On 7 October, while most of Hong Kong was celebrating the day after Mid-Autumn Festival, the ENGL Debate Club proudly hosted the Macau Polytechnic University (MPU) Debate Team for a joint training session. This event marked an important milestone for the club. While previous joint training sessions were limited to universities within Hong Kong, such as CUHK and HKU, this event expanded the scope of these activities to universities within the Greater Bay Area (GBA).
In addition to demonstrating the broadening of inter-institutional collaboration activities, this event also reflected the ENGL Debate Club’s growing reputation. The Debate Club at MPU initially proposed the event based on their knowledge of PolyU’s success at the Greater Bay Area Debate Championship at the beginning of the year. There, the ENGL Debate Club won the championship title in addition to the prize for the best grand final speaker.
Featuring high-level debate demonstrations, group discussions, and multiple hands-on debate practice sessions, the event targeted students’ improvement of critical thinking, public speaking, and argumentation skills. Engagement with their peers from Macao allowed PolyU ENGL Debate Club students to gain exposure to diverse perspectives and build supportive peer-to-peer learning networks. Supported by funding from the Fund for Technology-in-Education (FITE) grant, the event challenged students to ponder the implications and applications of generative AI with respect to debate.
The ENGL Debate Club looks forward to continuing our inter-institutional exchanges and expanding our network with universities across the region and beyond.
