Winning Affirmative debate rounds is an essential part of your tournament strategy. If you routinely lose an Affirmative round, that’s a big red flag. You should be able to win all your preliminary Affirmative rounds, leaving you with just one Negative round you need to win in order to get to outrounds. One of the […]

Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded just how much persuasion lies in the delivery of a speech. That is, after all, the point of this website. A good speaker can talk about any topic and make it interesting to the audience. The effective use of vocal tonality, humor, pacing, and hundreds […]

There are plenty of benefits of being the Negative team. One of these benefits is that you have a lot less to prove. The other benefit is that you don’t necessarily have to take a fierce stand on anything until the Affirmative team has. When the Affirmative team proposes their plan, they are taking a […]

Credit for the idea of this phrase goes to Samuel Sefzik. It’s easy for your audience to get overwhelmed in a debate speech. There are a lot of points and plenty of logic floating around in any given debate round. Getting your audience to remember and care about all of your points is usually impossible (unless […]

It is a common cliche that it is impossible to over-prepared. I can see an argument for it, but do not be deceived into believing that all forms of preparation are good. It is possible to prepare with the wrong goal in mind, resulting in a disastrous round. The kid in the picture is probably […]

Credit goes to Samuel Sefzik (several time tournament champion and high-placing debater at Nationals) for the second and third idea. Confident body language sometimes boils down to small details in how you act in a debate round. Some of the things you don’t even pay attention to while debating can affect the judge’s perception of your […]