Speaker Responsibilities
For those of you who are new to debate or new to NFA-LD I thought it may be helpful to walk through each of the six speeches in NFA-LD and discuss, in detail, the different responsibilities and goals of each speech. I’ve discussed these in brief in this series before but wanted to expand each speech. So, today, we will begin to cover the first affirmative constructive. I gave a lecture on this subject at the RCC camp which you can view here.
This speech is given a time limit of 6 minutes to present the affirmative case in support of the resolution. Generally, this is going to be one of the easiest speeches to given since you will have it scripted before the tournament begins.
This is your bread and butter “debate case” speech that will probably end up taking up the bulk of you pre-tournament preparation. You’ll want to fully understand your case and know each card within you case. This will help when you are answering cross examination questions and you can quickly identify a piece of evidence which answers the negative’s question without having to look through your case which hurts your credibility.
My suggestion for a solid 1AC is to first start off with an introduction. You can see the difference in having an introduction from my STA case and Mike’s space case.
Here you establish the significance of the topic and pre-empt a topicality challenge. I would recommend no more than 30 seconds but it affords you multiple benefits. First, it gives you a chance to get out ahead on topicality. You can point to the evidence you cited in the introduction when answering topicality to give yourself additional arguments in the 1AR. Second, it gives you a chance to warm up your voice before jumping into the heart of your case. I’ve seen way to many rounds where the affirmative debater stumbles through the first couple of cards before warming up and delivering their solvency much better. Third, it gives the judge a chance to warm up to your presentation. If we truly view the debate round in a real world fashion many times as judges it’s hard to listen to the first 30 seconds to a minute simply because we have to adjust to your presentation style – ie, your pitch, rate, enunciation, etc… By having an introduction you let everyone ease into the debate case.
You then want to meet your stock issues. The rules clearly establish that the judging paradigm in NFA-LD is stock issues. As such, you will want to clearly identify which stock issue you are responding to and prove that you’ve met the prima facia burden. I would recommend a needs style case since that tells the best story.
You would start with establishing the inherency for your case – why the status quo is not solving. Then move onto your harms, plan and solvency. If you are trying to “run down the middle” of NFA-LD this will be your best route to success. If you run a comparative advantage case structure (plan-adv-adv) you should very clearly signpost each argument as an inherency, harm, or solvency to make sure the judge knows you did not miss anything.
In summation, the most important responsibility for your 1AC speech is to present a prima facia case proving to the judge that you have meet the stock issues burdens of proving inherency, harms, and solvency. Any other suggestions for the 1AC speech?
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Comments
I 100% agree with Will: interps in the 1AC are risky. You still have to extend it in the 1AR, and the extension might take a LITTLE less time than just reading the card. I just save my 30 seconds in the 1AC and run topical cases 
On the topic of preempts, though, the case should be -full- of them. Most people only half-listen to the meat of cards, so if your card has an argument in it that the tag doesn’t reflect, it’s still an argument and you still get to extend it through untouched in the 1AR.
Hypothetical example: My hege card tag says hege is key to prevent war, but two sentences in the card argue that hege is key to a strong economy, that’s a great spikeout to an econ disad.
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Generally I think the value of an introduction as a pre-empt to topicality is very minimal in front of a flow critic. There are two major problems with showing your interpretation that early – first, you give your opponent the option of running T on a word that your evidence does not engage, and second, you allow your opponent to craft their standards to answer your interpretation straight out of the 1NC, which will make your 1AR much, much harder.
Although your advice certainly is sound in front of a lay critic – getting ahead PERCEPTUALLY on the topicality debate is very important, because such a critic is unlikely to base their decision on a nuanced evaluation of the standards debate, but rather whether or not the case feels intuitively topical.