Upcoming Tournaments
Put your debating skills to the test
2019 Beijing Fall Invitational - November 9-10
Hosted at Tsinghua International School
The AGD is pleased to announce the Fall 2019 AGD Beijing Invitational Debate Tournament, taking place on the 9th-10th of November at Tsinghua International School. The tournament is open to students from both international and local schools.
Fall 2019 NHSDLC & AGD TOURNAMENT Topic
"Resolved: States should eliminate their arsenals of nuclear weapons."
Who Are We?
A global association dedicated to promoting debate across the world.
AGD believes that interscholastic competitive debate is universally valuable because it promotes self-expression, cultural understanding, academic exchange, critical thinking, tolerance, and civic discourse. AGD is committed to connecting high school-level debate organizations across the world and to overcoming social, economic, and institutional barriers to debate competitions. AGD works to accomplish these goals by empowering local students to compete in debate, both by supporting existing debate competitions across the world and by organizing new debate tournaments in partnership with local community leaders.
Tournament Results
NHSDLC 2018 National Championship International Division
Spring 2018 Beijing Regional
Fall 2017 Beijing Season Opener
Fall 2017 Shanghai Regional
Fall 2017 Beijing Regional
NHSDLC 2017 National Championship International Division
Overview
The Association for Global Debate (AGD) is a team of passionate debaters, organizers, teachers, judges, and parents who support the growth of debating across different countries and regions. As a support network, AGD strives to connect high school debating events, leagues, and societies to resources and experts, both local and foreign. We provide free resources for tournament and debate team organizers who need academic, organizational, or financial assistance.
Free Training Resources
AGD and its network of experts have put together a set of high impact development tools to its debating members and affiliates. AGD is committed to improving the quality of debate tournaments everywhere by maintaining a high-quality database of online training and educational materials, such as research guides, manuals, and public domain publications. AGD's academic staff is happy to travel to your city and conduct free in-person training sessions oriented towards prospective or beginner debaters.
Tournament Tabulation Systems and Assistance
AGD believes that any debate team or educator should be able to host a tournament without enduring a tidal wave of manual data entry. AGD’s team of expert tournament administration and organizers works to provide remote and in-person support for local organizers with the logistics, operation, and tabulation of their tournaments.
Sponsorship for Growing Debating Communities
The Association understands the constraints and challenges facing young debate organizations. The Association forms ties with key partners and sponsors in locations around the world and sources for them financial assistance to start sustainable, quality debating communities and lay the foundations for regional and national debating events.
International Tournaments
AGD supports and hosts a variety of international high school debate competitions each year across the world. AGD’s tournaments run using a variety of different formats, depending on the host location. The AGD and its affiliated tournaments all aspire to the highest standards of fairness, promptness, and professionalism.
Policy Advocacy
AGD is engaged in academic research on the impact that debating has on academic performance and career prospects. Through our studies and research, we advocate for changes to education policy that improve the status and resources available for extracurricular activities in general and debate in particular. Through these changes, we hope to improve the communities that our debaters, colleagues, and friends live in.
Interested in more Debate Resources and private coaching?
Check out Coach Connect.
becoming Member schools
Depending on the format and type of tournament that you’re interested in running, we can advise you on which tabulation system to use, ranging from the simple and elegant, to powerful but more challenging software. Details are available here.
Membership Applications
Institutions that are currently hosting debating tournaments in the Asian region are welcome to join the AGD as member competitions. Members are entitled to a suite of support services from AGD that includes tabulation software, fly-in experts, and financial support for meritorious debating projects.
Interested parties may fill out the Application Form below or send an e-mail to contact@agdebate.com with details about their event and can expect a response as soon as possible.
Workshop Requests
AGD regularly sends debating experts to different parts of Asia in order to facilitate learning through free or subsidized workshops. Our team of debating experts have backgrounds in different debating formats, including Public Forum, Public Policy, British Parliamentary, and Austral-Asian style.
Member schools that are interested in our training programs can send an e-mail to contact@agdebate.com for evaluation and lecturer assignment.
our Team
A brief introduction to the team of debate and education experts that make up the AGD.
David Weeks
President
Sunny Mewati
Academic Director
Lawrence Zhou
League Director
Nick Caputo
League Director
Daniel Carlson
League Director
Josh von Herrmann
League Director
We are privileged to partner with some of the best debating organizations in the world in hosting events and curriculum development.
National High School Debate League of China (NHSDLC)
The largest foreign language debate league in the world, the NHSDLC organizes over 75 tournaments across China each year. Regional tournaments vary in size from around 150 students in smaller provinces, to over 300 in larger cities. More than 15,000 students compete annually. The 2017 National Championship drew nearly 500 students, who represented every province in China.
The Yale University
Debate Association
The University of Chicago
Debate Society
Harvard College
Mentors for Urban Debate
University of Pennsylvania
Society for Youth Debate
List of Debate Resources
The following is a collection of debate resources in various formats, as well as generally applicable debate advice, blogs, and other useful sites.
Public Forum
Public forum is the most popular style of high school debate in the United States and is now practiced all over the world. It is also the style used at AGD tournaments.
A guide to Public Forum Debate
Public Forum short guidelines
How to Prepare for a Tournament
Useful websites and other resources for researching topics
British Parliamentary/Worlds/WUDC Style
The most popular style at international university debate tournaments.
The Practical Guide to Debating by Neill Harvey-Smith
The Birmingham Competitive debating guide, Kindly donated by James Bowker.
World Universities Debating Championship 2014 Speaking and Judging guides
World Universities Debating Championship, Speaker Scale - Used at most BP style debating competitions as well.
Monash Association of Debaters, Handbooks and Guides.
3 vs 3 Debating Styles - Australs, Asians and World Schools (WSDC)
Australia-Asia Guide to Debating
Schools Training Debating Guide
Lincoln Douglas (LD)
A hub of example Lincoln Douglas frameworks: http://www.valuecriterion.com/
Open evidence project: http://www.debatecoaches.org/resources/open-evidence-project/
Open case list wikis:http://hspolicy.debatecoaches.org/
Circuit Debater: http://circuitdebater.wikispaces.com/
Resources for Community News/Camps
Victory Briefs: http://www.vbidebate.com/
National Symposium for Debate: http://nsdupdate.com/nsd-camps-overview/
Premier Debate: http://premierdebatetoday.com/
APDA (American Parliamentary Debbating Association) Style
How to register for a tournament
General Debating resources
(BP Focused but generally cross applicable)
A crowdsourced glossary of debating terminology and jargon.
Shengwu Li’s Blog Lots of excellent advice on improving as a debater and meta-debate discussions.
The Monash Debating Review: (Academic articles on debating.)
International Debate Education Association: Debatabase, Teaching resources, Debating in the Neighbourhood Skills Guides
Frederick Cowell on how to beat stronger teams [Video on Facebook]
How to Debate International Relations Motions, by Jonathan Leader Maynard
Debating can change your life: Lucinda David at TEDxLundUniversity – Video on YouTube
Debatekeeper Android App - An excellent application that times debates and beeps at the appropriate times to indicate the beginning and end of protected time.
Debating Blogs and other community resources
The Communist Case File (Facebook Group) – Crowdsourced collection of useful information and discussions. (Not actually communist.)
European Debating – Contains an up to date list of dates for upcoming European debating competitions and motions from previous competitions.
Global Debate – Alfred Snider’s Blog on international competitive debating (BP and World Schools focused).
SevenTwenty – Dutch and general debating blog
AchteMinute – Group blog focused on German and international debating
DEBATTIERKLUB WIEN – Updates from Vienna debating society
Contact Information
If you need additional information or any of your questions answered, please do not hesitate to contact us!
US: +1 718 559 9208
CN: +86 010 59002305