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 Ellie Harris | Mar 26, 2021 | Advocacy, From Intermediate to Advanced
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...
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...
