by Anthony Severin | Jul 11, 2021 | Advocacy, Basics, Counterplans, Fiat, From Advanced to National-Class, Negative, Theory, Uncategorized
What must an affirmative team do to win a policy debate round? The affirmative should win if they convince the judge that the audience and the debaters are better off if the judge votes affirmative. Conversely, the negative should win if they convince the judge that...
by Jeremiah Mosbey | May 13, 2021 | Coaching, From Advanced to National-Class
What were the biggest things that helped you really start understanding debate as you were first starting out? We all have a short list of things that really made things “click” for us, and if you can remember those things, there’s a good chance that you could make a...
by Ben Brown | Apr 1, 2021 | Affirmatives, Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, Technique, TP
Anybody who’s been in TP or LD debate for any considerable amount of time understands the necessity of delivering a memorable 2AR. After all, being able to give the final speech of the round poses a significant rhetorical advantage to the affirmative–an...
by Ben Brown | Feb 4, 2021 | Concept Analysis, Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Strategy, TP, Uncategorized
In part 1, we looked at the argument for net benefits being the superior framing as compared to the burden of proof in Team Policy. The short version is that 9 times out of 10, the burden of proof boils down to net benefits anyway. That is, first, if there’s a net...
by Ben Brown | Jan 7, 2021 | Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Research, Thinking Strategically, TP
Each year, my debate club requires every student to go through the NCFCA’s “Comprehensive Guide to Policy Debate” curriculum in the fall, regardless of experience level. Having read it multiple times before, I was skimming the week’s assigned chapter twenty or...
by Ben Brown | Dec 10, 2020 | Counterplans, Debate Blog, From Advanced to National-Class, From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Theory, TP
A few months ago, for the first time in my Team Policy career, I wrote a Negative brief which centered around a topical counterplan. Having never attempted this before, I had to sit down for a good while and think through the theoretical justifications for such...
