Debate Topic: Nasi Lemak vs Fruitcake. Is Nasi Lemak better than Fruitcake?

1.0 Focus of the activity

This activity does not require the students to debate on the features of the foods. The

name of the foods is used to represent the culture respectively. Nasi Lemak represents

Malaysian culture while Fruitcake represents Western culture (from the perspectives

of both the short story and generally).

This activity intends to enable students to be able to relate Malaysian and Western

cultural aspects. The students have to relate compare and any unfamiliar cultural

elements found in the story Fruitcake Special with their prior knowledge of Malaysian

culture. This is done so that the students are able to improve their knowledge on how

others view each other’s culture.

2.0 Organisation of groups

1) In this activity, students are required to form groups of 4 members.

Eg: Assume that the class consists of 32 students. There will be 8 groups

altogether.

2) However, not all group members have to be involved in the debate session. Each

group is required to send only two representatives for the debate session. Other

members have to help brainstorming points for the groups’ debaters.

Group number Number of members Number of Debaters Side/ session

Group 1 4 2 Opposition / 2nd

session

Group 2 4 2 Opposition / 1st

session

Group 3 4 2 Government / 2nd

session

Group 4 4 2 Government / 1st

session

Group 5 4 2 Opposition / 2nd

session

Group 6 4 2 Government / 2nd

session

Group 7 4 2 Government / 1st

session

Group 8 4 2 Opposition / 1st

session

Table 1: Example of organisation of groups.

3) Two debaters from each group will team up with two debaters from another group

to form a new debate team. E.g.: 2 debaters from Group 1 + 2 debaters from Group 3=

1 opposition debate team. Table 1 shows an example of organisation of the team

4) The Government team will support the motion Nasi Lemak is better than Fruitcake,

while the opposition team will opposed the motion.

5) The debate is held in two sessions. 10 minutes for each session, and 5 minutes for

preparation is allocated.