Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
I’ve gotten the chance to judge at a few Wyoming high school tournaments this year, and I’ve loved every second of it. When it comes to the LD rounds I’ve been lucky enough to judge, one thing stands out to me: that value criterion debates seem to be shaped more by rote habit than actual in-round strategic utility. My soul read of many of the debates that I’ve judged is that debaters have been told that the V/C debate matters, that they should spend non-insignificant amounts time on it, and they should win that theirs is better; however, many debaters don’t know why it matters or how it will shape the outcome of the round. This is not to say I haven’t heard good warrants about why pragmatism is preferable to the social contract, etc, but rather that it oftentimes seems like the V/C debating is not connected to a win condition. If you zoom out, it’s unclear why winning the V/C means winning the round. The thesis of this article will be that your V/C should either give you a win condition or you should drastically reduce the amount of time you’re spending debating it. Read the complete article below the fold.
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If you're not already following Professor Graham on YouTube, you should be. Adrian Graham is a debater at the University of Wyoming and a coach at Laramie High School, and he produces amazing debate content that's useful for everyone, but geared toward Wyoming debaters. Whether you're hoping to learn the basics or win championships, Adrian's content is full of useful info, great strats, and a rambunctious corgi.
His video on judge adaptation is a great place to start for anyone, and we also love his takes on research, disclosure, and prep time. If you do policy, his primer on the Federal Jobs Guarantee part of the topic is amazing, and his take on reading the IRS DA is a must watch (it's crime that more 1NCs don't have the IRS DA!). Thanks for producing such awesome content Professor Graham! Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming Director of Debate
A few months ago, before the college national debate championship, I screen-recorded my research and file production process for one of my NDT (National Debate Tournament) assignments. My job was to produce econ "thumpers", or arguments that economic decline is inevitable (this "alt cause" is a handy tool to answer any economy argument). I thought it might be a good example of my research process that I could turn into a research video-lecture. I'll be forthright that I'm not great with video editing software. I'm no Professor Graham! My editing is rough around the edges for sure, but I think this video-essay establishes a ton of useful concept for learning research skills. The econ thumper file I produced took me about 4 hours start to finish, and I had 3 hours and 20 minutes of raw video of that process that I collapsed down into 18 minutes by speeding segments up. I've never been satisfied with any research lecture (that I've given or seen), and I think part of the reason why is that seeing research and file production is the best way to learn how to do it, but it's an hours if not days long process. Time lapse is a partial solution to that problem. You can find the video here! I highly suggest downloading the video, not watching it on Dropbox. |
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