Coaching
NDCA Open Evidence Project
I wanted to remind everyone that the National Debate Coaches Association runs the “Open Evidence Project” which aims to release thousands of files from high school debate camps to the debate community. While a lot of the files are obviously not relevant for us this year (although if your case deals with space it may [...]
Debating the Most Intuitive Cases Under the Resolution
Part of being a successful debater is having a solid case. What exactly qualifies as a solid case is open for debate (pun intended). I have always been an advocate of debating the most intuitive case under the resolution. Some of my contemporaries believe in cutting obscure cases that either barely meet the burdens of [...]
Taming the Kritik: How to Beat a Kritik Debater in LD
Today I’ll explain how to engage in kritik debate and some useful strategies to beat back the dreaded K. Although the kritik remains rare in LD debate it is not entirely absent from rounds and tournaments. Some enterprising debaters have changed the headings to DA – Counterplan, but make no mistake – It’s a kritik. [...]
Summer Prep 101: An LD’ers Guide to Taking Advantage of Your Summer Break. Part 3 of 3
So, you’ve finished most of the heavy lifting necessary for next year’s resolution. What’s left is Contention Development targeted at the most likely cases/arguments. At this point in your summer research you should have quite a few articles that you’ve collected and turned into policy chains. From these policy chains you should have generated tags [...]
Surveying Attitudes Toward Topical Counterplans in LD
Matt Whitman, a debater from Western Kentucky University, has asked me to pass this along – he’s promised to come back and summarize his results when he finishes his thesis. “Aside from the annual topic change, NFA-LD (and really, the rest of forensics) continues to evolve as an activity itself. As competitors, coaches, and critics, [...]
Summer Prep 101: An LD’ers Guide to Taking Advantage of Your Summer Break. Part 2 of 3
Last week we discussed researching the topic area and building a policy chain. This week we can start putting it all together by tagging and/or frontlining all of the literature in your policy chain. At this point there is no right or wrong way to approach cutting/frontlining. As long as you’re gathering evidence for good [...]
Amended Resolutions
Per an email sent to the IE-L on Thursday, May 5 at 5:49pm the Lincoln Douglas Committee has revised the wording of the 5 resolutions: The Lincoln Douglas Committee has revised the wording of the 5 resolutions for clarification reasons. If you have already voted, and feel you need to change your ballot, send me [...]
Why do you participate in debate?
Now that the season is over I think it’d be a great time to reflect: why do you participate in debate? I often find these conversations are helpful at the end of the season when so many coaches and students are experiencing burnout and may feel like all the hard work of the season was [...]
Summer Prep 101: An LD’ers Guide to Taking Advantage of Your Summer Break. Part 1 of 3
Being a winning LD debater starts with your work ethic. For both the novice and the advanced competitor, success in Lincoln-Douglas debate is about research. Those who are willing to do the research give themselves a competitive advantage in every round they enter. This is because they understand the topic area well enough to articulate to [...]
Possible Topic Wordings?
We probably have only a few more days to submit possible topic words to the NFA-LD committee (specifically Dave Trumble (dtrumble at anselm edu)) since the final five resolutions will be published April 30. If you’ve ever had to write topics for a tournament you’ll know it a really hard job and it’s essentially impossible [...]
BREAKING – Board suspends vote – will keep this year’s topic one more year
Just got an interesting email on the IE-L regarding next year’s NFA-LD topic… … The NFA-LD committee has just finished receiving results from the 2010-2011 coaches NFA-LD survey that was sent out two weeks ago to all active NFA member schools. Apparently, preliminary results indicate that a majority of debaters have decided against engaging the [...]
2011-2012 Topic – Ag Policy
The first topic listed for next year was submitted by Kelly Larson At Missouri Southern. I believe it was originally submitted for this year but was second place and thus gets resubmitted automatically. Here is the full topic paper. Here is the statement of significance: The arena for discussion over the next 10 plus years [...]
