An Apex Thought student who began with no prior debate experience reached the later rounds of THBPO 2025 in Bangkok — competing against some of Southeast Asia's strongest school debaters — just over a year after his first class. His journey from complete beginner to international competitor is the clearest answer I can give to parents who ask: how long does it actually take? Here is his story.
(Reza is not his real name. I've changed it and a few details to protect his privacy. His journey, however, is entirely real.)
Reza was 15 when he first walked into an Apex Thought class. He came with his mother, who had found us through a friend's recommendation. He was polite, quiet, and, by his own admission when I asked him later, terrified. He had never debated before. He had never spoken in front of more than five people. He didn't know what British Parliamentary debate was.
Eleven months later, he was sitting in a ballroom in Bangkok, representing Malaysia at THBPO 2025.
Month 1–2: Learning to Argue Without Winning
The first two months for most new students are the same: uncomfortable, humbling, and transformative. Reza joined our Young Orators League programme on Sundays and quickly discovered that having opinions was not the same as being able to defend them.
The first skill we work on is structure, not eloquence, not vocabulary, not delivery. Just: can you make one clear point, support it with one piece of evidence, and explain why it matters? For most students, this alone takes several weeks to become natural.
First In-Class Round
Reza spoke for 3 minutes with notes, made one argument, and sat down visibly shaking. His feedback: structure was there, but delivery was too fast and eye contact was absent. He stayed after class to ask what he could do better.
First Rebuttal Drill
Rebuttal drills force students to respond on the spot. Reza's first attempts were mechanical, repeating back what the other person said before responding. By week 6, he was engaging with the substance directly and finding logical inconsistencies.
Month 3–5: Building Breadth and Speed
The middle phase of development is often the most frustrating for students, and the most important. Reza had mastered the basics but kept running out of material in longer rounds. His arguments were solid but narrow.
We addressed this through two approaches. First, I assigned him a weekly reading habit: one long-form article per day across different topics, covering economics, technology, climate, healthcare, and international relations. Not to memorise facts, but to develop the habit of seeing every story as a potential debate motion.
Second, we increased the pressure. Motions were announced with progressively shorter prep times, moving from 20 minutes down to 15, 10, and then 7. The ability to construct a coherent case under time pressure is a skill that must be trained; it doesn't develop from comfortable practice sessions.
First Inter-Class Competition
Reza's team finished second. He gave the Whip speech, which he had never done in a real round before. His crystallisation of the debate was incomplete, as he summarised rather than evaluated, but the confidence in the room was measurably higher than his first round three months earlier.
Month 6–8: The THBPO Decision
"When Dr Shantini told me she thought I could try for THBPO, I didn't believe her. I had only been doing this for six months. But she said she didn't say I was ready. She said she thought I could be ready."
The decision to enter a student in an international tournament is one I make carefully. Sending a student who is not ready wastes their time and money, and can actually set them back if the experience is too overwhelming. But I also believe that there is a category of student who is best developed through being thrown in at the deep end: students with the self-awareness to learn from failure, the resilience to come back from it, and the intellectual hunger to find out what they're capable of.
Reza was that kind of student. So we began a dedicated 12-week THBPO preparation block.
Month 9–11: Intensive Tournament Preparation
The final preparation phase was the most intensive. We increased sessions to twice weekly, adding a Thursday evening online session to the Sunday programme. We brought in additional coaches from Apex Thought's trainer roster to expose Reza's team to different adjudication styles.
BP Format Specialisation
THBPO uses standard BP. Reza's team trained specifically on the Closing role, the hardest position for most school debaters who are used to 2-team formats. Extension logic took four dedicated sessions before it clicked.
Full Mock Tournament
Three consecutive rounds in a single day, judged by external adjudicators. Feedback sessions after each round. By round three, Reza's Whip speech had transformed. He was no longer summarising; he was winning the debate retrospectively by reframing each clash in his team's favour.
Travel and Final Preparation
Two weeks before Bangkok, we shifted to decompression mode. Light practice, confidence work, and a focus on mindset: how to stay sharp across 6+ rounds in two days, how to recover from a bad round, and how to engage with international students in the prep room.
Bangkok: THBPO 2025
Reza's team did not break to the elimination rounds at THBPO 2025. They went 3–3 in the preliminary rounds, which, for a student who had started debating less than a year prior at an international tournament with teams from 15+ countries, is genuinely remarkable.
More importantly, Reza came back from Bangkok different. Not just as a debater, but as a person. He had sat in prep rooms with students from Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, and India. He had argued motions about international monetary policy and climate reparations with people his age who were as serious and well-read as he was. He had discovered that he could hold his own on a global stage.
He enrolled in Voices of Tomorrow (our adult programme) the Sunday after he returned from Bangkok. "I feel like I've only just started," he told me. That, more than any competition result, is the sign of a debater who will go far.
What Reza's Journey Teaches Us
Reza's path from complete beginner to THBPO competitor in eleven months is not the norm, but it's also not exceptional. I've seen similar trajectories in students who share three characteristics:
- They show up every week, without exception. Consistency of practice is the single biggest predictor of development speed.
- They ask for feedback, and they act on it. Students who receive criticism as information rather than judgement improve faster than anyone else.
- They read widely and stay curious. Debate is not a performance skill. It's a thinking skill. The students who read beyond what they're asked to read always develop the most depth.
If your child has those three qualities, the timeline to competitive debate is shorter than you might think. Get in touch and let's talk about where they could be in a year.
Dr Shantini Karalasingam
Founder, Apex Thought. PhD (University of Nottingham) · M.Education Guidance & Counselling (UM) · B. Arts Hons (UM). Debate educator and coach with over a decade of experience training students for international competitions.
Share this article