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A simple infographic of Robert Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction

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A simple infographic of Robert Gagne's 9 Events of Instruction

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This is more for my own personal use, but good if you want a quick check on where you are in the events. 9 is a lot, surprisingly, but the 1st 4 events goes by quickly.

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I met up with Syue on Monday night, mostly trying to check how she's doing and trying to get to know her better. Syue's someone I've never debated with, so getting to know her is important to me so we'd work together well without any sense of awkwardness. Nothing too deep, nothing too fancy. I get a general gist of what she knows about the topic at hand, but I'm not actively teaching her just yet, as I feel like I don't have much time to do so on Monday. I'll have more time with her somewhere during the week.

Syue's really nice. She's my junior, a fellow TESOLian and took the news of "experimenting" on her very well. She doesn't really know the details, but she does consent to being recorded and posted online. I did give her a short run down of what she's getting into, a quick view of the lesson objectives and such, just so she's not too shocked if I ever do anything drastic.

I'm really excited to see how effective this method will be. Here's a quick video of Syue debating, before learning how to do an extension speech, Tuesday night.

During a feedback from our coach, he mentioned that the case that she has put up is quite weak, some sentence statement were ambiguous and shaky, and she wasn't able to utilize her 7 minutes well since she only spoke for 4. Learning how to execute an extension speech will fill up more of the time given to her, serves more analysis to her substansive and strengthen her case.

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Syue listens closely to a senior debater, Emi. Emi's quite good at extension speeches, and I can see Syues trying to understand the entire speech's structure. She seems absorbed into it, so I guess the attention grabber (in the form of Emi demonstrating it to her) works.

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A little guide on feedback, just a supplement. 

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A little guide on feedback, just a supplement. 

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During one of my classes, my classmates did a presentation on feedback. I took pictures in hopes it will help during the feedback part of it.
Though I won't be giving much feedback most of the time. Because Syue will be debating in a real tournament, the feedback will be from real adjudicators who will be my gauge of how much the learning objective have been successful.

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We met up again on Wednesday, before debate training started, and I decided to ask her what she knew about it and what she has done about it before this. Keep in mind, Syue has been seeing her seniors debating and showcasing how to do extension speeches (mostly by the closing house of the debate) for the past few days and she's sort of gotten the main idea. It's never a bad idea to ask her again on what she knows about it.

She answers correctly, indicating she knows and understand the concept, and the only thing left is to show her the step by step.

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Step 4 and 5: Presenting Content and Providing Guidance

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Step 4 and 5: Presenting Content and Providing Guidance

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We were joined by UniMas's coach and veteran debater on Wednesday night, Albert Kumahendran, who will be the adjudication core during our battle in Nationals. He taught the whole team how to properly structure and find points during prep time, and how to follow the framework done to actually give an effective closing house speech. Albert got us to debate on the motion he proposed whilst teaching us how to do the framework, so we had our points ready and all we had to do was go up on the stage and give a 7 minute extension speech.

I had to work with Syue, and pick up on giving her guidance. We essentially worked together and build up both of our speeches together, just to make sure we maintained consistency in our speech. There were a few things she was confused about, and I made sure the air wasn't tense and harmful, that she wouldn't be scared to ask me anything, at any given time that we had together.

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This is the material used to teach Syue on how to work on her extension speeches. I went to a Summer Debate Camp last year, and they gave me a handout, which really helped me become a better debater. I'm using the same way that was taught to me, with my own additions that I've worked on since becoming a debater.

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Intro to Debating and the British Parliamentary Format

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All throughout Wednesday and Thursday, Syue and I practiced on how to give extension speeches, working out different motions and situations depending on theme, and trying to see what else that needed to be improved on.

All the while, I was giving her continuous guidance, whenever she needed. We were getting used to how each other was working, and gotten used to the pattern. So far into this, Syue has managed to give analysis on the motion given, but she's yet to manage figuring out which points the other houses has failed to touch upon, and I would blame that on the lack of practice.

So we practiced more.

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Feedback is given after all our practices, actually. It's repetitive, to make sure that the team know what exactly we had done and not had done between 2 consecutive motions, and seeing how the degree of misses and errors decrease or increase marginally between them. At times, Syue manages to figure out some of the points that were not singled out by the other house, but sometimes she misses. She brings it all back up, follows the steps given during step 4, and with my guidance, we both lay it all out for the team to hear.

And when feedback are given, we dish out a piece of paper and write it all down, so we know what to do and what not to do in the next rounds.

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This isn't in the Gagne's 9 events, since this isn't practice anymore. Syue's out there on her 1st round of National's debate with a pretty difficult motion, and she's using all the things she's learned to give a good extension speech, since we are the closing house.

In my opinion, it's not bad, and she's gone far from how she had started on Monday. She has managed to point out the flaws and errors in the other houses, rebutted and responded well to them, and made sure to reinstate the statement. In my book, that's all the lesson objective achieved, and Syue has successfully understand how to make extension speeches.

Now it's all up to the judges what they thought of it.

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Syue did alright for her 1st tournament, and you can see that her skill increased as the rounds progressed. Not as consistent, but I'd say outside factors like difficulty of motion and background knowledge about the motion were also at play here.

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I don't have consent from the adjudicators to record them, and it's rude to do so, especially when you're the one they're giving feedback to, so we relied on good old paper and pen and jotted down any mistakes or flaws they pointed out, the suggestions they gave, and the strengths we made.

I'd say Syue has managed to get the basics of extensions down, but here comes the hard part of the extensions: actor's analysis, process analysis and comparisons. It's much more harder and detailed, but it would help us to make more analysis that would allow us to overthrow our opponents and pinpoint the main problems of the issues debated.

It's much more harder, like level 2 of extension speeches, but for now, Syue has mastered the basics of extension speeches.

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The learning objective:
Understand the concept of extensions by:

a. Bringing forward the speech not touched upon by the other side.

b. Giving new analysis and evidence on that substansive.

c. restating the argument

Debate jargon aside, it's just trying to develop an argument with more analysis. View it like an upgrade to what was already spoken, more layers of inspection and backing with reasoning and evidence.

After Emi's speech, I'm sure she got the general gist of how it looks, but it wasn't until another senior debater, Ernest, who comes up and does his speech that I started actually annotating what his structure was and explaining how that's the objective.

Ernest, to me, has the best extension speech, and shows the bare bones of the concept, slowly building up substansives and bringing it up to life. He's the perfect example to show Syue how it's done, and I do so by giving her a break down of what Ernest was doing in his extension speech.

Syue's reaction to this was a sense of understanding, by which I gauged with questions of what Ernest was doing in other parts of his speech, off camera. She gets it, but we won't really know until tomorrow, where I'll focus on teaching her how to structure it, and we'll try to see her try it out herself.

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Step 9: Retention and Passing of the Skill

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Step 9: Retention and Passing of the Skill

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Syue went 6 rounds in the Preliminary, and across it all, she used all that was given to her in the previous rounds, everything her seniors and Albert given here, all the advice and guidance from me to churn out great speeches. If that's not retention, then I don't know what is. I'm sure in any other upcoming debate practices or tournaments, she'll definitely be using the same skills again, probably even better.

As of passing the skill, that's contentious to whether or not Syue will continue to debate. She's only started a few months ago, but I'm sure she'll do the same as I have, and teach her juniors how to do it right.

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Syue have gone from a total greenhorn to Malaysia's 105th best debater, in the span of a week, and I got to be there for her every step of the way. Dinner dates, debate practices, singing in the car, McD late night suppers, being in this journey with her has taught me the delight of discovering a student in a fellow junior, a valuable lesson I'll keep forever with me. As my first student, she has flourished exceptionally well, and achieved the objective, heck, surpassed me too.

While the process of her that was recorded for the purpose of this little experiment is shown here, moments like getting to know her better, the frustrations in her face as a motion leaves her astounded, her shyness of approaching the topic, her mischevious side when meeting new people in a new environment, that was all off camera, and albeit not recorded, it'll forever stay fresh in my memories.

What started as a simple experiment to learn about Gagne's 9 Event's of Instruction, an effort to make it more believable than the standard use in showing an example of it in the form of "making a sandwich", it ended with a deeper understanding and appreciation of the career I am in, and my student reaping the benefits of it.

With new skills being developed, Syue herself started a new cycle of the 9 Events, learning how to develop actor's analysis without my guidance, and showcased a tenacity that enables her to self learn it herself. As a teacher, my goal to get her to learn and better herself on her own is achieved. I can only imagine how many more cycles she'll generate all by herself, in her journey to become a better speaker.

Syue has shown to me, that the 9 Events of Instruction doesn't necessarily have to come from one person. In fact, a lot of the teaching of the materials and feedback weren't even coming from me. The experiment generally ran itself. Syue has also shown me how hard it could be to learn a skill, and with patience and tenacity, even the most hardest motions can be broken down and executed well.

I don't regret doing this. I wish her the best in her future tournaments, and if she'll allow me, I don't mind guiding her though all her other cycles too.