21st HEnDA National Tournament Support Site

This site is intended to provide unofficial support information about the 21st HEnDA High School Nationals Debate. Many of the contents were initially created by generative AIs, and then, some of them have been verified/modified by experienced human debaters and educators.

Since there are remaining unverifiable or false information, PLEASE verify the contents including citations and quotations before you use them in debate speeches. This site DOES NOT take any responsibility for uninteded consequences of your use of information from this site.

Most contents were initially generated by AIs such as Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, etc. They are very "knowledgeable" about competitive policy debate because their training data included policy debate documents, notablly from OpenCaselist (Roush et al., 2024). Google AI specifically acknowledged it while other AI declined to disclose the sources of their training data in their conversation:

"Large language models (LLMs), including Google's Gemini models, possess an incredibly nuanced understanding of the competitive debate ecosystem due to the inclusion of public internet data and specialized academic datasets in their training." (Google, 2026, June 17) More in here.

本サイトはHEnDA（全国高校英語ディベート連盟）の2026年度ディベート大会論題「日本政府は輸入米の関税を撤廃すべきである。是か非か。」に関する資料を主に英語で提供することを目的としています。ある程度の競技ディベートの経験や知識を前提とし、高校のALTや教員を対象としています。ただ、高校生やそのほかどなたでもディベートに興味があるかたの参考になればと思います。ただし、内容の多くはAIによる生成物であり、人手による検証や修正を試みていますが、生成物をそのまま公開している部分や、検証済みのページでも不正確な情報などが残っています。特にディベート大会での使用にあたっては、必ず内容を自分で点検し、証拠資料は元の出典を確認してください。このサイトの情報の利用による不利益が生じた場合、このサイトおよびその作成者は責任を負うことはできません。

Please note that the contens do not necessarily represent the site manager's personal opinion about the 2026 HEnDA resolution and relevant issues, nor does it represent the views of their related organizations. 

なお、このサイトの内容は必ずしも論題や関連する争点に関する作成者の個人的見解を示すものではなく、作成者の関係団体の立場を表すものではありません。

😅 HEnDA style policy debate textbook,  created by Claude.ai, June 18, 2026. (For highschool teachers, ALTs, and college students) --- yet to be verified by humans.
Notes/Warnings:

1. Most of the examples including those in Appendex F (Evidence citation templates) have double quotation marks but they are not direct quotations from the sources. The quotation marks are intended to mark the samples. When you creat evidence cards/briefs/speech manuscripts, DO NOT include the quotation marks at the beginning and at the end of your own writings. Use the quotation marks only for direct quotations from sources.

2. The HEnDA evidence rules allow paraphrases but it is highly recommended that you use verbatim direct quotations surrounded by double quotation marks or clearly seprated block quotations, in addition to photocopied originals.

3. In sample speeches, as in Appendices D and E, all pieces of evidence use paraphrases without quotation marks. BUT, it is also recommended that you use direct verbatim quotations at least in some evidence in your speeches. When you read paraphrase, do not say QUOTE and UNQUOTE. 

4. When you read direct verbatim quotations, DO say QUOTE and UNQUOTE. Reading only selected words from the direct verbatim quotations, as is practiced in American policy debate, is a possible method of delivery, with those highlighted in the manuscript (i.e., "selective highlighting"). If this practice is ethical is still a question to consider. IF you change the original text's meaning, it is distortion, which is penalized.

How to Judge HEnDA Debate

Link to Debate Judges’ Manual: All Japan High School English Debate Tournament by All Japan High School English Debate (HEnDA) Judging Committee (c2024) (If this link is blocked, try the archived file from here.)

🎦Video explainer based on the Manual, created by Google NotebookLM

Stock Issues (traditional policy debate) and HEnDA Constructive Speech Structure Compared

A Workbook for Writing Advantages/Disadvantages, generated by Google NotebookLM

You could ask an AI to help you to read an article and pick up evidence from it.... BUT you must verify the results by yourself.

Reading academic articles and find evidence.

Tips for Attack Speeches  

Human-made or verified (mostly) ideas and quotations

Resolution (Link to Official Definitions)

HEnDA Official Rules (Link to the HEnDA official site)

Affirmative Briefs

Negative Briefs

Sample Debates (Text, audio, video, ...)

Other Resources (Human-made list of references, links to other resources on the web, ...)

Link to 20th HEnDA Nationals (2025) Official Site. This site has officials rules, judge manuals, links to recorded videos, etc.)