by Charlie Said | Oct 20, 2022 | From Intermediate to Advanced, Parliamentary, Strategy, Team Policy, Thinking Strategically, Topicality
There’s few things that make experienced debaters happier than a quality Topicality debate (Hereafter referred to by the common debate lingo of “T”). That’s probably because T is so often mishandled by both teams, to the frustration of...
by Anthony Severin | Jul 11, 2021 | Advocacy, Counterplans, Fiat, From Advanced to National-Class, Negative, 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 Harrison Durland | Feb 12, 2021 | Soapbox
This post is part of a series:See part 1 hereSee part 2 hereSee part 3 here Throughout this series, I’ve been setting the stage for and summarizing Pragmatism as an expansive paradigm/weighing mechanism for a judge to make decisions in debate (among other things, such...
by Harrison Durland | Dec 25, 2020 | Soapbox
In my previous article I discussed some of the “goals and anti-goals of debate.” It was partially a standalone topic, but it also served as a lead-in to this broader series on what I’ve decided to call Pragmatism Theory (or just “Pragmatism”). This article still won’t...
by Anthony Severin | Dec 21, 2020 | Judging/Judges, Speaking, Technique
We Ethos coaches frequently hear despair about how judges receive theory-heavy arguments. There’s a perception that judges despise topicality, counterplans never win rounds, and hardly anybody has even heard of a kritik… and those who have heard of a kritik just think...
