HUFS and Korea’s premier 24-hour news channel YTN held the 7th YTN-HUFS Elementary School English Debating Championship online. The two-day online competition began on February 20 (Sat.) and ended the following day. The organizing committee and participating students placed the highest priority on compliance with COVID-19 precautionary regulations and agreed to hold the event online for the second year in a row.

Joined by 52 elementary student teams from across the nation, the competition heated up as 31 teams and 21 teams battled it out in the international league and domestic league tournaments, respectively. All participating teams went through three preliminary rounds and four final rounds. The ‘Superb Team’ title was given to teams with all four wins in the final rounds after the preliminary competition.

The competition covered a range of current issues, including the interests of marginalized groups, limits of intervention in internal affairs of states, eco-friendly technologies, advantages and disadvantages of SNS, and the human rights of criminals. In line with its key objective, the event put more focus on helping the students hone their basic debating skills and improve their persuasive use of English than assessing their fluency in the language.

The ‘Superb Team’ title went to the DeVengers (Woo Jeong-Min, Jung Ji-Min, Jin Ha-Jin, and Kim Bo-Min) in the international league tournament and Sliced Milk (Jung Won-Seok, Jung Ye-Eun, Shin Do-Yoon, and Kim Bo-Min) in the domestic league tournament.

Leveraging its experience and know-how in holding the entire process in a contact-free manner, including the orientation and adjudicator training, the organizing committee is gearing up to bring the competition to the international level from 2022 onwards, opening its doors to students from China, Japan, Southeast Asian countries, and the rest of the Asia-Pacific region.