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.

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.