This document provides advice on how to adapt your debate strategies and arguments based on judge philosophies and observations of judges. It recommends observing judges closely, not assuming you know them without experience, and reading judge philosophies for clues about what types of arguments and evidence they prefer rather than right before a debate. Key things to look for include their views on topicality, kritiks, counterplans, theory, evidence preferences, and how they assess risk versus truth. Keeping detailed notes on judges can help adapt future debates to what individual judges are likely to respond to positively.
This document provides advice on how to adapt your debate strategies and arguments based on judge philosophies and observations of judges. It recommends observing judges closely, not assuming you know them without experience, and reading judge philosophies for clues about what types of arguments and evidence they prefer rather than right before a debate. Key things to look for include their views on topicality, kritiks, counterplans, theory, evidence preferences, and how they assess risk versus truth. Keeping detailed notes on judges can help adapt future debates to what individual judges are likely to respond to positively.
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This document provides advice on how to adapt your debate strategies and arguments based on judge philosophies and observations of judges. It recommends observing judges closely, not assuming you know them without experience, and reading judge philosophies for clues about what types of arguments and evidence they prefer rather than right before a debate. Key things to look for include their views on topicality, kritiks, counterplans, theory, evidence preferences, and how they assess risk versus truth. Keeping detailed notes on judges can help adapt future debates to what individual judges are likely to respond to positively.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
- Adopt a baseline of behaviors that don’t require adjustment
o Respectful behavior o Act well in cross-x o Don’t swear o Don’t be rude o Don’t say that you are killing the other team - Observe your judges closely o It is a major place to get intelligence - Don’t assume you know your judges without previous experience with them o Not all information is equally trustworthy o Don’t trust other people’s judges opinion - Judge philosophies o How to read it: Don’t read it immediately before a debate Look for terminology judges use Who judges elimination rounds? You will read into the idea what you want to read instead of what is actually there if you do it right before a round Ask judge questions for: If you have no info and require info for a debate If there is no philosophy Don’t ask questions with only one viable answer Pay attention to the style in which the judges write their philioiphies The style that it is written tells you about the judge What did they comment on tells you about what type of arguments they like o If they don’t write about Ks then they don’t judge Ks a lot Check the philosophy based on the types of arguments that interact with your strategy The issues that a judge writes about are what they believe is correct about debate based on the time period that they debated The tone of the judge philosophy tells you a lot about the way they like debate o If someone devotes a lot of their philosophy on a specific concern you must adapt to that o I will vote on anything means that they may be absolutely honest about that and some people put that in there and then start to go against that The old and the young are the most ideological commited o Young – people lose on arguments and win on arguments when you just finished the fire about how you debated and what you lost on and this will be integrated into your debate judging o Old – you have judged a lot of debates and you have an opinion on how debate should be Looking for things within the judge philosophy o T – Does the philosophy show an overall standard for viewing T debates? A principle that can make a difference in the way you debate. Also look for things on language of topicality that can be used Ground v. Limits If someone likes reasonability they are more likely good for aff on t Competing interpretations means they are good fr neg on T Don’t use T tactically for a judge that wont like it If they mention specific cases use that to assess if their core of the topic is similar to yours o Ks – The terminology that is used is very important If the judge talks about specific T strategies and stuff like that they know about Ks If it is clear that they don’t know about Ks don’t read it Define terms in Ks for bad judges Change your shell for judges Write 1NCs with judges in mind There is a kritik spectrum similar to the topicality spectrum o Cirucmstances in which you have to adapt the 1AC o CP – do they write about specific CPs and do they look are competition very in depth Look for international fiat o Theory No one likes poor theory debates “Blip” “Block” “Voting issue needs explanation” this judge wants you to adapt how you argue theory
Reject the argument? Or the team?
o Evidence How much evidence does the judge read What type of evidence do they read If a judge tends to call cards then make sure you talk about the evidenve in the round so they will call for it Does a judge call for evidence by name or label Take notes on all of the above for the type of evidence they call Does the judge give arguments with evidence more weight o Risk How a judge assesses risk and whether or not they believe debate is an activity in which they think about risk rather than truth
Keep a list of judges for yourself
It can help you and your squad
Don’t write down judge comments only in anger or in hate
Don’t have grudges against judges that dropped you
Given the type of discussion they gave for an RFD what types of arguments did they vote for