Dear Colleagues,

The Taipei American School Speech and Debate team is excited to invite you to attend the inaugural Taiwan Speech & Debate Invitational on October 11-13, 2024, hosted at our campus in Taipei, Taiwan.

We are excited to offer you and your students not only an outstanding tournament experience, but also a unique cultural opportunity to explore parts of our beautiful island and engage with the growing international speech and debate community.

Please note some important initial tournament information - we will add additional details as the tournament approaches:

-The inaugural Taiwan Speech and Debate Invitational will be an in-person tournament.

-Schools from around the world are invited to attend.

-The tournament will run Friday through Sunday. We encourage teams to arrive by Wednesday, October 9^th to allow for an adjustment and cultural experience day on Thursday, October 10^th. We have selected this weekend as 10/10 is Taiwan’s National Day, a national holiday, and October 14^th is a holiday in the United States, making return travel easier for visiting teams.

-Our current plan is to offer Congressional Debate, Policy Debate, Public Forum Debate, and World Schools Debate, as well as Extemp, Impromptu, Oratory, and Informative. We are open to expanding our offerings to include Lincoln-Douglas and interp events if there is significant interest. Please email williamsc@tas.edu.tw if you have interest in adding these events.

-The tournament will offer six preliminary rounds in Public Forum and Policy, five preliminary rounds in World Schools Debate, four preliminary rounds in all speech events, and three preliminary sessions in Congressional Debate. In debate, we will break all winning records. In speech, we will advance the greatest number of students reasonable (around a third of the field).

-We will offer novice divisions in both Policy Debate and Public Forum Debate. These divisions will also include middle school students. If interest warrants it, we will add novice divisions in other categories.

-We anticipate being designated as a University of Kentucky TOC qualifying tournament at the following levels:

-Public Forum Debate - Finals

-Policy Debate - Finals

-Speech Events

We cannot wait to share more information with you in the coming months and to welcome you to the island of Taiwan and our beautiful campus in Taipei!

Chase Williams

Director of Speech and Debate

Ian Hopkins

Middle School Speech and Debate Coach

Micah Cook

Upper School Speech and Debate Coach

Lawrence Zhou

Upper School Speech and Debate Coach