The International New Debaters (IND) Track or formerly known as The Newcomers Track (TNT) is offered for the third time in a row.

This track will be taught by Joe Zompetti and Sergei Naumoff.

Well designed and tested out curriculum provides unique opportunity for beginner debaters to catch up with the rest of the YF group in an intensive 4-days training of KP debate and public speaking.

Unlike last year, IND 2009 will run only during the KPDC, July 24-27, 2009. It is designed for students with no or limited experience in debate, who would like to get some practice before competing. The curriculum will teach and reinforce some basic debate skills and concepts, and will do so in a clear, and easy to understand manner. Through a lot of practice, these 4 days of intensive training will reinforce and build up confidence for the beginning debaters and hence give them a good starting position for the Mixed Team Track.

The IND will emphasize development and mastering of the basic skills of debate—argument construction, refutation, and public speaking. Through small group activities, daily games and drills, skill development sessions, and finally working as a member of a team, participants in the IND will learn, hone, and master these three foundational skills, which will enable them to compete regardless of which format they choose to participate in.

Argument construction, refutation, and public speaking will be the skills most emphasized in the IND, however numerous other important skills will also be covered:

• Resolution/Motion Construction
• Affirmative Case Construction
• Negative Case Construction
• Questioning
• Note Taking
• Teamwork

After this 4-days initial training, the participants of the IND will join the rest of the group for the MTT track.

Statements from last years' participants:

Ablay & Azizzhan [debaters]: On our track we have a lot of fun: making new friends, speaking English, debating and playing table tennis.

"Elvira Seitkazinova [Trainer]: We [trainers] have been preparing this track for a half of year. We tried to make it as fun as possible. Now we are happy that we met all of you and that we can find out more about your personalities. What I specially like about IND is a great diversity among the participants. Moreover i'm really glad that i have an opportunity to work with such great trainers as Ronna and Aaron. To some up i'd like to say that we are having and we are going to have a lot of fun!!!

These are the biographies of the trainers teaching this track

Dr. Joe Zompetti is an associate professor of rhetoric at Illinois State University where he is also the Director of Forensics. He received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan). He currently serves on the IDEA-NL Board of Directors. He has been an international trainer in Slovakia, Macedonia, Estonia, Romania, Slovenia, and Japan. He has coached debate for over 20 years in various formats, including Karl Popper, American policy, American Lincoln-Douglas, American Public Forum and British Parliamentary debate.

Sergei Naumoff is a debate coach at Herzen University of St.Petersburg, Russia where he teaches Comparative Politics and Forensics. He started debate activities in 1998 as a university debater, then high school debate coach and a debate administrator. In November 2006 he was elected as IDEA-NL Board member. Since 2000, he has participated in six IDEA Youth Forums (in Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Czech Republic) as a staff member, judge, coach and trainer.