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San Beda Debate Society

Debate Manual

SY. 2015- 2016


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Contents

Intro

What is debate? Purpose of Debating?

Debate 101 / Technicalities

Motions

British Parliament

Asians

Speaker Roles

Prep Time

Case Building

Definition

Triggers

Problem

Model

Framing

Splits

Speech

Arguments

Rebuttals


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Signposting

Manner

POIs

Debate jargons

Matterloading

Conclusion


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What is debate? Why the hell are we doing this?

Basically its just a bunch of people shouting at each other because they dont

agree on a certain issue. Haha just kidding! Its more than that. Debate has different

meaning to different people. For the Dictionary it is . For some they consider debating a

game and a sport where they compete to become the best. It may also be theatre or a

form of poetry for other people because they see it as art. Some consider it a hobby or

an extracurricular activity. But whatever the definition, debating is an important aspect

of everyones lives because debate is everywhere. Your neighbors are arguing about the

recent Vhong Navarro Case. Your mom is arguing with your dad about not helping with

household work. You see on television politicians arguing about different laws like theCyber Crime Law and the Reproductive Health Law. And these things affect everyone

including you. Should people really be focusing on a private case rather than focusing on

national issues like the Pork Barrel Scam? At home, should it be that only women do the

house stuff and stay at home while men by default be the breadwinners of the family?

Are these policies just? Are they infringing our rights? There are a lot of issues today

that are being tackled, where will you side with? And this is where debating comes into

play. It invites intellectual discourse. Debating is a platform for ideas to be presented in

order for us to gain more knowledge. And as we gain more knowledge the more weknow what the best thing to do is. And as you guys join us in this journey we hope that

you too find meaning and purpose in debating.

Debate 101 / Technicalities

Motion

Every debate has a topic. For example, THW ban marijuana. You wont be able to

choose which side you are going to defend. Its random. For British Parliamentary

there will be one motion only. In an Asian Parliamentary format (we will discuss in

more detail later) there will be three motions. You will rank the motions


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British parliament

In this format there are for teams in the house/room. Opening

Government (OG) , Closing Government (CG), Opening Opposition (OO), and

lastly Closing Opposition (CO).The government teams are the affirmative side

or for the motion while the opposition teams are against the motion. There is

a 15 minute allotted prep time for this format.


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The first speaker would be the Prime Minister (PM). Second is the Leader of

the Opposition (LO), Third is the Deputy Prime Minister (DPM). (Deputy

Leader of Opposition (LO) is the fourth. Member of Government (MG) is the

fifth to speak. Member of the Opposition (MO) is the sixth. Last speaker for

government would be the Government Whip (GW). And the last speaker of the

debate would be the Opposition whip. They each have roles in the debate.

Lets learn em !


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Opening Government

You guys have the advantage of setting up the debate.

Prime Minister

Thefirst affirmative, therefore, has the following duties:

A formal introduction;

The definition, and any other definitional clarifications;

The affirmative teams case approach;

The arguments;

A summary of arguments;

A conclusion

Deputy Prime Minister

Opening Opposition

You guys have the duty of clashing with the OG.

Leader of opposition

Deputy Leader of Opposition

Closing government

Member of Government

Government Whip


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Closing opposition

Member of Opposition

Opposition Whip

ASIAN PARLIAMENTARY

The Asians Format is a little different to BP. In the house there are only three debaters

in each team. There are only two teams(Affirmative and Negative) in Asians unlike BP which

has four. There are no Members in this format, only first, second, and third speakers are

present. After the OWs speech, the Opposition Reply would be the next speaker followed by

the Government Reply speaker. The Reply speaker cannot be the whip, it may only be either

the first or second speaker. There is an allotted 30 minute prep time for this format.


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Reply

Prep Time

This time should be sacred. It is important because this is time when your

team talks about how to win the debate, what strategy will you do, what

argument you guys are going to run. It is therefore important to use this time

wisely.

Questions to answer in Prep

Has his ever been done somewhere?

Who is the house? The State? Society?

Who are the stakeholders? What are their interests? How does one team fulfill or fail them?

What is the ideal world? Goal What do we want to achieve?

What are the principles and burdens of the other side?

It is also better if your team has Prep roles. For example one may think of arguments while

the other is thinking of the stakeholders while the third person may be thinking of the

possible arguments of the other side. This is just an example, you may create your own

prep duties or roles with you team.


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Case Building

Definition

It is impossible to debate without first understanding what the topic means. Therefore,

both teams need to decide what they think the topic meansfor the purposes of the debate. This

is known as the definition.

Not many debating topics involve complicated words. Therefore, the purpose of the

definition is not to tell your audience, adjudicator and opposition what a word means in

general. Instead, the purpose of the definition is to explain what a word meansfor your debate.

We will examine the best ways of achieving this purpose shortly. In all cases, the affirmative

team must present a definition of the topic; a clear statement of what the team understands

the topic to mean. The first affirmative speaker presents this definition early in his or her

speech.

How To Define A Topic

Above all, both teams should try to be as clear and as simple as possible when defining the

topic. This involves a number of techniques :

Define terms in the topic, not every single word.There is nothing wrong with defining

individual words. However, you should choose the terms and words to define; dont just define

every word for the sake of it. There are two reasons for this:

1. Defining many words (such as a or the) is both confusing and a waste of time (for example

there is no need to say, we define the word a as an impersonal indefinite article that

precedes nouns commencing with consonants!)

Do not define metaphorical terms literally.

Remember, the definition is not an exercise for its own sakeit is your chance to explain what

your team understands the topic to mean. Therefore, if you believe a topic is metaphorical, you

should define the topic with its metaphorical, not its literal, meaning. Lets return to the topic

THATTHE CARROT IS BETTER THAN THE STICK. Weve already seen that this topicis a


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metaphor. It would make no sense, therefore, to define a carrot as (for example) an orange

vegetable. Instead, you would need to explain that carrot is a metaphor for incentive, and

stick a metaphor for punishment.

Do not make definitions too complicated.

This is sometimes expressed as a simple rule; do not give a dictionary definition. Firstly, this

creates a risk of defining words wrongly (for example, by defining metaphorical terms literally,

or defining groups of words one word at a time). More importantly, though, it removes

meaning from your definition. The adjudicator does not want to hear what a dictionary says

about a wordthe dictionary was not written with your topic in mind! Instead, you should

explain what you think the terms mean for the specific topic that you are debating. Of course,

you may refer to a dictionary to determine the meaning of a word in the topic. However, you

should then rephrase that definition as you want it to apply to your debate. Be prepared to give

examples to explain your definition. This is not necessary in most topics. However, in some

topics, even your definition wont really clarify the meaning of the words.

You cannot time and place set.

Example

THW

Triggers

There are two types of debates

Problem

Model

Framing

Splits


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Speech

Arguments

Rebuttals

Signposting

Manner

Manner is the way you present yourself and your speech

The most important rule is to be yourself.

Eye contact

Speed and Volume and Variation

Thinking like the stakeholder

Avoid complex vocabul ary wherever possible. For example, there is no reason

to accuse your opposition of nave inductionism it is far simpler and hencemore effective to say, our opposition assumes that because [X] has occurred in

the past, it will continue to occur in the future.

Acronyms can cause great confusion to adjudicators or audience members

who dont understand them. Therefore, you should state what any acronym

stands for the first time you use it. For example, it is not enough to simplyrefer to the WHO the first time that you do so, you should say something

like, the WHO the World Health Organisation.7

There can sometimes be value in using technical terms, but these need to be

explained. For example, it is never enough simply to refer to economies of

scale you need to explain the term as well (declining average costs as

production increases).


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POIs

Debate jargons

Matterloading

Conclusion


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SOURCES

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