Coaching
Enumerated v Implied Powers
As mentioned in a comment on Michael’s Kritik post one way to view the NFA-LD rules is that they enumerate a certain set of “powers” or “positions” the negative can run. (This argument may or may not also apply to the affirmative in NFA-LD, but this discussion will focus solely on the negative.) A few [...]
What to do in cross-ex?
A common question new debaters ask is, “So, what do I do in cross-examination?” This is of course a question with as many good answers as there are coaches and competitors. Here are my guidelines for cross-ex: 1) Only ask questions if you already know the answer. An exception to this is when you’re clarifying [...]
Open Thread
I’ve seen this on other blogs that I follow and was wondering if it’d be helpful on here as well – what questions do you have for the Southern California NFA-LD community before APU? Leave any questions in the comments and I’m sure someone will reply…. They can be on coaching, judging, competing, evidence, observing, [...]
1st Workshop vodcast
Down at the coach’s conference, I was talking with Danny about putting together some videos to make a kind of “virtual workshop” that this site could use in the place of traditional workshops. The traditional ones are great, but in addition to travel times and hosting stress, we also have the problem of some schools [...]
A Good Place to Start
One of the reasons I support NFA-LD debate is that each year I get to learn so much about the particular topic being debated. Whenever anyone brings up Greater Horn of Africa, renewable energy, Cuba, transportation, etc… I feel so knowledgeable and almost always can engage in a discussion regarding possible policy solutions and their [...]
Critical Thinking
Throughout higher education critical thinking is a central tenant of most college classes. Most students must complete a “critical thinking” requirement in order to get their degree. Debate is certainly one of the best activities to teach critical thinking and is one of the reasons it is my passion to teach and share with other [...]
Interesting comment
From the Sunset Cliffs post an anonymous person writes: all the preparation is wasted. opp strategy is always Topicality, procedurals, and counterplans. the debate doesn’t start until the 2nd speech. at least thats what it seems like. If true, I think this is a very damaging to both the future adoption of the event by [...]
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 [...]
Space Tourism – Run before 2012, or it won’t matter!
Longtime fans of this site, or people who have hung around the circuit long enough know that I have a tendency to write strange cases. Earlier this semester, I threw together a case as a handout for my Argumentation & Debate course. The case took me about 30 minutes to write (Lexis Nexis for the [...]
Losing
A necessary byproduct of a competitive system is that someone has to lose each NFA-LD debate round. Since we employ a win-loss system for determing who wins one debater, will, by rule, leave each room with a loss. Losing can be a very valuable part of the debate tournament. It mirrors life really well. You [...]
Debate is a game
Some great comments on recent posts hashing out why we do debate (here as well). One of those comments, which as been agreed upon, is the statement that “debate is a game.” I hear this often and it is spoken as if it’s carved in stone. I, for one, disagree. NFA-LD Debate for me is [...]
Some Clarity on Funding Theory
I would like offer some of my thoughts on why and to what extent an affirmative must discuss funding. These are my current thoughts, but I’m really interested in some discussion to help me reach some clarity. This seemed to come up a lot this weekend. 1) An affirmative must provide something under the plan [...]
