The Format of Debate

Intro hey callie chappelle here and thanks for tuning into this video the format of debate this video is part of the novice go fight win debate series a series of videos dedicated towards teaching novices the basics of policy debate so again my name is callie chappelle and i'm a former debater for the university of michigan i debated at traverse city central high school and i currently coach at gulliver prep i'm a 2nd 1a and fun fact about me i'm a true blue 2nd so how do you make the most of these videos well you should take notes and you should re-watch bits that you need re-explained hopefully we'll have worksheets and or supplemental materials that will go along with the video so check out the video description to see if i posted anything there if i haven't nag me and most importantly you don't need to memorize at all this video especially is going to have a lot of information but what i want you to do is be familiar with everything in the video but you don't have to know all of it in detail it's a building process so question for you do you remember the two sides in a debate Sides of a Debate well there are two the first side is the affirmative or the f team and they give reasons why the resolution is good so for example they could have an aft plan that says the government shouldn't make private businesses change their technologies for the purposes of domestic surveillance the neg team gives the reasons why the ask plan is a bad idea or doesn't fit under the resolution so an example is that you could say the government surveillance is good because it allows us to prevent a terrorist attack General Format of a Debate so what is the general format of debate there are eight speeches in a debate and each team gets a certain amount of time to prove their point and speeches are timed there's a specific order of who speaks and when and there are four participants in the debate each person gives one constructive speech one rebuttal speech asks questions once and answers questions once just a disclaimer this can be really confusing so buckle up and don't be afraid to ask questions in the comments section or rewatch parts that you need re-explained Speaker Positions in a Debate there are multiple speaker positions in a debate on the af team there's a 1a or first affirmative speaker and a 2a a second affirmative speaker the 2a is the head of the f team on the neg team there are two similar positions the 1n or the first negative and the 2n or 2nd negative the 2n is the head of the night team usually one person is the 2a and the 1a and 2n and their partner is the 1n and 2a so when i say i'm a true blue 2n that means that normally i give the 1 a and 2n speeches my partner would give the 1n and 2a speeches Tips and Tricks to a good partnership so here are some tips and tricks for a good partnership we should always listen to your partner and value their advice and you should also communicate well while debating two minds are always better than one don't lone wolf learn together regardless of whether you win or lose you can always learn something from every round and sometimes you need your partner to be like hey you could have done this better or hey you did a really great job at this or hey i agree about this or hey i disagree about that if you lose don't beat yourself up and your partner don't beat your partner up definitely don't beat yourself up with words or actions and have fun together support one another having a great partner is one of the great joys of debate hey here's a story now as partners and best friends forever so my novice partner was hannah casperson and there's a picture a selfie we took i'm really bad at selfies at our very first tournament ever and here's a picture of us at our high school graduation we're still friends so we had a really great communication we work together really well and you know we're still great friends even though we no longer debate together so Types of Speeches types of speeches remember there are two the first type of speech is a constructive and that those occur at the beginning of the debate they are eight minutes long and these are the speeches where you make all your arguments and you respond to your opponent's new arguments there's a three-minute cross-examination period at the end the second type of speech are rebuttals and those occur at the end of the debate those are five minutes long so a little shorter than constructives and these are the speeches where you give reasons why your argument is better and compare evidence and respond to arguments but you can't make new arguments in these speeches so constructives build your case make new arguments rebuttals you can only respond to arguments previously made and each debater gets one constructive one rebuttal and one cross-examination in a debate round Order of the Speeches so here's the order of the speeches it's gonna look like a lot but i'm gonna explain it in depth the first speech is the one ac or first affirmative constructive that's eight minutes then after the what i see the 1a will stay standing because they'll be standing up giving their speech and then the chew end will ask them questions during cross-sex and cross-examination is three minutes cross-examination is gonna have its totally own separate video in this series so check that out next is the one nc the first negative constructive that speech is eight minutes and after that speech the one n stays standing and the 1a crosses the one end that means the 1a will ask questions to the 1n after that comes the 2ac which is the second affirmative constructive again it's constructive so it's 8 minutes and the 2a stay standing because they just spoke and then the one end cross sexes so do you see a pattern here every person who gives speech will stay standing after their speech and get questions asked about their speech by someone else on the opposing team and ironically the person who asks them questions from the opposing team is the person from the opposing team who is not giving the next speech so you'll notice that the two n cross x is the one ac because the next speech is the one nc so the other next speaker is going to speak here the to the one nc gets cross x by the 1a because the next speech is by the second affirmative speaker and the uh 1n cross x is the 2a after the 2ac because the next speech is going to be the one on c so the t or the two and c so the two and c is the second negative constructive just like all other constructives is eight minutes and afterwards as you might have guessed the two ends stay standing and then they get cross-sexed by the 2a after that come the rebuttals and there are no cross x's after the rebuttals the 1nr occurs the 1ar the 2nr and the 2ar so whoa WHOA. Who says what when?! i know that was a lot so let's take a look at what these patterns are and i'm just going to point out again visually what we were saying before that everyone has two speeches so the one a is represented here in red so let's just zoom in on the one a the one he has two speeches the one ac the first affirmative constructive and the one ar the first affirmative rebuttal and the uh 1a gets crossexed once right after the 1ac and the 1a cross x's once across they cross x the 1 and c so you have to see the patterns and you'll notice that as i said everyone gets two speeches everyone gets two cross x's asking and answering and it goes one one two two one one two two and the affirmative and negative switch speeches every time except for this which is the neck block where we have two neck speeches right in a row so pop quiz ready first what are the four speaker positions what are the two types of speeches what is the order of speeches in a debate what speech comes after the 2ac what speech comes after the 1ac who cross-examines the 1n speaker who gives the last speech in a debate who is the head of the night team oh we went too fast okay so look at these questions take out a sheet of paper take out the sheet of paper take it out and answer these questions okay pause me okay gotta assume that you did that i'm yeah i'm watching you right now through the screen make sure you do it and let's go through the answers so the four speaker positions are the 1a the 2a the 1n and the 2n the two types of speeches are constructives which are how many minutes eight minutes and rebuttals which are five minutes the order of speeches in a debate are let's see if you got this one 1ac 1nc 2ac 2nc 1nr 1ar 2nr 2ar and remember you can always take up a sheet of paper that has this all written down that you can refer to during a debate don't worry my very first debate i definitely cross sex the wrong person because i didn't know what the order was um the speech that comes after the 2ac is the two nc right because it goes one one two two so after the two ac the second negative speaker would speak what speech comes after the one ac the one and c because one one one ac one and c who cross-examines the one-end speaker well let's think about this rationally the person who crosses so the person who crossex is the one n is going to be from the other teams it's going to be an f an f person and it's going to be the f person who doesn't give the speech right after the one c so the speech that comes after the 1 nc is the 2ac so that means that the person who cross-examines the 1n would have to be the 1a who gives the last speech in the debate the 2a does and that speech is the 2ar and the head of the night team is the 2n and the head of the f team is the 2a Prep Time prep time so you have time in a debate round to prepare your speeches and this time is called prep time or just prep so most judges give you eight minutes of prep uh even though there are like a couple of weird state circuits that give you six minutes and then there's one tournament that gives you ten minutes so it does vary but usually it's eight minutes and you can ask for prep time before any of your speeches so if your app you can prep before the 1ac the 2ac the 1ar the 2ar you can prep while the other team is taking prep time as well and if you work well with your partner you will make the most out of your prep time but eight minutes isn't enough time to prepare 26 minutes of speeches you're probably asking me well to be honest most preparation for speeches actually occurs before the debate even starts this is why research and preparation beforehand matter a lot research is done before tournaments and the 1ac and most of the 1nc speeches are pre-written before the debate round if you're prepared so in order to be prepared and to use your prep time wisely make sure you know where you can find things in your dropbox if you hear a new argument then you should write down a response so you don't have to think of it again when you hear the argument again flowing so to keep track of what's been said and quickly organize your speeches we use a note-taking technique called flowing and we'll talk about this more later in the flowing video so let's talk about the speeches each speech in order and its main purpose so there are more details about each speech are in the being af and being nag videos but this is the overview so how do you know who gives what speech well it's actually in the name as shakespeare said a rose without no never mind if you knew rose's name would it smell sweet no i shouldn't have brought this up because i don't actually know what shakespeare says but who gives a speech is denoted in the name the 2a c the 2a gives the speech and here the c says what kind of speech it is in this case a constructive speech because remember 2ac just stands for second or formative constructive pop quiz Pop quiz! 1nr who gives the speech what type of speech is it write it down alrighty okay i'm gonna assume that you wrote it down who gives a speech the one n it's in the name and what type of speech is it a rebuttal 1 AC- First Affirmative Constructive so let's talk about each speech in turn the one i see or the first affirmative constructive so the goal of the one i see is where the af team presents their proposed action explains why it's better than the current system or the status quo the one i see is 100 prescripted and prepared before the debate usually the order in the 1ac is as follows first is the plan what action do you propose to take so an example of a plan text would be the united states federal government should prohibit federal agencies from acquiring or compelling private entities to design or alter the commercial information technology products for the purposes of facilitating domestic surveillance the second thing is inherency so why the plan or your action isn't already being done now so one side note about inherency is it's kind of gone out of vogue to include in one ac's so sometimes uh you'll notice that plans don't have inherency that doesn't mean they automatically lose it just means they have to read it in the 2ac if you bring it up in the onenc harms harms are the our advantages so these are problems with the current situation that the f would fix and the third is solvency and these are reasons why doing the plan will solve the problems that you've presented INC- First Negative Constructive the second speech is the 1nc or the first negative constructive and the purpose of the 1nc is where the negative response to the 1ac f plan and then gives reasons why it's a bad idea there are a variety of types of arguments that can be made or quote-unquote run in the 1nc and we'll talk that about that in later videos so the goal of the one and c is to prove that the f plan causes more problems than it helps that essentially the ass harms are worse than its advantages so there are two different ways you can do that the first are called on case arguments and these are arguments that are directly in response to the aft plan's advantages the second are called off-case arguments and these are other arguments that give reasons why the affirmative plan is a bad idea for future reference da's counter plants k's and t are all examples of off case arguments it's a totally fine if you don't know what those are we're going to be watching videos about them soon and this speech is mainly prescripted since you usually know the other team's app plan beforehand and are already prepared 2AC- Second Affirmative Constructive the next speech is the second affirmative constructive or the two ac and there are two big goals of the two ac the first is to explain again or what we call extend the reasons why the aft plan is a good idea and the second thing is to respond to all negative arguments about why your app plan is bad so you should respond to arguments in the order the one ac made them so most of the speech is also prescripted if you're well prepared and if you know the arguments a negative will make against you you can prepare responses this is called making blocks and blocks are both for the af and night teams and we'll talk about how to make them later often arguments in your 1ac are responses to negative arguments and i guess i should make a quick caveat that uh you should respond to arguments in the order of the one i see made them um in the context of case and you can answer the off-case arguments remember counterplans t-d-a's don't worry we'll talk about this in the order that you so choose them and being f and being neg videos it tells you the most effective way to answer those arguments The Negative Block-the 2NC + INR next comes the negative block that's the 2nc and the 1nr and because the next two speeches are both made by the negative two next beaches in a row and together they're known as the neg block or just the block um and even though the neg has to respond to all the arguments made in the 2ac the night team has two speeches to answer everything in the 2ac so instead of repeating the same thing twice uh which would be boring for everyone involved we do something called splitting the block that means that the neg team divides up what they're going to say so the 2n says half in the 2 nc and the 1n says half and the 1 and r and you decide what arguments you want to make in the block what arguments the 2nd is going to make and what arguments the 1 is going to make so you don't repeat the arguments before the cross examination of the 2ac so what happens is the 2ac happens and then and then the night team's like can we take some prep you're just like yes of course and then you're like whispered to yourselves and you're like okay you're going to take the da and case and 2 and c and i'm going to take the counter plan the one and on you're like k break and then you do the cross x of the 2ac why do you do that because you always want to ask questions the you want the 1n who crosses the 2ac to be able to ask questions about relevant things and not ask Goals of the Negative Block questions about things that are not relevant so what are the goals of this negative block well the first is to respond to every argument made in the 2ac and also to create and deploy a winning strategy for the end of the debate also beneficial is to make more arguments than the af team can respond to in the 1ar which is the next app speech and remember the 1nr is shorter than the 2nc but they have more time to prepare also remember that the 1nr is a rebuttal so you can't make new arguments you could only talk about arguments that were made in the 2 and the 1nc and extrapolate on those and respond to affirmative arguments so you can read a new argument like a new da or a new counter plan in the 1nr ah you can only do that in the 2 and c 1 AR- First Affirmative Rebuttal after the next block is the 1ar or the first affirmative rebuttal so the goal of the 1ar is to build on arguments that were made in the 2ac and then answer all arguments made in the next block and to be honest the 1ar is not going to have enough time to talk about every argument in the 2ac so you as the 1a have to pick which arguments are the best and also know which ones you're winning but more importantly you need to focus on the arguments that will win you the debate and explain those very well it doesn't matter if you give the best explanation of the tiny argument that no one cares about because that's not going to be the argument that wins you the debate instead you might want to invest time on major things that you're losing to make sure that you can win the debate at the very end of the day and it's better to explain less very well than a lot really poorly 2NR- Second Negative Rebuttal the last negative speech in the debate is the 2nr the second negative rebuttal and the goal of this speech is to explain a package that will win you the debate you should explain why doing the app is a worse idea than not doing the app or the status quo and every 2 hour must include in this order this first an overview so where you say if you only remember three things for my speech the three most important things are and then say them and then second after you do the overview you have to refute every affirmative argument made in the 1ar about the argument you're making you must do that you cannot drop you cannot forget to respond to particular affirmative arguments made 2AR- Second Affirmative Rebuttal in the 1ar the last speech in the debate is the second affirmative rebuttal or 2ar and the goal of the 2ar is to explain why doing the act is a better idea than not doing the f that every 2ar must include in this order one an explanation of what the pl plan does because the judge who may be sleeping or something may not remember exactly all the details about the plan the second uh is that you have to explain why the ass plan is a good idea so these are usually the advantages of the f plan the third is why the world with the f plan is better than the world without the f plan and then fourth you need to refute all negative arguments made in the q and r so it sounds pretty simple but it actually a little bit complicated in the Whew! That was a lot! debate and that was a lot i know it was a lot to take in and it's okay it's like having the game of basketball explained to you without ever seeing a basketball game i feel like i don't know what you crazy people are talking about because that sounds crazy but we're gonna have a demo debate i well i will try to upload a demo debate to go fight win soon so you can speed the speeches in action or take a look around online to see what's what's there because the biggest way to understand what i'm talking about is to actually just see a debate happening and i think hopefully you'll be giving your own speech for a mini debate soon and the best way to do to learn is by actually doing it so we'll have more videos coming detailing each speech individually that's the how to be app and how to be night videos but i think a good timeline for you is to re-watch this video if you're confused then try to watch some demo debates even if those debates aren't on this topic that's okay and after you watch a couple of debates and are like yeah like kind of get what's going on even if you like even if it's somewhat challenging then go and watch the being app and being meg video for more information Activity #2 so here's an activity the one ac should make a statement so what i'm what you should do is round up a group of four of your friends and one person gets to be the one a one verse gets b the one n one person's the two a one person's the two n and just do this so one a make a statement about why the wow i didn't change this for this year's topic i'm sorry did you make a statement about why the federal government should substantially curtail domestic surveillance just crosses out of your mind uh the 1n should refute the point made by the 1ac and make an additional point about why the plan is too expensive or is it effective the 2ac should defend the point made by the 1ac and answer the argument made by the 1nc the 2nc should continue the attack on the 2ac on the 1ac the 1nr should continue supporting the additional point about why the plan's too expensive the 1ar should respond to the previous two speeches the two and i should state why your arguments are more correct than theirs and why the judge should vote for you and the two i should say why your arguments are more correct than theirs and why the judge should vote for you the affirmative so you should sit down try this out um because the big the best way to kind of figure out the general feel of debate is to just sit down and do it and if you don't have enough time to do a full debate this i think is a great start Cross-Examination (cx) one last thing cross-examination so at the end of every constructive speech there's a three-minute cross-ex and judges don't usually write down what happens in cross-sex but it's commonly accepted that what is set in cross-sex is binding in a debate round so for example if your partner admits a major concession to the other team you can't just come up and be like oops they lied in the next speech if you're good at cross-sex then judges will give you higher speaker points so it's a great way to come off as awesome because everybody knows your swag is bigger than the room and you should always use all three minutes of cross sex it's free prep time for your partner so if you don't know what to ask think of something on your feet but to be honest don't worry too much about crosstalks right now make sure that you understand everything first and that'll really help you get give a really fantastic cross-sex but check out the cross examination video for more details it'll be below Signposting/Roadmapping sign posting and road mapping so this is really important at the beginning of your speech you need to say the order of the arguments you'll be addressing so the judge knows how you'll organize your speech the judge when they flow or take notes will take notes on each argument on an individual sheet of paper so telling the judge the order in which you'll be speaking helps the judge organize their sheets of paper before you start talking you should give the order of the off-case arguments and the advantages only you don't have to give the order of the arguments within each sheet of paper within each major argument all right so what are the big ideas here Big Ideas the first is there are speaker positions and time limits you don't have to memorize it all right now but because you can just copy the order and times down and have a cheat sheet during the debate you should know that each speaker has a certain responsibility so you should know what your role is in the debate if you don't know then go back and look at the video when you find out what your speaker positions are because you need to know what i'm saying like the role of the one nc is to do this you need to know like if i'm given the one and c what am i supposed to be doing and the third thing is take a deep breath zen don't freak out yes there's a process to debate we don't expect you to learn it all at once it takes time and practice i've seen top varsity debaters forget what they were supposed to speak and stand up for the wrong speeches i've seen top judges forget who was supposed to speak or forget how much time was supposed to be given for a speech everybody makes mistakes everybody's still learning and you are just at the beginning of a really exciting journey so i hope you enjoyed this video and hopefully you'll turn into more and in the future go fight one