Billy's Notes

Billy's Notes from today (5.12.06)'s meeting:

Debate meeting 5/12/06

The Four Roles

• Introduction
  
  
  
  • State a position (affirmative/negative)
  
  
  • Introduce your group members and their roles
  
  
  • State your main contentions
  
  
  • Give a preview of polls, history, statistics or other
    evidence that you will be hearing from the next speakers
  
  
  
  


• Constructive
  
  
  
  • Second speaker on the team is constructive
  
  
  • Prove the reasons stated by the introductory speaker
  
  
  • Construct arguments to support the claim
  
  
  • You must do exactly what the introduction stated
  
  
  • State any evidence or statistics that promote your
    side
  
  
  
  


• Refutation
  
  
  
  • Defend yourself against attacks
  
  
  • Attack the opposition and their points made
  
  
  • Point out flaws in the opposition’s evidence and facts
  
  
  • If no attacks have been made, you must think and
    anticipate the attacks
  
  
  • Debate is often won or lost on refutation; most
    important
  
  
  • Speaker must be able to think on his feet
  
  
  
  


• Conclusion
  


• You may not introduce new evidence or reasons in the
  Conclusion


• May seem as if this speaker has not much to do ahead
  of time but he (or she) must pay the most attention during the debate


• Reviews the case, and wraps up all of the strong
  points of your case, and the weak points in the opposition
  

General role facts

Conclusion and Refutation speakers must be able to
contextualize evidence against you to lessen the blow, you can’t assume the
judges didn’t hear it

The goal is to prove your side is better, not that it is
perfect. This is not geometric proof; We aim at probability not certainty.

Use words like “probably,” “very possibly” and “most
likely.” Allow room for error because there is almost always some doubt.

Judges like Manners and Courtesy

You are talking to the Judge, not to the other team. Never
address a person.

Sarcasm is not appropriate, some humor is.

A team must have its case planned, all of the team members
must know what the other people are going to say.

A refutation speaker must be able to think on his feet, and
to be the devil’s advocate.

Concluding speakers must re-enforce the points made in the
introduction, and must pay attention throughout the entire debate.

Terms of Debate

• Proposition must attack the status quo.


• A side is either affirmative (support the proposition)
  or negative (stay with the status quo)


• The affirmative always goes first and last (first intro,
  last conclusion)


• Negative team doesn’t always have to defend the status
  quo, they may just reject the affirmative’s claim of the method of reform.


• Status quo is right until it is proven bad.


• Turns
  
  
  
  • Affirmative intro
  
  
  • Negative intro
  
  
  • Affirmative construction
  
  
  • Negative construction
  
  
  • Break
  
  
  • Negative refutation
  
  
  • Affirmative refutation
  
  
  • Negative conclusion
  
  
  • Affirmative conclusion.


• The affirmative refutation speaker gets the benefit of
  hearing the negative refutation before they go.
  
  
  
  • Negative refuter has to defend possible attacks


• Affirmative contentions can’t be able to be solved
  without changing the status quo


• Contentions must have something to prove about the
  Proposition


• The responsibility of the introductory speaker is to
  outline the definition of the proposition. Take the key terms in the
  proposition or contentions and define them or question how they are being
  interpreted.
  
  
  
  • Very often the two sides agree on the definition
  
  
  • A debate can simply be a fight of the interpretation
    of the wording of the proposition.