Debating on: case mini-debate Instructor/commentator: Charles Comments:
Great line by line. You had very good structure for your arguments. Awesome for your first speech!
You should try to add more details to some of your arguments. You have the basic outline but don’t develop them. Your first priority is to respond to the neg, but you shouldn’t lose sight of the need to continue defending the aff.
Nice job using recency of evidence to compare. That’s fantastic.
Date of debate: 6/25
Debating on: Theory mini debates Instructor/commentator: Mikaela Comments: Good work! Nice 2AC/2NC blocks. Use "they say" when responding to the other team's arguments. Be sure always to warrant your arguments. Also, in addition to responding to the other team's arguments, extend/explain the original arguments (those made by the previous speech on your side) (a bit confusing in this format, but always important!). On the neg, make arguments about why theory shouldn't be a voting issue.
Date of debate: 6/29
Debating on: states politics Instructor/commentator: nicole Comments:
You need to flow. like actually - need to take notes when folks are speaking. it is impossible to commit the entire debate "to memory."
You do a good job explaining why the states would be better at funding a system than the federal government - but need to do a better job explaning that in the context of high speed rail.
You do a sufficient job on the 50 state fiat argument. try to make more than 3 answers when the 1ar spends this much time on it.
Finally, you need to read over the politics DA.
2ar: you do a good job explaining the permutation but did NOT make the argument we just talked about on how the permutation solves the link to politics.
For 50 state fiat - you need to extend more arguments and include the argument we JUST made about the penalty.
Date of debate:6/30
Debating on:K Instructor/commentator:Baker Comments:
-make sure to include evidence in your 2AC in order to respond to arguments based in evidence
-keep clear that while the 2ac against the k often is about many elements of their theory and such, the main focus for your speech is proving the aff is still a good idea
-avoid reading cards in the last rebuttal - rely primarily on the evidence and arguments you have read earlier
Date of debate: 7/2
Debating on: High-Speed Rail (Practice Debate 1) Instructor/commentator: Nick Comments:
- Good job with the 1AC, especially with placing emphasis on important words. There’s no need to summarize the evidence you’ve just read – this is the reason you read the tag before the card itself.
- Rather than using cross-x to ask William to re-read his sources, you should look at the pieces of evidence yourself so you don’t need to ask things like “who wrote that” or what the nature of a particular survey was. It’s not worth your time to spend cross-x discussing survey percentages for over a minute – spend some time asking about flaws with the disad and not just their case arguments.
- You need to flow during the 2AC so you know what arguments to extend later in the debate. Nicole’s comments on 6/29 are spot-on.
- Make sure you answer all of the case arguments in the 1AR. You did a good job answering the oil prices and Senate funding arguments, but you need to make sure you answer, for example, that people like cars because they value your time.
- Good job on explaining the merits of government spending, but you need some evidence here (ideally this argument should be made in the 2AC)
- Make sure you use all of your 1AR time – it’s one of the hardest speeches in debate because of the block’s time advantage, so you should rarely have “extra” time at the end.
Date of debate: 7/6
Debating on: Practice Debate B Instructor/commentator: Nicole Comments:
Your 1ac was an incomplete speech. You need to read the approved 1ac that was discussed within your lab.
Your cx of the 1nc needs to be questions, not just your discussion of your 1ac again.
Your 1ar is mostly claims without warrants. You need to reference 1ac or 2ac authors when you extend arguments. You need to provide more useful examples than the Great Depression for why setting up an NIB would help the US economy. You also need to use all 5 minutes.
REDO of 1AR:
better reference of arguments.
Work on your organization - make sure you are answering arguments on the CP first, then the DA, etc. Don't switch back and forth.
Also the plan can't BE a permutation - that is a combination of the plan and CP.
Date of debate: 7/7
Debating on: Practice debate D Instructor/commentator: Charles Comments:
1AC
- Your reading is fine. It would be nice if you could emphasize key words a little bit more. Make it sound more urgent.
- Stop fiddling with your water bottle.
- You need to be nicer in CX. It is seriously not acceptable to act that way.
- In CX you have to ASK questions. Not just state stuff. You also HAVE to let your opponent answer questions.
- You HAVE TO FLOW. It's impossible to debate if you don't write down the arguments.
1AR
- You don't need to re-read stuff that was in the 2AC. You're spending a ton of time winning that the aff will eventually save money, but this isn't really very important. The question is whether we can afford to invest money NOW. You need to win that deficit spending is good
- You need to extend the 'political capital not true' argument.
- On the CP, you are purely talking about federal action spurring private investment. This is okay (it proves that the plan solves the 'private action' stuff). But it's far more important to just prove that the CP can't create an infrastructure bank.
- Your answers to capitalism do not work. You're just saying the things that YOU believe, but this does not match up with what the 2AC said. You have to argue using what is in the debate - you can't just talk about what you want to talk about.
- You need to allocate your time better. They basically can't win on anything other than capitalism, so you need to get there with more than 45 seconds left.
Finally: you seem to be frustrated with James trying to tell you things. But from what I could tell, he was mostly right. You do need to be able to tell him to butt out, but I would recommend being a little more accommodating of your partner.
Re-do
- Nice job on spending. You got through that fairly quickly, and got out both the 'spending helps the economy' and 'we reduce costs over the long term' argument.
- I would just be slightly more forceful on politics. They had no answers at all to your link arguments. Just be more clear about this.
- For the CP, you are only talking about how the plan can promote private investment. But this still misses the point. The issue here is that the CP just doesn't make any sense. You need to prove that it can't solve the aff.
- You got to the K with a little over 3 minutes left. Which is fantastic. You said pretty much everything on the rest of the debate that you did this morning.
- You still have nothing on the perm. Your personal antagonism to any criticism of capitalism is preventing you from making strategic arguments. You need to get over that. You can make a lot of the arguments you're already making in the context of the perm if you just get over the hump and recognize that it's an 'even if' situation: even if they're right that the worst forms of capitalism are bad, it's wrong to ascribe that to us...
- Your 'no alt to capitalism' argument sort of works but needs more.
- On your second re-do with the perm, you did a really solid job. More of that and you'll do really well!
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Practice Round 1 Instructor/commentator: Nick Comments:
- As Charles suggested above, you should try to read the 1AC with some urgency and interest. Differentiating the tags from the text of cards and/or emphasizing key words/parts of the 1AC could increase the persuasiveness of your speech.
- Try to face or acknowledge the judge during cx
- You need to read your evidence in a speech before you reference it in cross-x
- Always flash or e-mail your 2AC to the other team when you're done with prep.
- You should use all of your 2AC time to read evidence and make arguments rather than giving an underview - the answers you make here determine what happens the rest of the debate
- When you say you have evidence, you should provide a reason why yours is more credible or reasons to suspect the negative evidence. Try to provide the judge a way to resolve your competing claims.
- Good 1AR extensions of 2AC evidence by name and warrant - you might want to read more evidence in some places like the elections DA
- Need better time allocation in the 2AR - spend more time explaining why the disad is non-unique and applying defense to it - it's the only place the neg can win the debate, but you barely spent any time answering its impact. Also, you need to explain an impact to the economy and why it outweighs an Israel-Iran war.
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Tournament rd. 3 Instructor/commentator: Charles Comments:
2AC
- You don't need to summarize the negative off-case positions. Just answer them.
- Your one answer on the CP is definitely not sufficient. It is effectively a permutation, which is fine. But you have just proven that it's POSSIBLE to do both of these together. But if the CP alone is sufficient to solve the aff, and it avoids the spending problems, then the neg will win.
You continue to go after this point in the CX, which just fundamentally misunderstands what's going on. They're not trying to argue that the CP is mutually exclusive (that you CAN'T do both simultaneously). They're just trying to argue that we don't WANT the plan to solve the harms because the CP does it without triggering the disadvantages.
- It's probably a bit overkill to read all that stuff on capitalism. It's not BAD, but that time could be devoted to some other things. You definitely would want to find that evidence for political capital not true, for example
- I think you read small parts of a couple cards on politics. You need to finish reading evidence once you start - or if you stop you need to explicitly mark it so the other team (and judge) know what you actually did read.
1AR
- The new cards on warming are not really legitimate. They made this the impact to the DA in the 1NC. You needed to answer it then. Your argument about why you can read cards in the 1AR doesn't make any sense. Obviously you can read cards on SOME things. But not when the argument was made before and it was dropped in the 2AC.
- Same problem on the CP as before. You need to explain why doing the aff would be BETTER than doing the CP. Failure to deal with this CP means a lot of the rest of the debate is pretty irrelevant.
- You do still have a decent argument about the value of stimulus, which is potentially a reason the plan is better than the CP. You should focus on this more.
2AR
- You need to really focus on the WAY in which spending is good that is better than the economic benefits the CP can provide. That's certainly possible, but it would take some serious work that isn't happening in this debate.
- You're doing a pretty good job of identifying the arguments on the line by line, and responding to what the neg is saying. The next step, though, is to think about the larger strategic picture. In this debate, the CP solving the whole case forces a massive change in the normal function of the debate. Most of what the 2AR goes for is just not helpful given this problem.
- You keep talking about your evidence that political capital isn't real. But you never actually read the evidence. Just having it on your computer doesn't help. It has to have been actually READ in the debate.
- Don't say your opponent's lied. Say they are incorrect.
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Tournament Rd 4 Instructor/commentator: Peter Cancro Comments:
you reread the same Meade card that they already read in the 1AC. this is redundant and annoys judges. on case only is too little offense (for a 1NC strat), you need at least a Disad or two and or a CP and or a Kritik. you really really really cannot read a disad that they pre empted without ANSERING THE PREEMPTS. to do so is to ALREADY have CONCEDED an answer to the DA before they even get another speech. DO NOT accuse them of lying unless you have a very specific claim and are will to talk to tournament administrators, coaching staff, and lots of other disturbed adults, as ethical violations are frequently treated as more serious than the individual debate they occurred in. Their "lies" sound more like weak flowing confusion, and honestly, most of the confusion seems to be yours (IE, most of what you think are lies, are in fact your flowing errors). Also, the 2NR should NOT go for a Downgrade when you have conceded an answer to it in the block.
Generally, you need to be much more precise and use a line by line in the block and 2NR. Also, it would help resolve the "we solve the econ" "you kill the econ" debate if you discussed and compared the warrants of the cards.
Lastly, you can email me at peterpcancro@gmail.com and I will reply with my flows, as well as comments and RFD saved to an excell workbook.
Date of debate: 7/10
Debating on: Tournament round #6 Instructor/commentator: Mikaela Comments: 1NC – There needs to be a clear CP text – you read a solvency card that almost says what the CP text would say, but there needs to be a distinction between the text of what the CP does and the solvency evidence for the CP.
This 1NC strategy needs more offense. The only impact you’re reading is also accessed by the case. That’s dangerous. If there’s any solvency deficit to the CP, you’ll be in a bad spot.
Flow the 2AC!!! You won’t be able to answer the arguments very well if you don’t have them flowed.
2NC – When you extend 1NC evidence, do more than just re-read the tag and cite; actually explain the argument and apply it to the aff.
Don’t extend the Miller evidence that you scratched in the 1NC – you scratched it because you realized it took out your only offense. So be careful extending an argument that A) you didn’t make, and B) is detrimental to your strategy.
1NR – You do a good job extending your 1NC evidence, but you need to integrate those arguments into the line-by-line, answering each 2AC argument in order. You say that the aff has no evidence that federal investment is better, but the aff made at least 2 arguments to that effect.
2NR – pretty good speech. You need to be more solid on the DA, though, since it’s your offense. You don’t answer each 1AR argument individually and just kind of extend all your evidence, which isn’t enough to get the job done. You could also be more careful on the CP. On the other hand you are doing a good job on the case.
EXAMPLE
Date of debate: June 23 Debating on: Constellation aff Instructor/commentator: Nicole Comments:
Awesome job! Best 1AC ever!
Table of Contents
Date of debate: 6/21
Debating on: case mini-debateInstructor/commentator: Charles
Comments:
Great line by line. You had very good structure for your arguments. Awesome for your first speech!
You should try to add more details to some of your arguments. You have the basic outline but don’t develop them. Your first priority is to respond to the neg, but you shouldn’t lose sight of the need to continue defending the aff.
Nice job using recency of evidence to compare. That’s fantastic.
Date of debate: 6/25
Debating on: Theory mini debatesInstructor/commentator: Mikaela
Comments: Good work! Nice 2AC/2NC blocks. Use "they say" when responding to the other team's arguments. Be sure always to warrant your arguments. Also, in addition to responding to the other team's arguments, extend/explain the original arguments (those made by the previous speech on your side) (a bit confusing in this format, but always important!). On the neg, make arguments about why theory shouldn't be a voting issue.
Date of debate: 6/29
Debating on: states politicsInstructor/commentator: nicole
Comments:
You need to flow. like actually - need to take notes when folks are speaking. it is impossible to commit the entire debate "to memory."
You do a good job explaining why the states would be better at funding a system than the federal government - but need to do a better job explaning that in the context of high speed rail.
You do a sufficient job on the 50 state fiat argument. try to make more than 3 answers when the 1ar spends this much time on it.
Finally, you need to read over the politics DA.
2ar: you do a good job explaining the permutation but did NOT make the argument we just talked about on how the permutation solves the link to politics.
For 50 state fiat - you need to extend more arguments and include the argument we JUST made about the penalty.
Date of debate:6/30
Debating on:KInstructor/commentator:Baker
Comments:
-make sure to include evidence in your 2AC in order to respond to arguments based in evidence
-keep clear that while the 2ac against the k often is about many elements of their theory and such, the main focus for your speech is proving the aff is still a good idea
-avoid reading cards in the last rebuttal - rely primarily on the evidence and arguments you have read earlier
Date of debate: 7/2
Debating on: High-Speed Rail (Practice Debate 1)Instructor/commentator: Nick
Comments:
- Good job with the 1AC, especially with placing emphasis on important words. There’s no need to summarize the evidence you’ve just read – this is the reason you read the tag before the card itself.
- Rather than using cross-x to ask William to re-read his sources, you should look at the pieces of evidence yourself so you don’t need to ask things like “who wrote that” or what the nature of a particular survey was. It’s not worth your time to spend cross-x discussing survey percentages for over a minute – spend some time asking about flaws with the disad and not just their case arguments.
- You need to flow during the 2AC so you know what arguments to extend later in the debate. Nicole’s comments on 6/29 are spot-on.
- Make sure you answer all of the case arguments in the 1AR. You did a good job answering the oil prices and Senate funding arguments, but you need to make sure you answer, for example, that people like cars because they value your time.
- Good job on explaining the merits of government spending, but you need some evidence here (ideally this argument should be made in the 2AC)
- Make sure you use all of your 1AR time – it’s one of the hardest speeches in debate because of the block’s time advantage, so you should rarely have “extra” time at the end.
Date of debate: 7/6
Debating on: Practice Debate BInstructor/commentator: Nicole
Comments:
Your 1ac was an incomplete speech. You need to read the approved 1ac that was discussed within your lab.
Your cx of the 1nc needs to be questions, not just your discussion of your 1ac again.
Your 1ar is mostly claims without warrants. You need to reference 1ac or 2ac authors when you extend arguments. You need to provide more useful examples than the Great Depression for why setting up an NIB would help the US economy. You also need to use all 5 minutes.
REDO of 1AR:
better reference of arguments.
Work on your organization - make sure you are answering arguments on the CP first, then the DA, etc. Don't switch back and forth.
Also the plan can't BE a permutation - that is a combination of the plan and CP.
Date of debate: 7/7
Debating on: Practice debate DInstructor/commentator: Charles
Comments:
1AC
- Your reading is fine. It would be nice if you could emphasize key words a little bit more. Make it sound more urgent.
- Stop fiddling with your water bottle.
- You need to be nicer in CX. It is seriously not acceptable to act that way.
- In CX you have to ASK questions. Not just state stuff. You also HAVE to let your opponent answer questions.
- You HAVE TO FLOW. It's impossible to debate if you don't write down the arguments.
1AR
- You don't need to re-read stuff that was in the 2AC. You're spending a ton of time winning that the aff will eventually save money, but this isn't really very important. The question is whether we can afford to invest money NOW. You need to win that deficit spending is good
- You need to extend the 'political capital not true' argument.
- On the CP, you are purely talking about federal action spurring private investment. This is okay (it proves that the plan solves the 'private action' stuff). But it's far more important to just prove that the CP can't create an infrastructure bank.
- Your answers to capitalism do not work. You're just saying the things that YOU believe, but this does not match up with what the 2AC said. You have to argue using what is in the debate - you can't just talk about what you want to talk about.
- You need to allocate your time better. They basically can't win on anything other than capitalism, so you need to get there with more than 45 seconds left.
Finally: you seem to be frustrated with James trying to tell you things. But from what I could tell, he was mostly right. You do need to be able to tell him to butt out, but I would recommend being a little more accommodating of your partner.
Re-do
- Nice job on spending. You got through that fairly quickly, and got out both the 'spending helps the economy' and 'we reduce costs over the long term' argument.
- I would just be slightly more forceful on politics. They had no answers at all to your link arguments. Just be more clear about this.
- For the CP, you are only talking about how the plan can promote private investment. But this still misses the point. The issue here is that the CP just doesn't make any sense. You need to prove that it can't solve the aff.
- You got to the K with a little over 3 minutes left. Which is fantastic. You said pretty much everything on the rest of the debate that you did this morning.
- You still have nothing on the perm. Your personal antagonism to any criticism of capitalism is preventing you from making strategic arguments. You need to get over that. You can make a lot of the arguments you're already making in the context of the perm if you just get over the hump and recognize that it's an 'even if' situation: even if they're right that the worst forms of capitalism are bad, it's wrong to ascribe that to us...
- Your 'no alt to capitalism' argument sort of works but needs more.
- On your second re-do with the perm, you did a really solid job. More of that and you'll do really well!
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Practice Round 1Instructor/commentator: Nick
Comments:
- As Charles suggested above, you should try to read the 1AC with some urgency and interest. Differentiating the tags from the text of cards and/or emphasizing key words/parts of the 1AC could increase the persuasiveness of your speech.
- Try to face or acknowledge the judge during cx
- You need to read your evidence in a speech before you reference it in cross-x
- Always flash or e-mail your 2AC to the other team when you're done with prep.
- You should use all of your 2AC time to read evidence and make arguments rather than giving an underview - the answers you make here determine what happens the rest of the debate
- When you say you have evidence, you should provide a reason why yours is more credible or reasons to suspect the negative evidence. Try to provide the judge a way to resolve your competing claims.
- Good 1AR extensions of 2AC evidence by name and warrant - you might want to read more evidence in some places like the elections DA
- Need better time allocation in the 2AR - spend more time explaining why the disad is non-unique and applying defense to it - it's the only place the neg can win the debate, but you barely spent any time answering its impact. Also, you need to explain an impact to the economy and why it outweighs an Israel-Iran war.
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Tournament rd. 3Instructor/commentator: Charles
Comments:
2AC
- You don't need to summarize the negative off-case positions. Just answer them.
- Your one answer on the CP is definitely not sufficient. It is effectively a permutation, which is fine. But you have just proven that it's POSSIBLE to do both of these together. But if the CP alone is sufficient to solve the aff, and it avoids the spending problems, then the neg will win.
You continue to go after this point in the CX, which just fundamentally misunderstands what's going on. They're not trying to argue that the CP is mutually exclusive (that you CAN'T do both simultaneously). They're just trying to argue that we don't WANT the plan to solve the harms because the CP does it without triggering the disadvantages.
- It's probably a bit overkill to read all that stuff on capitalism. It's not BAD, but that time could be devoted to some other things. You definitely would want to find that evidence for political capital not true, for example
- I think you read small parts of a couple cards on politics. You need to finish reading evidence once you start - or if you stop you need to explicitly mark it so the other team (and judge) know what you actually did read.
1AR
- The new cards on warming are not really legitimate. They made this the impact to the DA in the 1NC. You needed to answer it then. Your argument about why you can read cards in the 1AR doesn't make any sense. Obviously you can read cards on SOME things. But not when the argument was made before and it was dropped in the 2AC.
- Same problem on the CP as before. You need to explain why doing the aff would be BETTER than doing the CP. Failure to deal with this CP means a lot of the rest of the debate is pretty irrelevant.
- You do still have a decent argument about the value of stimulus, which is potentially a reason the plan is better than the CP. You should focus on this more.
2AR
- You need to really focus on the WAY in which spending is good that is better than the economic benefits the CP can provide. That's certainly possible, but it would take some serious work that isn't happening in this debate.
- You're doing a pretty good job of identifying the arguments on the line by line, and responding to what the neg is saying. The next step, though, is to think about the larger strategic picture. In this debate, the CP solving the whole case forces a massive change in the normal function of the debate. Most of what the 2AR goes for is just not helpful given this problem.
- You keep talking about your evidence that political capital isn't real. But you never actually read the evidence. Just having it on your computer doesn't help. It has to have been actually READ in the debate.
- Don't say your opponent's lied. Say they are incorrect.
Date of debate: 7/9
Debating on: Tournament Rd 4Instructor/commentator: Peter Cancro
Comments:
you reread the same Meade card that they already read in the 1AC. this is redundant and annoys judges. on case only is too little offense (for a 1NC strat), you need at least a Disad or two and or a CP and or a Kritik. you really really really cannot read a disad that they pre empted without ANSERING THE PREEMPTS. to do so is to ALREADY have CONCEDED an answer to the DA before they even get another speech. DO NOT accuse them of lying unless you have a very specific claim and are will to talk to tournament administrators, coaching staff, and lots of other disturbed adults, as ethical violations are frequently treated as more serious than the individual debate they occurred in. Their "lies" sound more like weak flowing confusion, and honestly, most of the confusion seems to be yours (IE, most of what you think are lies, are in fact your flowing errors). Also, the 2NR should NOT go for a Downgrade when you have conceded an answer to it in the block.
Generally, you need to be much more precise and use a line by line in the block and 2NR. Also, it would help resolve the "we solve the econ" "you kill the econ" debate if you discussed and compared the warrants of the cards.
Lastly, you can email me at peterpcancro@gmail.com and I will reply with my flows, as well as comments and RFD saved to an excell workbook.
Date of debate: 7/10
Debating on: Tournament round #6Instructor/commentator: Mikaela
Comments: 1NC – There needs to be a clear CP text – you read a solvency card that almost says what the CP text would say, but there needs to be a distinction between the text of what the CP does and the solvency evidence for the CP.
This 1NC strategy needs more offense. The only impact you’re reading is also accessed by the case. That’s dangerous. If there’s any solvency deficit to the CP, you’ll be in a bad spot.
Flow the 2AC!!! You won’t be able to answer the arguments very well if you don’t have them flowed.
2NC – When you extend 1NC evidence, do more than just re-read the tag and cite; actually explain the argument and apply it to the aff.
Don’t extend the Miller evidence that you scratched in the 1NC – you scratched it because you realized it took out your only offense. So be careful extending an argument that A) you didn’t make, and B) is detrimental to your strategy.
1NR – You do a good job extending your 1NC evidence, but you need to integrate those arguments into the line-by-line, answering each 2AC argument in order. You say that the aff has no evidence that federal investment is better, but the aff made at least 2 arguments to that effect.
2NR – pretty good speech. You need to be more solid on the DA, though, since it’s your offense. You don’t answer each 1AR argument individually and just kind of extend all your evidence, which isn’t enough to get the job done. You could also be more careful on the CP. On the other hand you are doing a good job on the case.
EXAMPLE
Date of debate: June 23Debating on: Constellation aff
Instructor/commentator: Nicole
Comments:
Awesome job! Best 1AC ever!