Each
of the Catalan universities in the Vives University
Network is represented by a team made up of a maximum of five members (two
speakers, two researchers and one reserve member) and a captain. The teams are
kept in the dark regarding whether they have to defend a position in favour or
against the topic in question right up until a few minutes before the
confrontation begins.  After each debate,
a team of judges made up of professionals from different fields of knowledge
decides which argument has been the strongest and most convincing.

This
year, the UIC team is made up of law students Miquel
De Espona Plana, Ricard Mor Martínez, Oriol
Oliva Trastoy and Marc Pertíñez Romagosa, together with business
administration student Alba García Jiménez. The team,
which is captained by Marc Pertíñez, has been preparing for the debate by attending
the Debating Techniques Workshop organized by the Language Planning Department
and taught by professors Ricardo Jiménez and Marta Juanhuix. The UIC team
made it to the semi-finals in the 2011 edition of the competition.

The
objective of the Debate League is to promote the use of words by students
through dialectical confrontation between teams, which have to defend a
position in favour or against a topic of current affairs. Speakers are assessed
on skills such as teamwork, the soundness of their arguments, the fluency of
their presentations, and their semantic and formal accuracy.