Buildacase

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You’re about to complete Part One. In this section, we connect Lessons 1-3 and point out the gaps which future lessons will fill.

What theory has this course taught you about debating?

1. At a basic level, debating is building and comparing arguments.
2. When you build an argument, you need to make sure you identify a problem (context), identify a solution (mechanism), and identify the outcomes of that solution (impact). Otherwise, the argument is incomplete and confusing.
3. When you compare your argument to another teams’ argument, you can adopt two different strategies. Assessing the truthfulness of that argument, and assessing the importance of that argument.
4. When assessing the truthfulness, you can either a) prove the impact won’t happen, or b) prove the impact that’s actually good is bad. You do this by attacking the mechanisms which opponents provide. You can attack your opponent’s mechanisms by either adding additional context which undermines their analysis, or pointing out flaws in their reasoning.
5. When assessing the importance, you can weigh your opponent’s mechanism/impact compared to your own. You can either a) mitigate your opponent’s impact (point out other overwhelming reasons that an opponent’s impact will happen.) or b) accept their impact and analyze why your impact is more important.
6. To analyze why your impact is more important, a) you must identify and analyze the relevant metrics in the round, b) show your opponent fails to fulfill those metrics, and c) show why your argument more successfully fulfills those metrics.
7. The most difficult part of debating, especially for novices, is being comparative. Once you are comfortable with generating strong arguments and refutation, the next step is effectively comparing those arguments to your opponents arguments to show your side’s merits to a judge. To be comparative, you must first identify the criteria which your opponents want to win on. Then you can show why they fail to fulfill that criteria. Then you can show why, even if they successfully fulfill that criteria, your argument fulfills it better.
8. When everyone makes decently reasonable and important-sounding arguments, you must weigh. There are dozens of ways to weigh and the first step to being good at it involves understanding the correct parts of your case to compare to your opponent’s case.

What are the practical skills and drills this course has taught you to debate effectively?

1. Structured, consistent training regiment: Above all, this course has given you practical drills to teach yourself how to debate.
   1. If you followed all the instructions, you have watched dozens of high-quality debates and internalized good arguments and debating practices. You can track a variety of different speaking styles and are slowly developing a ‘sixth sense’ for what makes an argument convincing.
   2. You have practiced specific skills for days and weeks on end. You now have a framework to practice future debate skills (through focused, intentional, short, consistent practice), and the confidence to practice on your own since you have certainly seen improvement in your debate skills since starting this course.
   3. You’re hopefully appreciating that you DO have the capacity to become an excellent debater. You are hopefully appreciating that learning any skill, like debate, takes focused, consistent, rigorous practice to become good at.
      1. Basically: Watch how people better than you debate, reflect on how to translate and apply their skill to your skill, and practice in short, consistent, intense bursts.
2. Linear flow: Linear flow helps you a) structure arguments more convincingly and notice when you are missing obvious gaps your argument, and b) ‘translate’ opponents’ arguments so you understand their argument and any obvious gaps in their analysis. Linear flow is your skill to build and understand arguments.
3. Comparison toolkit: After identifying an opponents’ argument, you have several tools to overcome it. You have the two rubrics to assess truthfulness and assess importance. You also have four layers of weighing, and a dozen weighing metrics. You have the concept of criterion and metrics burned into your skull, so you can recognize when you are being comparative and when you are not.

However, this course is only the beginning.

If you applied the 50/50 rule and watched some of the videos, you will recognize that these skills are only the tip of the iceberg. Debate is a far more complex game than just logical argumentation.

Here is just a few additional constraints that make the game fun and difficult:

• Sorting through analysis: too many ways to analyze, what is the best thing to say?
• Speaking role and order
• Prep time
• Motion types, motion wording, motion topics
• Partner dynamics
• Debating in-person versus online

Remember the constellation in an earlier lesson? Debating is more like this:

(WIP)

Regardless, you now have the foundation to understand all other debate training resources. If you want to learn about all these additional constraints and how to master them, you only need to ask a debater for help, ask a judge for feedback, watch a few youtube videos, and train. Or you can ignore all training resources and just practice debating with your friends or yourself.

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This is the end of Buildacase’s main lesson. Congrats on making it to the very end, you should be very proud of yourself.

If you found value in this class, all I ask is to share it with your peers. Your novices, your pros, your debate club, your Facebook page, etc. Let’s make debating free and accessible for as many new debaters as possible.

And no, this is not the end. Buildacase will publish a course on advanced debate concepts and on judging as well. As of now, all our advanced lessons are in the articles. If you want to stay updated on future lessons, exercises, articles, and so on, make sure to join the Facebook page and sign up for the newsletter. No, I won’t spam you.

Have a lovely day 🙂

• Matt Aydin