by Patrick McDonald | Feb 25, 2021 | Speaking, Strategy
Dear friends, not unfriendly acquaintances, others, I have a confession to make. Several days ago, I unearthed the script of the first full-length speech I ever wrote. On a hunch, I opened up the search function via Ctrl + F and punched in a solitary question mark....
by Patrick McDonald | Feb 11, 2021 | Speaking, Strategy
He’s asleep. He’s literally asleep. When that thought pierced into my mind, my initial reaction was one of astonishment. I was roughly halfway through my Persuasive speech, and five feet in front of me was the head judge, his head peacefully at rest on his chair,...
by Ben Brown | Feb 4, 2021 | Concept Analysis, Debate, 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 Patrick McDonald | Jan 28, 2021 | Debate, Strategy
In my novice year of debate, I had a time distribution problem. Perhaps this was because I enjoyed hearing myself ramble on about irrelevant points or demolishing the applicability of my opponent’s introduction. More likely, it was because my brain had yet to come to...
by Kyle Lee | Jan 5, 2021 | From Intermediate to Advanced, Negative, Strategy
Throughout my career in Team Policy Debate, I’ve always tried my hardest to brief every case I could and figure out all the cases at the tournament as soon as possible. I’ve spent late nights after tournament competition staying up to research cases and...
by Nathan Wang | Jan 1, 2021 | Debate, From Intermediate to Advanced, Strategy, Uncategorized
Debate is like a game of chess. In chess, positioning is everything. You can be ahead in pieces and still be losing the game. Sometimes, it’s even worth it to sacrifice a rook or even a queen for a better position. You need to know which pieces to develop and at...
