There are four teams in each debate round (8 debaters, 2 for each team). The government bench consists of Opening Government (OG) and Closing Government (CG), who should support the motion. The opposition bench is consists of Opening Opposition (OO) and Closing Opposition (CO), who should oppose the motion. OG and OO are collectively referred to as the Upper House, while CG and CO are jointly termed the Lower House. The order in which each speaker delivers a speech is demonstrated in the figure below.
The role each speaker plays in a debate round is summarized below:
Prime minister (PM) explains the background of the motion, sets a model, defines keywords in the motion, and brings up the most important arguments of OG.
Leader of Opposition (LO) gives rebuttals to the PM and brings up the arguments of OO. LO is the only speaker entitled to challenge the definitions set up by the PM, though highly discouraged.
Deputy Prime minister (DPM) /Deputy Leader of Opposition (DLO) are expected to rebut the previous speakers, bring forth other arguments of their team and to strengthen their case.
Member of Government (MG) / Member of Opposition (MO) rebut and extend the debate to a wider range of issues and perspectives. Extensions can be done in two ways:
Contributing new arguments never mentioned during the upper house debate.
Analyzing more deeply existing arguments by providing more explanations, more concrete reasons, or missing linkages within.
Government Whip (GW) / Opposition Whip (OW) are torebut, summarize, and more importantly, identify clashes and make comparative analyses. New examples and analogies to support existing arguments are allowed for the OW, but it should be noted that the OW is prohibited from bringing up new arguments since he or she is the last speaker in the debate round. The GW is highly discouraged from giving new arguments.
Preparation time:
Debaters have 15 minutes to prepare their speech once the motion is released. Teams cannot exchange ideas with each other during the preparation time.
Only tOG is allowed to stay in the debate room during preparation time.
Speech time
Each speaker has a 7-minute speech time and is allowed to extend his or her speech to 7.5 minutes. Arguments spoken after that will be ignored by the adjudicators.
Point of Information (POI)
POIs are a vital weapon for teams to attack and interrupt the speaker. They can be questions or statements. POIs can only be raised between the first minute and the sixth minute, both of which will be signified by a clap of hands.
When raising POIs, debaters should stand up, and say sentences such as “POI, Sir/Ma’am,” “On that point,” “Before you move on”. Debaters need to wait until recognized by the speaker, who has the privilege to decide whether to take the POI or not. It is suggested that debaters should take one or two POIs during their speech time.
Raising POIs is an effective way to show each team’s engagement and contribution to the debate. Even though the debater is not called upon by the speaker and thus cannot offer POIs, adjudicators will still mark POIs on their notes and take them into account when deciding the final ranking and scores.
Judging Criteria
In the BP format, adjudicators principally rank the performance of the four teams and each speaker according to their overall contribution, namely, matter and manner in the debate round. Matter refers to arguments, rebuttals and POIs brought up by the debaters, while manner means the way debaters deliver their speech, including speech structure, eye contact, etc.
Last but not least, adjudicators take account of role fulfillment of each speaker when judging. Violations of rules, say, lower house knifing their upper house, or OW bringing forth new matters, are punishable through the deduction of score of the team. However, making these mistkaes will not automatically make a team lose, i.e. no automatic losses.
Other Reminders
In a debate round, debaters will hear a first clap at the first minute, which signifies that POIs are allowed from then on, a second clap at the 6th minute, which suggests that POIs are disallowed hence, and a third clap at the 7th minute. At 7.5 minutes, debaters will hear three consecutive claps and should finish their speech and leave the podium.