THE BASICS

Basic steps

A successful preparation will generally have five steps – brainstorming, feeding back, case development, writing speeches and final discussions. These are not set in stone, and many experienced debaters will no doubt read this and think, “I have never prepared a debate by using those five steps!”. However, most successful preparations follow this basic approach, and using these five steps is an effective initial guide to preparation. We discuss each in turn.

Brainstorming

‘Brainstorming’ is a popular term, particularly among those teachers who prefer to be known as ‘educators’! It is usually understood as meaning a process where people

BEGINNER

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write down anything and everything that comes to mind, often in a very disorganised and somewhat artistic way!

This is not what is meant by ‘brainstorming’ in debating. In debating, brainstorming is usually understood as meaning that each member of your team will separately prepare the case. That is, each member of your team should find an issue, definition, theme, model and/or criteria (if necessary), arguments and a split. Of course, there is nothing to stop speakers from jotting down other thoughts, ideas, jokes, quotes or anything else that may be relevant. However, the important point is that each speaker should prepare the entire case. Ideally, this should be done in sufficient detail that, if the second step (case development) were omitted, speeches could be written from any of the team members’ proposed cases.

The reason for brainstorming separately is simple – there is a risk that a few team members (even perhaps just one team member) will dominate, either deliberately or inadvertently, so other valuable perspectives will be missed.

Feeding Back

The next step is for everyone to briefly feed back from his or her brainstorming. This means that each speaker in turn tells the team everything that he or she had prepared, at least in brief. It is best to hear each speaker in turn, rather than to hear each speaker’s definition, then each speaker’s theme, and so on – this allows each speaker to give due credit to his or her case, by presenting it in its entirety. Of course, speakers should not merely repeat what has already been said – it is much better in this situation simply to say (for example), “I had the same issue and definition as Tim”, rather than to force everyone to hear it again!

It is vital at this stage to allow each speaker to have a full chance to present his or her case. Often, nervous or excited debaters are keen to interrupt at this point, either to disagree or even to agree with what is being said. However, although such interruption can sometimes appear to accelerate or simplify discussion of an individual point, its overall effect is usually to complicate, confuse and delay the preparation. Of course, it is always acceptable (indeed, it is often necessary) to politely interrupt a speaker who is simply waffling, or who is giving too much detail about examples – at this point in the preparation, the aim is for each speaker to succinctly allow every other team member to know his or her ideas, not to provide fine details that can be filled in later.

It is equally important at this stage that all other team members write down what the speaker is saying. The best way to do this seems to be to note your team-mates’ case elements next to your own. For example, you can best compare proposed definitions by noting your team-mates’ proposed definitions. Similarly, it can often help to note any issues arising during the feedback time (for example, different arguments that

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could be merged, or contradictions between arguments that need to be avoided), in order to discuss these later.

Case Development

The next step is for the team to actually build the case – this is really the essence of preparation. There is very little to be said about case development that has not been discussed at length in the first four chapters – this step involves deciding your team’s issue, definition, theme, model and/or criteria (if necessary), arguments (including substantiation) and a split.

It would be tempting to view this process as simply selecting the ‘best’ elements from each team member’s brainstormed case. Case development can sometimes be this simple, but not usually. Instead, the usual approach (and best approach) is to ‘start over again’, with a blank page (literally and metaphorically). The elements of each team member’s brainstormed case will hopefully be highly relevant, and can be of great assistance in building your case. However, the team case must nonetheless be built from scratch – this is the best way to ensure that it is a consistent and simple case, rather than a jumble of different ideas.

It is often common practice for teams for ignore the internal structure of arguments when preparing together. That is, teams often take the approach that everyone will decide the label, essential reasoning and basic substantiation, but that the individual speaker will be responsible for actually developing the argument. However, this approach is risky, and should be avoided wherever possible. We discussed the importance of arguments’ internal structure at great length; this is an important and legitimate part of the team case, which the team as a whole should be responsible for developing.

Writing speeches

By this point, speakers are able to go away and actually write their speeches, individually. This involves writing palm cards and developing introductions and conclusions where necessary.

The only important point here is that this occurs after the case development is complete. There are few things more nerve-wracking and irritating for a team to have a speaker trying to write his or her palm cards during case development – that is, writing ideas on palm cards as they are decided. Write your palm cards once you know exactly what should be on them!

The third speaker should now script his or her conclusion and, if necessary, write a summary. After doing so, he or she should brainstorm possible opposition arguments

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and effective rebuttal to those points. These ideas should be shared with the team in final discussions.

Final discussions

The final step in the preparation process is for the team to have brief final discussions.

This usually involves some or all of the following:

• The first and second speakers briefly summarising their speeches for the team, to ensure that everyone (including the person giving the speech!) understands any subtleties in the case.

• The team discussing potential opposition arguments, and possible rebuttal against those arguments. This often involves the third speaker explaining the possible arguments and rebuttal that he or she has just considered.

• The team discussing potential opposition rebuttal against its arguments, or discussing any potential weaknesses in the case generally.

• The team identifying the key strategic goals in the debate. For example, “We have to make this a debate about [X]” or, “Point [Y] is very important – let’s remember to keep emphasising it in rebuttal”.

This covers the basic steps of team preparation. It is vital to follow these steps, especially in the case of inexperienced debaters. Many debaters, particularly inexperienced debaters, manage to start in the middle, move to the end, and finish somewhere near the beginning! It is not uncommon for teams to find some examples, write arguments about those examples, think of a theme, write their speeches, then realise what the issue of the debate actually is and decide that they really need a model.

Resolving differences of opinion

Disagreement is the essence of debating. Any good debating team will face frequent disagreements about the best way to argue a case – that is the inevitable consequence of team members brainstorming separately. This section is about reaching a compromise in such a situation. Of course, we are not here discussing a situation where two team members have suggested arguments that are different but yet complimentary – in that case, you don’t have a problem! We are discussing arguments (or even entire case approaches) that are either openly contradictory or that are inconsistent in their approach. What is the best way to resolve this situation?

Ask any ‘expert’ on team building, and he or she will swear solemnly that compromise is vital for any successful team situation. However, to use compromise effectively in a debating preparation, we need to know what kind of compromise is successful. In debating, the most successful form of compromise is usually for one proposal to be rejected completely, and the other proposal to be accepted completely. Generally, the worst form of compromise is to try to merge two arguments or approaches that are quite different.

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Hopefully, you have already realised this – it flows logically from everything that has been discussed earlier. For example, in Chapter One, we examined two very different issues that could be raised by the topic “THAT BIG IS BEAUTIFUL”: globalisation, or unrealistic body images. The only effective way to ‘compromise’ between two team members who presented these interpretations is to have a mature discussion about which approach is most likely to win the debate, then to choose that approach.

The worst possible approach would be to somehow try to combine the ideas, to argue about whether ‘big things’ are somehow ‘beautiful’!

In fact, this principle is really just part of a broader debating technique: that sometimes, debates are won as much by what teams leave out of their case than by what teams manage to stuff into their case. This is not to suggest that you should shy away from controversial arguments, of course, but too often teams come unstuck for trying to include too many ideas into a case that could have done well on a few simple and well-developed arguments.