Author: Ki Radcliffe, University of Wyoming debater Judge adaptation is an incredibly important skill to have no matter what style of debate you are doing. At the end of the round it is only up to one person to decide who wins. While you may think you are clearly winning an argument if you are unwilling to adapt to your judge’s preferences and philosophy then you may end up losing. Keep reading for a quick overview on how to best adapt to your judge. You should always read your judge’s paradigms and ask them questions before the round. Ask questions especially if you have a judge that doesn’t have a paradigm so you can get a feel for how they tend to vote in rounds. Clarity is always your best friend. You want to make as many arguments that you can but if your judge doesn’t understand those arguments you have wasted your time.
In high school debate you could have a round where your judge was someone who had never done debate and the next round have a college policy debater. Both of these judges require very different ways of debating in order to win. It is always very important before your round begins to read your judge’s paradigms and ask questions before the round (if you have any). Pay close attention to the small nit-picky things on your judge’s paradigms like. This could affect what you go for in your rebuttals. If you have two winning options but your judge has made it clear on the paradigm that they prefer one or don’t like one, then that should influence your decision (however if you don’t think you can win on a certain argument you should go for something that is winnable instead). My debate partner and I have a strong preference for our strategy against nontraditional affirmatives, but at a recent tournament many of our judges’ paradigms said they thought topicality was a particularly compelling argument against nontraditional affirmatives or that they weren’t super big on unusual K’s. This affected my 2NR decisions for those rounds. I went for the argument I thought my judges would prefer. In their RFD’s our judges mentioned that they didn’t think our alternative would have been a good 2NR option. Knowing your judge’s paradigm can be extremely important to making decisions on what argument to go for in round. Reading paradigms on Tabroom can be useful even when it’s not right before a round. Some of the most experienced people are writing about arguments and you can learn a lot from their views on debate. On Tabroom you can find a list of all the judge philosophies for all the judges at a tournament, including national circuit high school and college tournaments (like this one, from the 2020 Texas Open in college). Paradigms have good tips on things that judges feel debaters often overlook, and are therefore great “how to’s” on debate in general. Lay judges in my experience can be a bit of a wild card. Especially since many of them don’t have paradigms. This is where asking your judge questions before the round becomes very important. You need to get a feel for your judge and their experience. How do they feel about certain arguments? What do they want to see out of this round? What do they not want to see in this round? It is important to understand your judge because they are the one who decides who wins at the end of the round. DO NOT spread with lay judges. I remember doing this in high school and seeing other kids do it as well. It is not impressive. If your judge doesn’t know what you are saying how are they going to vote for you? You need to speak in a way so that your judge understands and when you are speed screaming at a judge who doesn’t know much about debate they are not going to have a good time. That means they won’t vote for you and they will probably give you low speaks. It doesn’t make you look cool or smarter. Also, for PF and LD if you want to run things like K’s or theory arguments you need to have an alternative option for lay judges who are most likely not going to love those arguments. If your judge doesn’t understand your argument no matter how badly your opponent answers it they are going to have a really hard time voting for you at the end of the round. What works best in front of lay judges is what works best in front of everyone: analyze the warrants of your evidence and doing in depth explaining. Don’t just tell them to extend the ___(blank)__ evidence, but explain the warrants in your card and then cite your source Tell your judge how to vote: characterize how the round is going. Sound confident! Don’t be afraid to analytically attack your opponent’s arguments. Good analytics that make sense will do more for a lay judge than reading a bunch of cards at them and not explaining the warrants. Especially since a lot of lay judges don’t flow like circuit judges, it is important to explain warrants in a narrative way that sticks with them. Logic and clarity are your best friends (with every judge but especially lay judges). However, never treat your judge like they are uneducated. Your lay judge is very smart, they just may not know the intricacies of debate jargon. Don’t use debate jargon, explain things using words that you would if you were explaining this to your parents. Do a line by line (which you should be doing anyway) this helps your judges flow stay organized especially if they don’t flow a lot so that after the round when the review their flow all of the arguments are nicely lined up for them. Read their facial expressions if they don’t seem to like an argument, and maybe invest your time somewhere else. Watch when they take notes. What are they flowing? What are they not flowing? Do they need time to catch up? Something I learned while judging at high school debate tournaments is that often debaters think that they are communicating more than they actually are. That little analytical blip that makes perfect sense to you because you thoroughly understand all the background knowledge and you wrote it may not make as much sense to your judge. It is important to allocate your time wisely, so sometimes you can’t go in depth on arguments, but if your analytic relies on background knowledge you may need to rethink it or spend the time necessary to explain it. Time allocation is really important in debate so don’t waste time making arguments that don’t make sense when you can give a more detailed analysis on a different argument. This is one reason why watching your judge’s facial expressions is important. If they look confused, they probably are. You have probably done more research on your topic than your judge has so don’t expect them to know everything about the subject and its background. Don’t use a ton of jargon when explaining something your judge may not be familiar with because then you will lose them. When you are in a round there are tons of small signals that you send to your judge throughout the round. Little things like you should be ready to stand up and give your speech as soon as the round starts, if you are the first speaker the email doc should be sent. Stand up right way for cross-x be prepared with questions so it starts right away. If you stand for your constructives, you should stand for cross-x. It tells the judge you are invested and want to be there. Be confident every speech. Make it seem like you are invested in the round. Pretending you are not doesn’t give the judge “cool vibes” it makes them think you don’t care, and they are less inclined to want to vote for you. You want your judge to want to vote for you. No matter who your judge is you need to be clear. If your judge doesn’t understand what you are saying it doesn’t matter how qualified they are or how smart your arguments are they won’t vote for you. If you can’t spread clearly then don’t spread, it is better to go slower and be understood than to go fast and not be understood. Make your arguments clear, don’t use an excessive amount of jargon explain things. Also please, please do line-by-line. It’s essential to flow clarity. If your judge has to waste time trying to figure out where to put an argument down on a flow, then they are not hearing the arguments you are making. Having clear organized speeches ensures that your judge can clearly follow your speech and that is to your benefit. The more arguments you get through to your judges the better off you are.
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