Welcome to week 11 of The Great Debate's introduction to Lincoln-Douglas Value Debate. Today's lesson is all about researching and preparing for your first full debate round! Rather than watch a video, I want to encourage you to spend this class working as a team to prepare for a full debate round next week.
Next week you will spend your entire class period debating! In preparation for that class, spend this week tweaking your cases, finding additional supporting evidence, and preparing cross examination questions and responses to arguments you anticipate hearing.
First, go through the arguments you have heard over the past 10 weeks and decide which ones you are prepared to refute. If there are any you haven't figured out how to attack or reject, think about that with your teammates and prepare a pre-written "block" of a couple arguments specifically addressing the weaknesses of those points. If you have any parts of your case you find less than compelling, consider what evidence would be useful to further support the arguments. If you need research help, feel free to re-watch the Research Basics video, read the blog article "Secrets of Great Researchers," or talk to your coach or a librarian about how to find evidence you need. Don't forget that on the Great Debate twitter there are lots of links to articles of interest as well.
Second, practice reading your cases, reading your practice cross examination questions, reading your prepared refutation arguments, and reading your back-up evidence. Make sure you are comfortable with all the words in these quotations and that you fully understand what you are saying. You sound much more credible when you aren't stumbling through your arguments in the round.
Third, make sure you have everything printed out and organized so you can find it during the debate round. You'll want at least one copy of everything you might read during the round and you'll want to put it into folders or some other storage system so you can quickly and easily retrieve it during the round.
Fourth, practice making some arguments with your classmates. Present one or two arguments and have them respond using 3-point refutation. Then switch. Let them present a couple arguments and you respond with 3-point refutation.
With that, you should be ready to spend this final week preparing for your first debate rounds.
If you haven't already, be sure to visit The Great Debate website
to request your free packet of outlines. If you are a student, you
can request the student packet and coaches can request a coach packet
with additional resources including a syllabus and answer keys.Next week you will spend your entire class period debating! In preparation for that class, spend this week tweaking your cases, finding additional supporting evidence, and preparing cross examination questions and responses to arguments you anticipate hearing.
First, go through the arguments you have heard over the past 10 weeks and decide which ones you are prepared to refute. If there are any you haven't figured out how to attack or reject, think about that with your teammates and prepare a pre-written "block" of a couple arguments specifically addressing the weaknesses of those points. If you have any parts of your case you find less than compelling, consider what evidence would be useful to further support the arguments. If you need research help, feel free to re-watch the Research Basics video, read the blog article "Secrets of Great Researchers," or talk to your coach or a librarian about how to find evidence you need. Don't forget that on the Great Debate twitter there are lots of links to articles of interest as well.
Second, practice reading your cases, reading your practice cross examination questions, reading your prepared refutation arguments, and reading your back-up evidence. Make sure you are comfortable with all the words in these quotations and that you fully understand what you are saying. You sound much more credible when you aren't stumbling through your arguments in the round.
Third, make sure you have everything printed out and organized so you can find it during the debate round. You'll want at least one copy of everything you might read during the round and you'll want to put it into folders or some other storage system so you can quickly and easily retrieve it during the round.
Fourth, practice making some arguments with your classmates. Present one or two arguments and have them respond using 3-point refutation. Then switch. Let them present a couple arguments and you respond with 3-point refutation.
With that, you should be ready to spend this final week preparing for your first debate rounds.
By now you should have read all of Coach Marko Djuranovic's Ultimate LD Handbook. Keep the book handy as a reference if you need it throughout the rest of your debate career. I'd suggest skimming the discussion of the debate round just to be sure you're ready for your first full debate round!
As homework, be sure to read your cases one time every day this week. You'll also need to gather your necessary supplies for the round. You'll need: a timepiece of some sort (so you know how much time you have left to speak), 2 different colored pens (some debaters even like 3 or 4 colors), paper for flowing, post-it notes or some little notepad to write ideas that come to you throughout the round, and a highlighter to identify any parts of quotations you find useful.
Have a great week and we'll see you next week for our twelfth debate lesson, "Your First Debate Round" where we'll actually debate!
Have a great week and we'll see you next week for our twelfth debate lesson, "Your First Debate Round" where we'll actually debate!
If you are interested in learning a form of debate other than Lincoln-Douglas value debate, The Great Debate is a wonderful textbook for policy debate written by the teacher in these videos. The Great Debate
provides training in the basics of debate and includes information
for debaters who have already learned the fundamentals and are looking
for more intermediate level training. The Great Debate has a
teacher's guide (coming soon) which includes lesson plans and
additional material for coaches. For more information about The Great
Debate, visit our website. We also have produced a video training series for Public Forum Debate. The public forum series is another free resource from The Great Debate.
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