Judging Competitive Debating - Part 3 - Chairing

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" and "Judging Competitive Debating - Part 2 - The process of judging."

Pictures chairs when discussing how to chair?
Wow. So hilarious. Very original.
CC Wikimedia commons

Chairing is one of the odder roles in competitive debating, on good days it takes practically no work, but it can also be incredibly difficult.

In theory, the chair is responsible for keeping the debate running smoothly, dealing with any issues that arise and running the judging discussion in such a way that the correct call is made. In practice the actual chairing of the debate is a fairly minor part at an actual competition, as speakers know what order to go up in, and issues of keeping order rarely happen.

Conducting the judging discussion is more difficult, not everyone who is an amazing judge is an equally good chair as it requires not just coming to the correct call and understanding the debate, but requires interpersonal skills for managing the discussion and dealing with disagreements. 

Chairing is a difficult and responsible role, so its perfectly natural to be nervous when doing it for the first time, just like when speaking. Just remember to work through the substance of the decision and not be intimidated.

This is harder to make strict rules on than some of the other stuff I've written about, as it varies from debate to debate, but I've tried to give some general guidelines. If you want to learn to chair in more detail the best way is to watch and imitate experienced chairs in how they run the discussion and ask them questions.

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 

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.

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:

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: