Debating

The part for which you have all been waiting.

All debates at the Oxford IV will be conducted in the British Parliamentary format with 5 preliminary rounds of 5 minute speeches followed by a break to quarter-finals.
All final rounds from the quarter-finals onwards will be conducted with 7 minute speeches.  The tournament will be tabbed similarly to Worlds with a first round randomly drawn followed by power-pairing for all subsequent rounds.
This year we hope to continue to provide challenging international and principles based motions which will be closed.

We will continue to hold an English as a Second Language (ESL) break (using the same definition used in the World Championships). Therefore all teams, whether ESL or EFL, will be included in the main break. If any ESL teams break in the top 16 teams they will pass to the main break, whilst the top 8 ESL teams not included in the main break will continue to the ESL semi-finals.

Our Chief Adjudicators for 2009 will be Jonathan Leader-Maynard and Alex Worsnip, who are the current mace champions and former Worlds finalists. We will be using the usual 100 point scale for judging and judging guidelines will be explained on the day. The Oxford IV should, as usual, attract an excellent judging panel, both in terms of Oxford judges and judges from all over the country. We are very grateful to everyone who comes to judge at the tournament, especially to those who have retired from the debating front-line, but still find the time to make the trip to Oxford.  Giles Robertson from Cambridge will be tabbing.

For institutions who have purchased the IONA package, we will be enforcing the n-1 rule (i.e. if you register n teams you must bring n-1 judges; for example, 3 teams = 2 judges). You may, if you wish, bring more judges than this; however, we will charge a small fee to cover the cost.