Judging
Judging NFA-LD
A lot of great discussion on the site regarding what NFA-LD is. I do not presume to know – however, I wanted to add in my opinion. First, a little background. It’s been a struggle to get NFA-LD added as a regular event at both the local league (PSCFA) and local invitationals. I’m constantly emailing [...]
Introduction to NFA-LD
Earlier this semester I had the privilege of hosting a ‘masters class’ at our PSCFA coaches conference on coaching and judging NFA-LD. There were roughly 20 people in attendance representing about 10-15 schools, many of which have never done NFA-LD before this season. I was really excited with the discussion we had which covered event [...]
Lafayette College Debate Camp – Recap
The inaugural Lafayette College NFA-LD Debate Camp concluded yesterday. We had a GREAT week at camp with 27 debaters and 7 staff. In the camp tournament, the debaters all pretty much had the same evidence as everyone else. Sam Derrick of Lafayette College finished prelims as the only 6-0. Advancing to the showcase semi-finals were [...]
NFA Results
Hey Y’all, Just wanted to let you know that the hard work paid off and NFA was a great success for both Cali and NFA-LD. Pacific’s Broc Maples and Steve Farias broke to double-octs, and UNR’s Matt Hogan was also a double octa-finalist. Great Job! There was also a coaches meeting at NFA this year [...]
Introduction to Topicality, Post 1 of 5
When I first started judging and coaching NFA-LD I assumed given the impression of the event from afar that topicality would rarely be argued. Was I wrong! At our first tournament Cerritos did not even have answers to topicality and our affirmative teams were really hit hard with that oversight. An interesting difference between CEDA/NPDA/NDT [...]
What is traditional policy debate
To continue the debate from earlier posts from Mike & John, I came across this great article in the Debater’s Research Guide from Wake Forest University in 2003. It attempts to define what is traditional policy debate and argue that critiques, as usually argued, do not constitute traditional policy debate and are bad for debate. [...]
AT Marse – In defense of Kritiks in NFA-LD
Forgive the title of the post, just trying to have a little fun. I don’t have too much of a problem with the things that Mike Marse is advocating (and similarly Danny Cantrell in his comment), but I wanted to provide an alternative viewpoint. I don’t think that ALL kritiks are against the NFA-LD rules. [...]
Kritik Theory
I wanted to explain what I believe about Kritiks, and hopefully start a discussion that will lead to some understanding about this realm of debate theory. Why now? This last weekend at the California Double-Up some of my students (the ones who don’t also do CEDA) ran into their first kritiks. So, what is a [...]
Topic Area Background
The LD Camp went very well, with 16 students from 4 schools in attendance. Not bad for the first year of anything that doesn’t give away trophies. Anyway, among the highlights was a discussion of delivery by Prof. Bill Sparks of Cerritos College, who (among other things) explained the difference between strategies that allow you [...]
Judges: The Role of Cross-Examination
One aspect that significantly differs from NPDA to NFA-LD debate is cross-examination. Following the first two constructive speeches there is a 3 minute period where the debaters can ask each other questions. Interestingly, I can find no reference to cross-examination in the official NFA-LD rules. The National Forensics Journal has many articles on judging NFA-LD [...]
Introduction to Judging NFA-LD
The purpose of this article is to discuss the development of various paradigms for judging NFA-LD. This is valuable as a competitor as well because the better you understand this new judging pool the more successful you will be. The first observation about judging in NFA-LD is that the rules which govern the way debate [...]
Rules
For a refresher here are a copy of the NFA-LD Rules from (http://cas.bethel.edu/dept/comm/nfa/ldrules.html) NFA Lincoln-Douglas Debate is a one-person, persuasive, policy debate on traditional stock issues. It is a communication event, by which we mean the philosophy of the activity is consistent with that which governs other individual events. Competitors in NFA Lincoln-Douglas will be [...]
