Most people are familiar with discussions as they are done everyday, one person trying to convince another person by directly talking to and with that other person. But discussions have their limitations and one of the problems is that they are often won by the person who either speaks the loudest, believes the most in his arguments or just hangs on the longest.

Some still might say: 'So what, I still won', but the thing about this is that you didn’t really convince people, they just quit. Debating is a discussion with rules which aim to lift the discussion to a higher level of argumentation, with the purpose of actually convincing people. As a result, debating has a certain setup no different from any other sport. Surprisingly enough, people find it strange to have rules for discussions but think it is common sense to have field lines, a goal and rules in a soccer match. 

The use of rules is to make any game fairer and more fun, and such is the case with debating. The goal of rules is to make the argumentation flourish, to reach a more sophisticated level of analysis and allow both teams to search for the (philosophical) depth of the motion in their cases.

Part of debating is giving speeches, in a standard debate every person is expected to give a 5 or 7 minute speech. This aspect gives debating the unique ability to practice on public speaking skills. We understand how public speaking is still the biggest fear of many people - as much as 40% of people report that their greatest fear is public speaking and only as few as 5% say they don’t have any fear of public speaking -, yet have witnessed many times how weekly practice has nearly every person overcome that fear surprisingly quick.