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| With thanks to Mark Haughton for the pretty diagram |
Showing posts with label basics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basics. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 December 2014
Roles on the table in British Parliamentary Debating
This post list the very basic requirements for each role on the table, more advanced articles are on the way but I thought it would be useful to have this to start with as a reference/index.
Saturday, 29 November 2014
Debating Glossary
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| Picture unrelated but adorable. |
I suggest using CTRL+F to find particular terms as the list is fairly long.
Please comment below with any additions, requests for clarification, etc.
| Term | Definition |
| Ad hominem | Arguments that attack the character of a person, not their arguments. Considered very bad form in competitive debating. |
| Adjudication team | A team of senior judges who set the motions for a competition and decide who judges which debate. (Also called 'CA Team' or "Adjudication Team") |
| Analysis | Explaining why a thing you say is true. See previous post for more details. |
| Analysis motion/debate | A motion/debate about proving a statement is true/false e.g. “This house believes violence is never the answer” is about the truth of that statement, not proposing that a particular action (e.g. “going to war”) is good. |
| Announce Room | The room, generally a large lecture theatre, in which the tab rolls and the CA team and Convening team announce things to the competition. |
| Assertion | When you make a statement but provide no analysis as to why it is true. |
Tuesday, 28 October 2014
Judging Competitive Debating - Part 2 - The process of judging
This is part of my series of introductory articles, which explain the basics of competitive debating and follows on from "Judging competitive debating - Part 1 - A general framework."
Note taking
The first thing to say is that while you are watching a debate you should take notes of what the speakers are saying so you can refer back to them later, and to make comments to yourself (e.g. “good structure”, “have they responded to previous speaker?”).
Notes should be concise and clear as possible as you’ll have to refer to them quickly during adjudication. You don’t need to write down literally everything a speaker says (and given how fast they often speak that may be impossible) but you should try to include the important points of analysis and engagement.
The standard way to do this is to take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half or quarters, with each speaker in the appropriate place. Multiple colours of pen can help for distinguishing speakers, comments and POIs, and it can be useful to highlight important bits. I tend to use blue and black for the different teams (so will write a blue POI in a black speech) and red pen for comments.
Recently I’ve started taking notes on a laptop because my handwriting is terrible and slow (dyspraxia yay). This is fairly unusual but seems to be becoming more common (and I think may be more common in the US). I’ve made templates for judging which I use, which divide the page in quarters, one plain and one in colour (if they are cut off on the side of the screen switch to "web view" rather than "print view"). I then add comments, POIs, etc using bold, italics and underlining.
However amazing your memory is you really need to take good notes, as you should be able to supply evidence for your conclusions during the discussion, without notes everything tends to blur together, and you will be more likely to confuse what particular speakers said.
You should hang on to your notes after a debate so that if speakers ask you for personal feedback between rounds, or at the social in the evening. Though as a general rule I’d say not to share your notes with speakers as they should contain your unfiltered opinions on a debate, and you may self censor if you think people will read them.
Judging discussion
After the debate has finished and all the speakers have been herded out the room, the judges will have about 15 minutes to discuss the debate, come to a call and assign speaker points. This discussion will be moderated and structured by the chair, generally the most experienced judge on the panel. Given that time is tight, and if judging runs over the whole tournament can be delayed (resulting in rage and violence from the conveners, and getting food/drink late) you should try and present your opinion of the debate in a clear and concise way and focus on relevant parts of the debate.
Note taking
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| Not massively relevant, but I couldn't resist. - Creative Commons, Photopin. |
The first thing to say is that while you are watching a debate you should take notes of what the speakers are saying so you can refer back to them later, and to make comments to yourself (e.g. “good structure”, “have they responded to previous speaker?”).
Notes should be concise and clear as possible as you’ll have to refer to them quickly during adjudication. You don’t need to write down literally everything a speaker says (and given how fast they often speak that may be impossible) but you should try to include the important points of analysis and engagement.
The standard way to do this is to take a sheet of A4 paper and fold it in half or quarters, with each speaker in the appropriate place. Multiple colours of pen can help for distinguishing speakers, comments and POIs, and it can be useful to highlight important bits. I tend to use blue and black for the different teams (so will write a blue POI in a black speech) and red pen for comments.
Recently I’ve started taking notes on a laptop because my handwriting is terrible and slow (dyspraxia yay). This is fairly unusual but seems to be becoming more common (and I think may be more common in the US). I’ve made templates for judging which I use, which divide the page in quarters, one plain and one in colour (if they are cut off on the side of the screen switch to "web view" rather than "print view"). I then add comments, POIs, etc using bold, italics and underlining.
However amazing your memory is you really need to take good notes, as you should be able to supply evidence for your conclusions during the discussion, without notes everything tends to blur together, and you will be more likely to confuse what particular speakers said.
You should hang on to your notes after a debate so that if speakers ask you for personal feedback between rounds, or at the social in the evening. Though as a general rule I’d say not to share your notes with speakers as they should contain your unfiltered opinions on a debate, and you may self censor if you think people will read them.
Judging discussion
After the debate has finished and all the speakers have been herded out the room, the judges will have about 15 minutes to discuss the debate, come to a call and assign speaker points. This discussion will be moderated and structured by the chair, generally the most experienced judge on the panel. Given that time is tight, and if judging runs over the whole tournament can be delayed (resulting in rage and violence from the conveners, and getting food/drink late) you should try and present your opinion of the debate in a clear and concise way and focus on relevant parts of the debate.
Thursday, 23 October 2014
Judging competitive debating - Part 1 - A general framework
This is part of a series of introductory articles. Which explain basic concepts of competitive debating. It is followed by "Judging Competitive Debating - Part 2 - The process of judging."
I am indebted to the wonderful David Bender for the first part of this explanation, I was going to write one myself but his is sufficiently good and concise that would seem like a waste of time:
I am indebted to the wonderful David Bender for the first part of this explanation, I was going to write one myself but his is sufficiently good and concise that would seem like a waste of time:
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| CC - Photopin |
[Judging] is a 'comparative assessment of each team's persuasiveness'.
It's comparative, insofar as you compare teams: there is no absolute standard of persuasiveness a team has to beat.
It's team-based, insofar as you have to judge the whole team.
We know that three things make a speech persuasive: content, analysis and style. If a speech contains all three of those things, it is persuasive.
Content means attempting to prove things relevant to your side winning. You can choose content - so pick what path you want to take to proving your side. However, other teams can challenge you to provide content: 'demonstrate this is legitimate'. Look to see what metrics teams set themselves, and what metrics are set by other teams.
Analysis means explanation. Specifically, an idea is well analysed if teams explain why it is true, and why it is important. Analysis can be thick or thin. Thick analysis is well explained with each logical step explicated. Thin analysis is poorly explained with many missing steps. Analysis can be broad or narrow. Broad analysis contains many independent logical chains to prove a claim. Narrow analysis contains just one. Broad, thick analysis is most persuasive.
Style means you can understand what they say. If what they said is confusing, it cannot be credited.
If a speech fulfills its relevant burdens, in a well analysed and stylistically clear manner, more so than other teams, that team wins.This framework works well for most university level competitions, but might be harder to apply in novice and schools competitions where arguments may not be made as clearly and may not explicitly clash with each other. (I’ll probably write a more detailed post on this in the future).
A few additional notes:
Wednesday, 27 August 2014
What is analysis?
This is part of a series of introductory articles. Where I try to explain basic concepts of debating.
“More analysis” has become a bit of a cliché in giving debating feedback, but its almost always true that the team who does the most wins the debate. But what actually is it?
At its simplest, analysis is “telling the judges why what you say is true.”
The opposite is an assertion. So if I say that “If we do this people will be happier” that's an assertion. If I say “When we do this it will cause A, A will cause B because of C, […...] and then X will happen which will make people happy because Z.” See what I mean?
Metaphors I find useful are building links in a chain, or piling bricks on top of each other. A lego house made of small bricks connected together and reinforcing one another is going to be stronger than a loose pile.
Saying more words, or saying longer words, isn't the same thing as analysis.
Explaining something in a roundabout rambling way that doesn't actually include the important content of what you are saying. Just because you've talked about something for four minutes doesn't meant you have actually explained what it is in any level of detail. "A then B then C" is different from "A! C! !B Z! A!"
Long and technical words may make you sound clever, but they don't actually make what you are saying any better unless they are explained or bring something extra with them. "The economically disenfranchised are systematically excluded from the political discourse" doesn't actually tell me anything more than "poor people don't have much power in politics."
Strategically deploying analysis
Now you obviously don't need to do a huge amount of analysis for every claim you make, you can probably get away with saying “water is wet” or “death is bad” without much explanation. And in the limited amount of time you have to speak you need to strategically decide which of your points need to be analysed more. So you focus your time on points the other side are likely to oppose.
So your opponent will be more likely to question a point that is important to the debate (e.g. free speech is an inherent right). This also means that a point that doesn't need analysis in some debates will need a lot in others, so in a debate on military intervention people are unlikely to question that death is bad, but in one on bioethics they might say it either isn't bad in itself or less bad than other things.
On the flip side, if I spend half my speech proving in detail that "Democracy is good" and my opponent doesn't contest that, but contests how well my method achieves democracy then my analysis won't really help me win.
Proving importance
With any point the two things you need to prove to the judges are:
1) Why is this true
2) Why is this important.
(Though admittedly the boundary between them is often fuzzy).
We've already talked about proving why something is true, and proving why it is important works the same way. Often its easier to prove importance than truth since its often more intuitively obvious, ("X will cause a civil war" is a difficult thing to prove, "civil war is bad" is easier). You may also have to prove why something is more important than another thing, which is normally called "Comparative" but that needs a separate article.
This is a very basic introduction, but I think it gets the important ideas across, if you want a more philosophical look at analysis I suggest the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
As always feel free to comment and complain below.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on this article, particularly the Communist Case File members with whom I had a very productive discussion.
In the interests of Journalistic integrity I must make a confession: The image above which I had previously implied was a Lego house is actually composed of Duplo the larger blocks intended for infants. I hope the world can forgive me.
“More analysis” has become a bit of a cliché in giving debating feedback, but its almost always true that the team who does the most wins the debate. But what actually is it?
At its simplest, analysis is “telling the judges why what you say is true.”
The opposite is an assertion. So if I say that “If we do this people will be happier” that's an assertion. If I say “When we do this it will cause A, A will cause B because of C, […...] and then X will happen which will make people happy because Z.” See what I mean?Metaphors I find useful are building links in a chain, or piling bricks on top of each other. A lego house made of small bricks connected together and reinforcing one another is going to be stronger than a loose pile.
Saying more words, or saying longer words, isn't the same thing as analysis.
Explaining something in a roundabout rambling way that doesn't actually include the important content of what you are saying. Just because you've talked about something for four minutes doesn't meant you have actually explained what it is in any level of detail. "A then B then C" is different from "A! C! !B Z! A!"
Long and technical words may make you sound clever, but they don't actually make what you are saying any better unless they are explained or bring something extra with them. "The economically disenfranchised are systematically excluded from the political discourse" doesn't actually tell me anything more than "poor people don't have much power in politics."
Strategically deploying analysis
Now you obviously don't need to do a huge amount of analysis for every claim you make, you can probably get away with saying “water is wet” or “death is bad” without much explanation. And in the limited amount of time you have to speak you need to strategically decide which of your points need to be analysed more. So you focus your time on points the other side are likely to oppose.
So your opponent will be more likely to question a point that is important to the debate (e.g. free speech is an inherent right). This also means that a point that doesn't need analysis in some debates will need a lot in others, so in a debate on military intervention people are unlikely to question that death is bad, but in one on bioethics they might say it either isn't bad in itself or less bad than other things.
On the flip side, if I spend half my speech proving in detail that "Democracy is good" and my opponent doesn't contest that, but contests how well my method achieves democracy then my analysis won't really help me win.
Proving importance
With any point the two things you need to prove to the judges are:
1) Why is this true
2) Why is this important.
(Though admittedly the boundary between them is often fuzzy).
We've already talked about proving why something is true, and proving why it is important works the same way. Often its easier to prove importance than truth since its often more intuitively obvious, ("X will cause a civil war" is a difficult thing to prove, "civil war is bad" is easier). You may also have to prove why something is more important than another thing, which is normally called "Comparative" but that needs a separate article.
This is a very basic introduction, but I think it gets the important ideas across, if you want a more philosophical look at analysis I suggest the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
As always feel free to comment and complain below.
Thanks to everyone who gave feedback on this article, particularly the Communist Case File members with whom I had a very productive discussion.
In the interests of Journalistic integrity I must make a confession: The image above which I had previously implied was a Lego house is actually composed of Duplo the larger blocks intended for infants. I hope the world can forgive me.
Wednesday, 30 July 2014
Attending a Debating Competition
This is a followup to my previous article "What do you need to bring to a debating competition?" and part of a series of introductory articles.
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| A generic university building |
When you arrive you will be need to register. There will likely be a stressed
looking person at the entrance or in the main hall with a laptop. This is
simply a matter of telling them your individual and team names, and various
other details such as:
- Second language status -
Some competitions have separate tabs and/or finals for speakers for whom
English isn't their first language, to take into account the extra level
of difficulty this causes.
- Novice status - Similar to
the above, generally defined as anyone in their first year of university debating who has not broken
at any tournament.
- Clashes - This is
particularly important if you are judging but may also be important for
teams. So you list institutions or people you would be
uncomfortable judging or being judged by, or that someone might reasonably
expect you to be biased about. (E.g. institutions you have attended,
former or present romantic partners, people you have spoken with, etc.)
- Dietary requirements - If they are providing food (E.g. vegetarian, religious, allergies, etc.)
- Payment - There is normally a "reg fee" that covers the cost of running the competition, any food provided, etc. Different institutions have different rules on whether they cover it, if they provide subsidies etc. so ask at yours and ensure you know in advance what the competition will cost you. Reg fees are usually paid in cash although bank transfer and check can be options. If you need to be reimbursed from a University or Union, it is useful to ask for a receipt.
Saturday, 3 May 2014
What do you need to bring to a debating competition?
This is the first part of a planned series of basics for new debaters. Feedback is as always appreciated.
Pens and paper
You're going to need something to write on and with. While you can always borrow pens and paper from people this gets tiresome quickly.
I've started buying multipacks of generic multicoloured biros because I always lose them (and people 'borrow' them). A useful trick is to write in different colours for different things (e.g. black for your stuff, red for rebuttal or comments). Highlighters can also help. I like using thick marker pens to write titles so they are obvious when glancing at notes (my speaking notes tend to consist of THE TITLE OF THE POINT at the top, and indecipherable squiggles for the rest of the page).
Always use A4 if you can, flipping between little notepad sheets is distracting for you and the judges. I quite like having a clipboard, especially when you get those annoying side tables on desks.
Time keeping
Its useful to time yourself while speaking (so you don’t suddenly realise you’re still on your first point with one minute left). Many people these days use mobile phones, with either the native stopwatch app or the super shiny Debate Keeper app, which helpfully flashes and/or goes 'bing' at the appropriate times. Others distrust this modern witchcraft and use traditional stopwatches, which have the benefit of not running out of power or receiving calls from your cousin at inconvenient times.
Crash
In the nicest way possible, the standard of crash can be pretty minimal. Sleeping on a floor with half a dozen other snoring slightly smelly people is not unheard of, so a sleeping bag is a minimal requirement, a sleep mask and/or earplugs might be helpful if you, like me, you have trouble sleeping at the best of times.
Bring whatever you need to feel human in the morning. Minimally spare underwear and deodorant, for the benefit of others if not yourself. Basic makeup if you use it. You can bring a towel, in case you're able to get a shower, and it helps if you're washing yourself in a sink as well (also you always need to know where your towel is). The microfibre ones are particularly good.
Always pack on the side of caution if you can, trains get delayed, you might stay out later than you planned, so spare medication, makeup, clothes can be helpful. Even if you don't plan on crashing its good to have the option.
Food
While tournaments are getting better at feeding people, man cannot live on pizza alone. I swear by the supermarket sandwiches and meal deals personally. And a continuous supply of diet coke (or other caffeinated beverages) keeps me functional.
Knowledge/Case files.
I used to say that knowing things was cheating. Then I realised people who knew stuff were beating me so I amended my view slightly. Facts on their own aren't going to win you debates, but skillful deployment can make a difference. You're not going to be able to learn everything there is to know the night before a tournament, but quickly checking the current status of the various civil wars is probably useful (I wish that comment was sarcastic, but that's the world we live in now). If you know there are particular gaps in your knowledge do your best to correct them, but this will vary between people. Read the top paragraph of the relevant wikipedia pages at least, too many times have I seen things go spectacularly wrong because someone didn't know the difference between NATO and the UN. (I've also written an article on the subject.)
More experienced people often put together a case file (a bunch of printed sheets in a folder with relevant information). The ideal use of this is to be able to quickly look up useful facts in prep time ("Is Iran Sunni or Shia again?"). But this is by no means compulsory, and over focus on it may distract from more important things like actually explaining your points and winning the debate.
Pens and paper
You're going to need something to write on and with. While you can always borrow pens and paper from people this gets tiresome quickly.I've started buying multipacks of generic multicoloured biros because I always lose them (and people 'borrow' them). A useful trick is to write in different colours for different things (e.g. black for your stuff, red for rebuttal or comments). Highlighters can also help. I like using thick marker pens to write titles so they are obvious when glancing at notes (my speaking notes tend to consist of THE TITLE OF THE POINT at the top, and indecipherable squiggles for the rest of the page).
Always use A4 if you can, flipping between little notepad sheets is distracting for you and the judges. I quite like having a clipboard, especially when you get those annoying side tables on desks.
Time keeping
Its useful to time yourself while speaking (so you don’t suddenly realise you’re still on your first point with one minute left). Many people these days use mobile phones, with either the native stopwatch app or the super shiny Debate Keeper app, which helpfully flashes and/or goes 'bing' at the appropriate times. Others distrust this modern witchcraft and use traditional stopwatches, which have the benefit of not running out of power or receiving calls from your cousin at inconvenient times.
Crash
In the nicest way possible, the standard of crash can be pretty minimal. Sleeping on a floor with half a dozen other snoring slightly smelly people is not unheard of, so a sleeping bag is a minimal requirement, a sleep mask and/or earplugs might be helpful if you, like me, you have trouble sleeping at the best of times.
Bring whatever you need to feel human in the morning. Minimally spare underwear and deodorant, for the benefit of others if not yourself. Basic makeup if you use it. You can bring a towel, in case you're able to get a shower, and it helps if you're washing yourself in a sink as well (also you always need to know where your towel is). The microfibre ones are particularly good.
Always pack on the side of caution if you can, trains get delayed, you might stay out later than you planned, so spare medication, makeup, clothes can be helpful. Even if you don't plan on crashing its good to have the option.
Food
While tournaments are getting better at feeding people, man cannot live on pizza alone. I swear by the supermarket sandwiches and meal deals personally. And a continuous supply of diet coke (or other caffeinated beverages) keeps me functional.
Knowledge/Case files.
I used to say that knowing things was cheating. Then I realised people who knew stuff were beating me so I amended my view slightly. Facts on their own aren't going to win you debates, but skillful deployment can make a difference. You're not going to be able to learn everything there is to know the night before a tournament, but quickly checking the current status of the various civil wars is probably useful (I wish that comment was sarcastic, but that's the world we live in now). If you know there are particular gaps in your knowledge do your best to correct them, but this will vary between people. Read the top paragraph of the relevant wikipedia pages at least, too many times have I seen things go spectacularly wrong because someone didn't know the difference between NATO and the UN. (I've also written an article on the subject.)
More experienced people often put together a case file (a bunch of printed sheets in a folder with relevant information). The ideal use of this is to be able to quickly look up useful facts in prep time ("Is Iran Sunni or Shia again?"). But this is by no means compulsory, and over focus on it may distract from more important things like actually explaining your points and winning the debate.
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