Competing
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 [...]
Case Idea?
Have your case adopted by the federal government already? Looking for a new winning affirmative after your 1AC went 0-2 last weekend?
Here is an interesting idea that I read about today on the New York Times – roundabouts. It’s pretty clearly topical – I’m not sure how much more reforming of roads you could [...]
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 schools and [...]
Sunset Cliffs – Open Field Report
The Sunset Cliffs Invitational, hosted by Point Loma Nazarene University in sunny San Diego is now just a week away. As of Sunday afternoon, there were 40 teams representing 14 schools from eight states. This is truly a phenomenal field – by far the largest and most competitive in Southern California this year. I’ll start [...]
One Small step for… NFA-LD?
Alright! Our first poll is finished at SoCal-LD.net and our community topic for next year that we’ll submit is on Space Exploration.
Here are the requirements for the brief due by Jan 31 – so we have about two weeks.
In order to be accepted for consideration, the topic area must be in the form of a [...]
Freight Mobility Case
Here is another case idea that I’ve come across – a case surrounding freight mobility. While the article is rather light on specifics I imagine if you did a little bit of research you’d be able to find some policy recommendations.
Panelists discussed the need for a national freight vision as critical to the future [...]
Introduction to Debate
From talking to lots of coaches in Southern California it seems that some programs are approaching NFA-LD as a “spring semester” event – with the idea that we get our students warmed up in the fall and then do a big push to get the event ready for state/nationals over break in the spring. [...]
Case Idea? Require broadband…
Not sure if this would be topical or not but it sounds really interesting – require any new construction to install broadband telecommunications cables.
My initial thought is that this is a perfect example of reforming the infrastructure. Currently, highways are not required to have broadband – this reform will require them which will greatly boost [...]
Writing a Disadvantage
So on this year’s topic you should have a wide range of generic positions to run against almost any case. Because the affirmative could, realistically, run a new plan every single round, it’s going to be very common for you to debate against cases you have little to no evidence against.
In that instance you [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
APU and a Fresh Perspective
Greetings! For those readers who may find my name unfamiliar, my name is Nick Matthews. I am a first-year student at UCLA, where I am competing in both NFA-LD and parliamentary debate. In high school, I was a policy debater for four years, competing at both the local and the national level. Now that I’m [...]
