speeches by the other team. In between the second and third speeches of the two teams, there was an additional 3 minute 'Rebuttal Round' involving all 6 debaters in a series of short arguments and immediate responses on the topic.

Winning team

The champions of the series were the team from the United World College of South East Asia, made up of first speaker Akib Khan, second speaker Maria Mateen, third speaker Madeleine Leamon and reserve member Siddhant Trivedi.

The team was coached by their teacher supervisor Megan Coskinas, and by former Singapore national debater Jonathan Pflug (who was ranked the best speaker of the tournament at the 2001 World Schools Debating Championships).

Regards,
Rashedul Hasan Stalin

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Arena_(Singapore_TV_series)