Public or private institutes and schools can participate, which have registered before Friday, February 28th, 2025
The levels that can participate are 3rd. and 4th. ESO. Anglophones cannot participate.
Each participating centre will select 3 students who will have to debate in English on the topics that will be on a list posted on the Festival website. Both the topic and the position to be defended (for or against) will be drawn by lots at the time of the debate and in public.
The student will not be able to take notes in advance, or dictionaries of any kind of support and will not be allowed to carry a mobile phone. However, they can bring blank sheets and a pen to write down what they want to prepare in their speech.
The debate time will be a minimum of 5 minutes and a maximum of 8, and a microphone system will be used. All team members must have participated at some point in the debate, although they do not have to respect an established order, whoever has the appropriate answer can intervene. However, if any member of the group does not intervene, points will be deducted.
There will be a moderator of the debate who will do the drawings, will have the function of intervening if speaking turns are not respected, and will energize the conversation if it is stagnant.
The debate will have elimination phases. The number of these phases will depend on the number of registrants. The organization reserves the right to modify the final format after the registration period has closed.
PREPARATION: It is important for teachers to work on argumentation in addition to linguistic competence and pronunciation. The jury will award points to the contributions of ideas, arguments and counterarguments that each topic can suggest.
DAY, LOCATION OF THE FINAL PHASE AND CONTACTS
The final phase will be open to the public, can be recorded, and will take place on Friday, March 14th., 2025 at 10:00 a.m. in the morning, in the Rovira i Virgili University room Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Terres de l'Ebre Campus.
The jury will be made up of three natives English speaking teachers, representative of TIEFA.
SENIOR STUDENTS DEBATE TOPICS 2025
a) Students should have daily housework tasks at home.
b) Governments should put a “sugar tax” on certain products like fizzy drinks.
c) There should be no time-change within European Countries.
d) The government must give incentives to encourage measures to prevent climate change.
e) Graffiti on public buildings and transport should be allowed.
f) Mobile phone should not be permitted in schools.
g) Excessive packaging of food products should be legislated.
h) The government should pay for all university education.
i) Social media comments should be protected by free speech.
j) Governments should be allowed to monitor social media activity.
k) Single-sex schools are more effective than mixed schools.
l) Security cameras are an invasion of our privacy.
m) Teenagers should start school one hour later to improve academic performance.
n) All films and series should be shown in their original language and not dubbed.
o) Buying locally grown products will help prevent co2 emissions.
p) Glass containers are better than aluminium or plastic.
q) Becoming vegan is impossible in our consumer society.
r) Being a vegetarian causes more problems for society than we think.
s) Cars should be banned from city centres.
VERDICT AND DELIVERY OF PRIZES
The final verdict will be made public once the jury has deliberated at the end of the last competition, and the prizes will be awarded Sunday 16th in a place to be confirmed
The organization reserves the right to modify the final format after the registration period has closed.