LD Training Week 14 - Cross Examination

Welcome to week 14 of The Great Debate's introduction to Lincoln-Douglas Value Debate. Today's lesson is entitled "Cross-Examination." We've talked about every other piece of the debate round and you've even had your very own debate round experience.  But the last piece of the puzzle is what goes on between the speeches you give in support of your own case and in opposition to your opponent's case.  Cross Examination is your opportunity to ask questions and make your opponent talk about what you want to talk about.  Learning the techniques of cross examination will take you a long way toward becoming a great debater.

This lecture focuses on both how to cross examine your opponent and how to answer questions during cross examination.  Cross-X is a 3-minute period after each constructive speech.  The person who just finished giving a speech is cross-examined by the other team.  For example, after the Affirmative Constructive, the negative debater will cross-examine the affirmative speaker.
Cross-examination is about asking questions.  It's not about giving your own speech, or bringing up new arguments and points of analysis.  Instead, everything that comes out of your mouth if you are the person cross-examining should be focused on asking questions either to clarify your opponent's arguments, poke holes in the arguments your opponent has made, or set yourself up for the next argument you want to make against your opponent.

When someone asks you a question in cross-examination you should remain poised, confident, and answer the question.  Try to anticipate what your opponent wants you to say and see if there's a way to give an answer that helps make your case even stronger.  Be concise when you answer the question, and if your opponent doesn't stop you, continue explaining the beneficial point you were making.  When you are being cross-examined, the most important thing to do is to answer the question you are asked.  Trying to avoid a difficult question is worse than admitting there is a hole in your case.  Remember, if you have a perfect case, you haven't thought about it closely enough.  There's always a hole in your case (but there's also holes in every case your opponents run).  Your job is to explain how the holes in your case are less gaping than the holes in your opponent's case.  

Before we start today's lesson, get a piece of paper and write down the contentions you are using for both your affirmative and negative cases.  Underneath each contention, write down two questions you think expose a weakness in your contention.   Put these pages to the side and watch the lesson.

This week's lesson is available on the Great Debate's youtube page. It is also available on the Great Debate website in embedded format. Finally, you can see the videos right here (in 2 parts):

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.

Now it's time to practice cross-examination!  For each contention, take the questions you wrote down before the lecture and see if you can come up with some new ones.  Is there an argument you usually use that you can set up with a question?  Is there a piece of evidence you love to use you can prepare a question to direct your opponent to make a contrary point to the conclusion of that quotation?  Write down at least 10 new questions about your cases.

Now let's try these questions.  Have one debater stand up as the cross-examiner and another debater as the cross-examinee.  The questioner should ask questions for 2 minutes, and the other debater should do his best to answer the questions.  Switch to 2 new debaters.  The other debaters on the team should keep watching and try to identify whether the cross examiner is asking questions and letting her opponent answer the questions.  The team should also make sure that the cross examinee is answering the question in a concise manner and trying to expand on the answer if the opponent lets him.  Keep switching debaters and rotate to new sides so every debater gets to cross-examine and be cross-examined at least one time on both the affirmative and negative side.

Finally, make a list of the arguments you set up and ask your teammates whether your questions successfully set up the arguments you wanted to prepare.

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.  For a brief recitation of some common LD values, I suggest this short post by the Debate Central team at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Finally, as homework, it's time to prepare for a couple debate rounds.  The next 2 weeks you will be debating your teammates.  Take some time this week to identify which questions you want to ask in cross examination and which arguments you want to make against your opponent.  Good luck preparing for our next couple debate rounds!

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.