World Schools Style Debating

World Schools Style debating (or WSS) is a combination of the British Parliamentary and Australia-Asian debating formats, designed to meet the needs of the World Schools Debating Championships tournament. Each debate comprises eight speeches delivered by two teams of three members, representing the Proposition and Opposition sides. The first six speeches are eight minutes in duration, with each team then finishing up by giving a four-minute concluding reply speech.

First speaker of the Proposition

The role of the first speaker is to open up the case of the proposition. That means he/she presents his/her side's opinion and arguments. Furthermore, he/she gives a definition of that motion, in order to prevent any confusion caused by the motion, which might lack clarity. The first speaker also sometimes gives a status quo or an analysis of the current situation regarding that issue (mostly in policy-debates) to show the problem the side Proposition wants to solve, or the situation the side wants to improve et cetera.

First speaker of the Opposition

His/her duty is to rebut the arguments given by the Proposition, meaning to show why it isn't or can't be true what "they" claimed. He/she can either give a counter-case regarding that motion or just decide to try to argue against the motion. When arguing against the motion, it is optional to give own arguments, as it would be sufficient to just rebut the arguments or the case well enough.

Second speaker of the Proposition

His/her role is to rebut the arguments given by the other side. Eventually, he/she can continue with his team's case and gives more arguments.

Third Speaker

The third speaker has to re-structure the whole debate, filter the key issues of the debate and give a rebuttal. As this position is also called the "rebuttal-speaker". his/her main objective is to prove the other team wrong. He should preferably deepen the analysis of the rebuttal. A good speaker also does case rebuild in the end. There they go into the rebuttal of the other side and show why the rebuttal was wrong or didn't touch their own arguments.

Reply speeches

World Schools Style debates include an additional speech from each team, called the reply speech (sometimes known as the "right of reply"). This is a short, four-minute speech given by either the first or second speaker from the team, and presented in the opposite speaking order to the rest of the debate (i.e. the Opposition deliver the first reply speech, followed by the Proposition). The roles of the reply speech are to:

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