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Setting Up Arguments
Setting Up Arguments
“OMG! The motion is THW ban drugs! We’re on Opening Government and I only have 15 minutes to prepare arguments with my partner. We’re arguing for the motion. What now?”
Step 1:
Pull out your pencil. Brainstorm ideas for why banning drugs would be beneficial. Some ideas: Decreasing drug use for minors, public health concerns, less dying, promotes healthier lifestyles
Step 2:
Select your argument from your brainstorming after discussing with your partner. Let’s pick the first one to use as an example.
Step 3:
Write down your argument and expand on it in three parts:
Claim - What are you proving?
That banning drugs will decrease drug use for minors
Analysis - Why is it true?
Less access to drugs when they cannot be sold at every plaza
Little to no advertising about drugs, leading to less demand created for it
The price of drugs is likely to increase due to more scarcity. Minors with little disposable income are unlikely to be able to afford it
Impact - Why is it important?
People are better able to function within society while not under the influence of drugs
In the long term, future generations can grow up with more social and economic stability
To strengthen your analysis, consider characterising and weighing:
Characterising is when you provide a description of a certain stakeholder to further strengthen your argument. For example, youth are oftentimes irrational and a little irresponsible when it comes to spending habits because they are young and are not burdened with paying the mortgage. It can be assumed, then, that they are easily influenced by marketing, hence why it is important that they get no exposure to advertisements about drugs.
Weighing is when you compare your arguments with other teams’ by considering different perspectives. This includes analysing various stakeholders and why they are more important to target, short term impacts, long term impacts, impact on magnitude, why your argument is more relevant, and/or why your argument is more likely to be true. You can do this at any point in your speech, whether it be refutation or making an argument.
Refutation + Rebuilding
Refutation + Rebuilding
Wonderful. We can make arguments. What now?
Why does Refutation matter?
Say you’re the Deputy Prime Minister (second speaker on OG). Our goal is to be the team with the strongest argument. In order to do so, you need to attack the opposing teams! OO just spent 5 minutes building a fortress. We need to completely take it down!
Step 1 :
Write down the opposing team’s arguments. This is called flowing - keeping track of all the ideas being brought up in the debate for better understanding of what's going on, refutation purposes and weighing purposes. Everyone should jot down everyone else’s ideas, not just those of the team they’re refuting.
Step 2:
Now that you know OO’s arguments, there are three main directions you can go:
Point out the flaws *best option*
Tell the judge what you think the problems are, and explain them. What do their missing mechanisms mean for the rest of their argument? Did they prove their impacts enough? Maybe it makes everything else false. Maybe none of their impacts work anymore. Maybe their arguments are just… not true.
Mitigation
Try to minimise the content of their argument as much as possible, usually starting with their impacts. How can you make their claims irrelevant or less severe? Going back to the example argument above - think about how you can lessen the effect that OG claims. Maybe it’s because minors are only a small portion of the population, therefore their policy doesn’t end in a lot of change.
Weighing:
It works exactly the same as already outlined above. Consider the reasons why your argument simply matters more and should be placed on top.
“That's cool and all, but what do I do after my team gets refuted?”
Rebuild!
Rebuilding is where you strengthen your partner’s points. Perhaps they were well refuted by the opposing team. In any situation, the second speaker is where you patch up holes by providing more reasons for why the argument is true, further explaining why the argument is necessary/important, or disproving the other side’s refutation. Build up that fortress again!
POIs
POIs
POIs, also known as “Points of Information”, essentially involve interrupting someone’s speech to ask them a question. Usually, POIs are lines of refutation disguised as a question. Each speaker should aim to both give and receive one POI per round!
They have many uses, including:
Throwing the speaker off their “rhythm”
Getting in extra information that you missed during your speech
Clarifying ideas from your speech
To ask a POI, raise your hand, say “POI”, or stand up. The speaker can either deny your POI by waving you down or just saying no, or they can accept it, in which case, you ask your question.
There are a few rules you need to follow:
POIs should not be over 15 seconds (speakers have the right to cut you off)
POIs cannot be asked to your bench (Gov teams can’t POI each other, same with Opp)
POIs cannot be asked in the first and last 30 seconds of a speech (before 00:30 and after 4:30)
Please be respectful. Wait at least 30 seconds before asking another POI (Don’t heckle!)
Let’s apply this to debate now. Say we’re on OO (Opening Opposition) for the following motion. OG (Opening Government) just made a wild wacky point and we’d like to engage:
Motion: THW ban zoos
Prime Minister: “Zoos limit the freedom of animals. It’s inhumane.”
Leader of Opposition (Us): “POI: People often keep pets. Do you consider that inhumane??”
Prime Minister (Response): “This is not inhumane. Pets are likely to be happier because they were domesticated in order to live alongside humans. Continuing with my point…”
POIs are not one-sided! This is where things get difficult - if someone asks you a POI and you accept it, you need to respond on the spot, ideally instantly, just like the Prime Minister in our example did. The techniques to do so are very similar to refutation - do your best to give a justifiable and realistic answer.
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