by Noah McKay | Nov 7, 2022 | Cross Examination, Lincoln-Douglas, Strategy, Uncategorized
Competitive debaters are trained to give good answers to difficult questions. So, we are profoundly uncomfortable when we don’t have an answer to a question. And, under most circumstances, we would never dream of refusing to try to answer a question. (Sometimes...
by D. J. Mendenhall | Oct 20, 2021 | Cross Examination
Oftentimes Cross Ex is seen as the time to trap your opponent and get them to concede key information, but when I was first starting debate I struggled a lot with this because I was nowhere near aggressive enough to get my opponent to admit anything they didn’t want...
by Kyle Lee | Dec 22, 2020 | Cross Examination, From Intermediate to Advanced
What would you say is the ideal cross-examination? Ideas like “a cross-examination that makes your opponents admit their faults” or “asking questions that strengthen your case” may come to mind. However, there’s a unique feature of...
by Anthony Severin | Nov 13, 2020 | Communication/Rhetoric, Cross Examination, From Intermediate to Advanced, Strategy, Technique
Let’s suppose I’m a prosecutor trying to convince a jury to convict the defendant in a murder case. Let’s call the defendant “Albert” and the victim “Buddy.” Albert is on the stand and I’m cross-examining him. You might...
by Thaddeus Tague | May 8, 2019 | Cross Examination
We’ve all seen it. Debaters who use cross-examination or cross-fire to expound on the speech they’ve just made. This is not only ill-advised but also obnoxious and shows a clear lack of understanding. More than that – if the debater knows what they’re...
by Harrison Durland | Feb 26, 2019 | Cross Examination, From Intermediate to Advanced, Strategy
Recently, we’ve written some articles that focus on cross examination. Those articles describe a few approaches to CX questioning, but now there’s another question to be answered: (how) do you put CX questions in briefs? As simple as this may seem, from experience I...
