2019哈佛辩论夏令营经历分享

两周的summer camp，Xu Zhizhen同学（2021届）在哈佛辩论营克服了许多困难，当然也完成了从语言到辩论技巧的诸多挑战。

The camp was a wonderful experience, the dorm, the meals, and the people… there were also many difficulties and challenges, from language to debating skills. But through the two weeks, I have become a lot better.

这个夏令营是一次非常好的体验，宿舍、食物、还有人们······这里也有许多的困难和挑战，从语言到辩论技巧。但在这两周里，我收获了很多很多。

One of our first tasks was doing research, and it was a challenging task for me. To search for a single piece of evidence, it requires reading many passages and finally, we would just cut a short sentence from them. My main problem was my reading speed, as English is a second language of mine. I struggled to read hundreds of long articles, there were a lot of words that I didn't know so I had to stop and look up their meanings, and some days I even stayed up until 1 am. But all the work that we had done turned out to be very useful later in debate rounds.

我们的首要任务之一是做research，这对我来说是一项具有挑战性的任务。为了寻找一个小小的证据，就需要阅读特别多的文章，到最后只是从它们中剪下一个简短的句子。因为英语是我的第二语言，我的阅读速度就相对很慢，看完一篇文章都十分痛苦。我挣扎着读了很多篇文章，其中有很多生词，我还不得不停下来查询它们的意思，有时我甚至会做到凌晨一点。但是我后来才发现，我们所做的一切准备在后来的辩论中都非常有用。

After we finished writing our case, we started to practice debates. More and more problems came out. For instance, sometimes I was not able to understand what our opponents were saying because they were speaking too fast. Also, during my speeches, it was hard for me to speak fluently, because I had to translate what I wanted to say into English or I had to find appropriate words to express. I knew that my speech would sound very untrustworthy compared to the native speakers, and I thought no judge would vote for us.

写完case后，我们开始练习一场完整的辩论，越来越多的问题出现了。例如，有时我根本听不懂对方的内容，因为他们的语速实在太快。而且在我发言时我很难说得流利，因为我必须把我所想说的翻译一遍，或者我需要找到合适的词语来表达。我能感受到我说话的时候和美国本地人相比是不太可靠的，因此我猜想大概没有人会投票支持我们。

But still, debate was not just about fluency, being good at English and being aggressive, the contents play a very important role. How you respond to opponents’ questions, what evidence you could provide, and how persuasive your points are could also be considered by the judge. I was happy to find out that the judges, especially the good ones, would care more about what the debater said instead of comparing who was more confident. We have seen people who are not native speakers won native speakers, so just prepare well, and leave it to the judge to judge.

但辩论不仅仅只是关于说话流利、擅长英语或具有攻击性，内容也起着非常重要的作用。你如何回答对手的问题，你可以提供什么可靠的证据，并说服评委为你投票同样重要。我发现评委，尤其是专业的评委，会更加注意辩论者所说的话，而不是比较谁更自信或者谁听起来更占上风。我们亲眼见证过也亲身体会过来自其他国家的选手战胜美国本土选手。所以只要做好充分的准备，剩下的就可以交给裁判判断了。

And finally, it was a great time to meet other people. There were a lot of friendly people from all over the world, and it was very interesting to know more about them.

最后，summer camp是一个能遇见许多不同类型朋友的好机会，有许多来自世界各地的同学们，和他们交流是十分有趣的。