4 ms·

I have coached multiple formats for years. And no, that’s not how competitive debate works. At least not competitive debate worth participating in. (TBF there a

by ke88y 4y ago

I have coached multiple formats for years. And no, that’s not how competitive debate works. At least not competitive debate worth participating in. (TBF there are a lot of terrible debate programs/leagues, so this may have been your experience.) The quality bar in most nationally competitive debate — the type for which students might get college scholarships or do well in national qualifiers-only tournaments — is far higher than in online discussions. Students enter with thousands of pages of evidence and must frame arguments in terms of a few common logical structures that can have a lot of emergent complexity. It’s more like adversarial mathematical proof writing situated in the context of policy making than what people typically call “debate”. Even the delivery of speeches is, I bet, not at all what you would expect. See eg https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share This is sometimes true even in cases where students aren’t allowed to bring outside evidence into the round due to students’ prior experience in evidence based formats. I tried using this system to vet some common debate mainstays — a politics disadvantage about the debt ceiling, a federalism counter plan, a very condensed 1ac from this years topic, and a very condensed 1nc shell. On the disad in particular this system double turns itself (google “double turn debate” for various explanations). This is a very novice mistake. The judge doesn’t notice. On the 1NC response the system ignores topicality, which is an instant loss. The equivalent of a plaintiff ignoring a pre trial motion to dismiss because they are too busy writing up cross examination questions for the defense witnesses. Again, the judge didn’t notice. The system isn’t working for me anymore but I bet you’d get similar issues with v/vc style LD cases, where the system doesn’t understand simple theory about how the value and criterion interact; particularly subsumption style arguments Even on more lay types of debates the system and judge fail, as documented in other comments. I wouldn’t recommend using this system to practice competitive debate.

eynsham 4y ago
Yes, the most time-efficient form of practice for BP (in my experience) was alternating opening speeches with a friend. 15+14+10 for reflexion≈40 minutes per speech.
- ke88y 4y ago
  In parliamentary styles, practicing opening speeches is definitely at the top of the list in terms of effective drills. So much hinges on getting off on the correct foot. In other formats the first 2-4 speeches are verbatim pre-written, either entirely or as composable blocks. so you want to make sure those blocks can be chosen correctly and delivered efficiently but practicing beyond that point is not a huge help. But you can instead drill specific skills. I have a large pile of “10 minute round” templates that I specialize to each topic for the students. Each focuses on only a specific skill and usually in the second constructive or rebutttal phase (eg, answering a link turn). Typically students who complete those drills a few times each and participate in a few scrimmages will make it to out rounds at their first novice tournament.
revelio 4y ago
>> Even the delivery of speeches is, I bet, not at all what you would expect. See eg https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share What's the point of a debate in which the speeches are completely unintelligible? They might as well just submit a written document if they're going to abuse the spoken word as aggressively as that.
- ke88y 4y ago
  > What's the point of a debate in which the speeches are completely unintelligible? 1. The speeches are intelligible. Maybe not to you. That's okay. 2. The oral presentation component still has value because it puts a hard constraint on the amount of time competitors have to formulate and execute on their strategy. It's an artificial constraint designed to train specific skills -- "thinking on your feet in the presence of a lot of information". What's the point of competitive running, or of any team sport? Given the highly artifical nature of the 100m dash, might as well just have each competitor run their race and mail in a video instead of having a track meet, right? What value could the competition provide? Ultimately, these are simply highly constrained games. The rules are designed to make the game competitive, and children play the game as a way to learn and practice various skills. No one thinks that being great at competitive running or hitting a baseball will immediately translate into e.g. business acumen or excellence on the battlefield. For some reason it breaks people's minds that debate is just another competitive game.
  - revelio 4y ago
    I think it's because this is described with the word "debate". Running 100m really fast is still clearly running, it's just very fast. Anyone can run, not everyone can run that fast. That video doesn't resemble anything anyone normal would recognize as debate. The point of debate is to persuade people effectively. If normal people can't even understand what you're saying they can't possibly be persuaded so you have totally failed at debate. If that competition was described as a speed talking competition then fine, no problem, but it's not.
    - 4y ago

by ke88y 4y ago

eynsham 4y ago

Yes, the most time-efficient form of practice for BP (in my experience) was alternating opening speeches with a friend. 15+14+10 for reflexion≈40 minutes per speech.

ke88y 4y ago
In parliamentary styles, practicing opening speeches is definitely at the top of the list in terms of effective drills. So much hinges on getting off on the correct foot. In other formats the first 2-4 speeches are verbatim pre-written, either entirely or as composable blocks. so you want to make sure those blocks can be chosen correctly and delivered efficiently but practicing beyond that point is not a huge help. But you can instead drill specific skills. I have a large pile of “10 minute round” templates that I specialize to each topic for the students. Each focuses on only a specific skill and usually in the second constructive or rebutttal phase (eg, answering a link turn). Typically students who complete those drills a few times each and participate in a few scrimmages will make it to out rounds at their first novice tournament.

revelio 4y ago

>> Even the delivery of speeches is, I bet, not at all what you would expect. See eg https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share https://www.youtube.com/live/Kc-QrcxrkCw?feature=share What's the point of a debate in which the speeches are completely unintelligible? They might as well just submit a written document if they're going to abuse the spoken word as aggressively as that.

ke88y 4y ago
> What's the point of a debate in which the speeches are completely unintelligible? 1. The speeches are intelligible. Maybe not to you. That's okay. 2. The oral presentation component still has value because it puts a hard constraint on the amount of time competitors have to formulate and execute on their strategy. It's an artificial constraint designed to train specific skills -- "thinking on your feet in the presence of a lot of information". What's the point of competitive running, or of any team sport? Given the highly artifical nature of the 100m dash, might as well just have each competitor run their race and mail in a video instead of having a track meet, right? What value could the competition provide? Ultimately, these are simply highly constrained games. The rules are designed to make the game competitive, and children play the game as a way to learn and practice various skills. No one thinks that being great at competitive running or hitting a baseball will immediately translate into e.g. business acumen or excellence on the battlefield. For some reason it breaks people's minds that debate is just another competitive game.
- revelio 4y ago
  I think it's because this is described with the word "debate". Running 100m really fast is still clearly running, it's just very fast. Anyone can run, not everyone can run that fast. That video doesn't resemble anything anyone normal would recognize as debate. The point of debate is to persuade people effectively. If normal people can't even understand what you're saying they can't possibly be persuaded so you have totally failed at debate. If that competition was described as a speed talking competition then fine, no problem, but it's not.
  - 4y ago