From Intermediate to Advanced
Isaiah on Winning Outrounds
Learn from Isaiah McPeak how to improve your outround performance.
Lindsay See on Rebuttals
Rebuttals have two basic points: 1. Why you’re winning the arguments you’re winning, and 2. Why those ones are the most important.
Three Common TP Questions
Isaiah answers 3 top questions Team Policy debaters have.
Pugh/Bozarth vs. Kintzing/Kintzing
Flow this round write down 3 things you should improve in your presentation style as a result.
Consistency Is Key
Have you ever crammed for a test before? While some of us are worse about it than others, essentially everyone has had an experience where they’ve waited until the absolute last minute to complete a school assignment, and rushed to complete it before the deadline. In...
You’re Researching All Wrong. These 4 Steps Will Improve Your Method.
You’re Researching All Wrong. These 4 Steps Will Improve Your Method. When I play chess, I watch my opponent's eyes. As they peer across the board, I can glean massive amounts of information. I can sense fear. I can sense excitement. I can sense when and why my...
A Guide to the 1AR Part I: Preparation
The 1AR presents a unique challenge: responding to two speeches in one. It’s probably the most difficult speech to give in a debate round, but it can also be the most fun. I’ve been the 1AR for most of my time in debate, and it’s my favorite speech by far. Sure, I...
Why Worse Plans Make for Better Cases
What makes a good affirmative case? Aside from one that wins, most debaters look for policies that they believe should be implemented in the real world, and more specifically, ones that create the most benefits. For instance, if one course of action would...
Voting Issues Part II: How to Run Voting Issues Well
In Voting Issues Part I, we discussed three common problems surrounding voters and how to avoid them by not running voters at all. But this doesn’t mean you should never run voters! It’s important to understand how to debate without voters, but at the same time many...
Stop Losing Rounds to Abuse
You’ve just delivered the greatest 2NR of your life. Certain that you’ve just won the round, you sit back in your seat with a grin. There may be one more speech left, but the round is essentially over. You hammered in your points, and demolished the mediocre...
Voting Issues Part I: The Case Against Voting Issues
Carefully read a list of numbers, wait a minute or two, and then try to recall as many of those numbers as you can. It’ll probably be easiest to remember the first and last few numbers. That’s because your brain is wired to recall things in order of primacy and...
The “Problem” With Judging, Examined
A couple of years ago, Harrison wrote a couple of excellent articles (here and here) delving into the different types of debate judges, and the pros and cons of each style. While we all understand the fact that there are different kinds of judges, it’s still very...
Purposeful Practice: The Solution
In the last article (found here), we covered why over-practice is a real threat to competitive speech & debate success. That article wasn't saying that practice is inherently bad. It isn't. Practice is fundamental to improving at anything. But there are helpful...
Debate: Not Just a Mental Activity
Debate is not a sport. Debate is not a physical competition where the strength and stamina of your body is tested against that of someone else's body, rather, it is a test of your mind and communication skills. But with that being said, we need to remember that the...
Learning from Yourself: Using Outrounds as a Template for All Rounds
Looking back on my freshman year of high school, I imagine that I and my partner were one of the most obnoxious teams in the region, perhaps the nation. We would run topicality almost every single negative round, not to mention starting virtually every single speech...
Revisiting the Burden of Proof, Part 2
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...
Your Reading Speed is Holding You Back; Here’s Why
I’ve always believed that my childhood love for reading was a foundational building block for my debate career. As I became increasingly engrossed in debate, I began to realize that my ability to read quickly was invaluable. Recently I became curious to see if I was...
Applications to Illustrate Principles
One of the first logical fallacies I ever learned about was the “Part to Whole” fallacy, arguing that one part of a larger category represents the whole category. For instance: “This tire is made of rubber. Therefore the vehicle of which the tire is a part is also...
Case Philosophies, the Why and the How
In almost every single video game, there is an objective. Maybe it's to capture the point, defend the base, take their flag, or even score a goal or a touchdown. Throughout the course of the game, it doesn't really matter how many kills you get, how accurate you are,...