Author: Matt Liu, University of Wyoming director of debate. After judging several of the UW online practice debates and watching even more, I’ve started to give some of the same feedback more than a few times. I wanted to consolidate my most common feedback here to benefit everyone. Below the fold, I’ve got 6 tips that I’ve said more than once over the last week and a half. 1. Sprezzatura and Beginning Your Speech
Sprezzatura is an Italian word that the Director of Debate at Kansas State taught me. It roughly translates to “studied carelessness.” More precisely, it is the ability to display “an easy facility in accomplishing difficult actions which hides the conscious effort that went into them” (Castiglione, 1528). In other words, it's the appearance of effortless cool derived from planning. Why are we learning Italian? Because everyone in Wyoming begins their speeches with roughly the same formula: “and I’ll begin… now” “and with that, I’ll begin” “and with that being said, …” “3… 2… 1… now” None of these starter phrases speaks Sprezzatura to me. Your goal is to project effortless cool, and these phrases are de-personalized, formulaic, and a bit robotic. You’re all super cool people. Inject a little more of you and your personality into your speeches! Let us hear a little bit more of what you sound like. Find a way to begin your speeches that suits you, isn’t too corny, and isn’t formulaic. Or, just drop the starter phrase. There’s no disad to just jumping straight into your speech. Take a moment to steady yourself, give the audience a knowing look, and launch into your arguments – because the arguments are what we’re here for. 2. Argue, Don’t Ask No pre-questions in cross-x, and no info-checks (and certainly don’t open with those). Pre-questions are little set-up questions that seem obvious that you want to ask before your real question. Skip it. Go straight to your best arguments. Info checks are when you ask to make sure you understand something (confirming someone’s value or criterion in LD, for example. Listen, and trust your flow! Asking someone’s value makes it look like you don’t know what your opponent’s arguments are. You want to project confidence and authority. Your first question in cross-x (and all the ones after it) should make it appear to the judge that you know more about your opponent’s case than they do. That goal is eviscerated when you ask them what their argument was. Instead, start with a question that makes an argument about their contention, that pokes a hole in their case. Think about your cross-x questions through the lens of utility. What do your questions do for you? If they’re not persuading the judge that you have a better argument, they’ve not doing anything for you. 3. More often than not, you should be spending disproportionately more time on the contentions than the value / criterion (LD only) This especially, overwhelmingly true in cross-x. In almost every debater I’ve judged in Wyoming, whether it was at a brick-and-mortar tournament or online, the value/criterion debate was far less important to my decision than the contentions, to the point of being irrelevant. The reason why is that values and the value criterion are frameworks for evaluating which impacts in the debate should come first; however, more often than not the value/criterion in the debate I’m judging do not provide a compelling reason to not weigh the other side’s impacts. Let me give an example. Justice and social justice are extremely popular values. Do either help resolve the fundamental tension of the predictive policing topic: crime vs discrimination? Is decreasing crime not just? Is reducing discrimination not just? Resolving which one of those is more important won’t happen by asking which one better fulfills social justice, it will happen on the line-by-line of the contentions and the impact calculus arguments. For example, “discrimination makes solving crime impossible because bad data corrupts the efficacy of police work” is great impact calculus, but it doesn’t contest whether the goal of predictive policing is justice. This is why when a debater says “even under their value/criterion, I win” they are so often right. However! Different judges feel different ways about this. That’s why judge adaptation is so important. Know your judge, and on the local circuit, don’t cede the value/criterion debate, but do think about spending far less time there (and far, far less time in cross-x). 4. Don’t take prep for the NC (LD focused, but universally applicable) The NC has two parts: you case, which should be 100% pre-written, and responding to your opponent’s case. The latter should also be almost completely pre-written. You should have pre-written, multi-point blocks to the most likely aff arguments written well before the tournament beings. This is a core part of pre-tournament prep for being neg. If this aff has one contention and it’s discrimination/bias on the predictive policing bad topic, you should be 100% ready to debate that. You can make minor adjustments during the AC to indict specific evidence and account for particular nuances, but you should have a goal of zero NC prep enabled by your pre-tournament preparation. Saving all your prep time for the NR is a game-changer for the neg and allows you to drop the hammer late in the debate. 5. Offense first You should put your contentions before your opponent’s contentions. This is as true of the 1AR as it is the NC, the NR, and the 2AR. You always should go to your argument first. This is putting offense first. Offense is what you win the debate on; defense is just you not losing the debate. You win the debate on your contentions, not answering your opponent’s. Back when he was coaching me when I was in high school, Cheyenne East coach Jeff Pope taught me this: you can win the debate if you win all of your offense and win it outweighs, even if, worst-case scenario, you entirely drop (or just undercover) your opponent’s case. You can never win if you cover all your opponent’s case but then drop or undercover yours. One last way to think about it: links in a chain. To win your argument, you can’t let your opponent break any link in the chain. You have to keep the entire argument intact. But to beat your opponent’s argument, you only need to break one link in the chain for the argument to fall apart. If any part of the argument is untrue, it’s game over for your opponent. This is why you need to spend more time on your case than on your opponent’s: you have to defend all of your argument, but only need to win one part of theirs is wrong. A disad has uniqueness, a link, and an impact. If the aff wins any of those parts are wrong, the neg doesn’t have a DA. Since most debaters are top-heavy, protect your time by spending it on the most important part of the debate first. 6. Impact calc You need to give the judge a reason to choose between the aff and neg impacts. The fundamental ground of the predictive policing topic, for example, is reducing crime vs reducing discrimination. What is your instruction to the judge about which one of those should be prioritized? How should the judge compare those things? You need to be thinking about these impact calculus arguments well before your round, well before your tournament even starts.
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