English Education Students Win Again and Become the Best Speaker in the National Debate Competition

FBS - Karangmalang The Indonesian language debate team of UNY has made another achievement by winning the title of best speaker as well as second place in the national debate competition. Citra Dewi Harmia, a student majoring English Education in 2016 was named the best speaker in the UNY national Debate and Essay competition (UNYDEC) which was held by BEM KM UNY at Yogyakarta State University, on 3 to 4 May 2019. This competition was participated by 24 teams from 8 provinces in Indonesia. This competition uses the Asian parliamentary debate system or the Asian parliamentary debate where there are two teams, namely the Government team in charge of supporting the motion or topic of debate and the Opposition team which rejects the motion. The motions or topics of debate that are given are very diverse and raise issues that are currently hot in the community. Some of the topics raised include: issues of education, women, environment, and technology. Participants are only given 30 minutes of preparation time to prepare a case and argumentation according to their position. The debate itself is an activity that aims to hone critical, logical, and solution thinking skills supported by good public speaking skills.

The UNY team consisting of Citra Dewi Harmia (English Education, 2016), Karina Wahyu (Chemistry Education, 2018) and Apni Sabila (Management, 2017) managed to pass three preliminary rounds with perfect winning points (9 points) and topped the competition tabulation with a total of 9 points as the highest scoring team out of 24 teams. The UNY team also managed to smoothly win the quarterfinals and semifinals, until they finally faced the UGM team in the grandfinals. UNY won second place and one of the speakers from the UNY team, Citra Dewi Harmia, won the highest individual score out of a total of 72 speakers and was named the best speaker. A week earlier, on 23 and 24 April 2019, the UNY Indonesian language debate team also managed to make an achievement by winning second place and second best speaker (Citra Dewi Harmia, English Education, 2016) in the Indonesian Student Debate Competition (KDMI) organized by LLDIKTI Region V Yogyakarta. This competition is the initial stage of the Indonesian Student Debate Competition (KDMI) at the national level organized by Ristekdkti. Each Regional LLDIKTI must select universities in their respective regions to take the two best teams that will represent Yogyakarta at the national level. The two best teams selected are UGM and UNY.

Citra Dewi Harmia, who is currently still in semester 6 of the English Language Education study program, admitted that she was very grateful for this achievement and was optimistic that she would get better results at the national KDMI which will be held in July at Airlangga University, Surabaya. Apart from UNYDEC and KDMI, Citra, who is an active member of UNY's English Debating Society (EDS), has also achieved a number of achievements in the field of English debate, namely the UNY Safel Foreign Language UKM sub-division. Some of these achievements include becoming:

- the delegation of UNY in the World University Debating Championship (WUDC) Mexico City, Mexico 2018.

- the 3rd  Runner-Up National University Debating Championship (NUDC) Kopertis V Yogyakarta 2018.

- the 3rd  Best Speaker National University Debating Championship (NUDC) Kopertis V Yogyakarta 2018.

- the 1st  breaking judge Alsa Crushbone Debating Championship (ACDC) UGM 2018 - 1st Best Speaker National English Education Debate (NEED), Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta 2019.

- the Top 6th Best Speaker in SEA Debating Competition (SEADC), UMY 201.

- the 1st  place winner and best speaker at UNY Student Debate Competition (KDMUNY) organized by UNY students, 2019