Debate as a Kind of Writing

• Focus on specific sentence and word level things

• Way a case is written is essential to those args
• Only thing you get credit for is what you say and how you say it
• Means args you make in a debate round are given meaning by how they are articulated
• Really clear rhetoric makes for a really clear argument

Tagging Shit with Ryan Bennett

• Function is to identify arg that will be made

• But also illustrates parts of args that are important

Independent vs. Dependent Clauses

• In debate dependent clauses at beginning of sentences muddle and confuse

• Dependent clauses cannot stand by itself
• Need preceding indicator
• Usually have commas if they come first
• Indep clauses can stand on their own
• Get judge to focus on impact – independent clause
• Dependent clause are premises
• Start with independent clause

Active v Passive Voice – Monica

• Active – subject is doing action

• Passive – action is being done to subject
• Rights protection by government is passive
• Active voice is much more precise
• Want to be precise – add clauses
• Passive voice is often pref and ness to be clear

Word Economy – Shane O Neal

• Take main idea of each sentence and say it quicker

• Filler words
o In order to
o So that
o That of
o With the purpose of
o My value will be
o My first contention is
• Rewrite with fewer words
o Change the order of the clauses
o Alter the vocab, looking for places where one word can be used instead of 3
• Practice reading the final product – be on the lookout for awkward areas that will harm fluency
• Contention one – immunization is effective at preventing the spread of disease
 DAY 2

Framework writing

• Lull the audience into passive listening so they don’t catch good shit
• ALWAYS want the audience to understand meanings and exactly what me mean
• What we don’t want them to do is provoked to critically think about it or why its wrong or what
the implications are
• Want cases to feel like a story
• want people to understand why we’re about to say what we are about to say
• write so you can go fast but be easy to process
• make sentences concise and take humble, small, discrete moves in arg

Reordering sentences/thoughts

• What in the blart is your sentence trying to say?

• Each premise should have own sentence in order to clarify
• Order them properly
• Identify what steps are necessary
• EDIT: Only changing public high school law doesn’t solve and perpetuates the system that
causes these mindsets because the problems with schools are located in the cultural acceptance
of these norms and not in the laws that enact them. The alternative is that students should
individually remove themselves from public high schools that require them to pass
standardized exit exams in order to resist the system.
• ORDER
• Thus, changing public high school law would in fact not only not help the problem, but
perpetuate it because the power structure that enables these mindsets to still continue is not
being altered,
• Therefore, the affirmative gets no solvency as the problems cannot be truly changed by
altering the law because the problems with the educational system don’t draw their power from
the laws that enact them, but rather the cultural acceptance of those problems.
• thus the only alternative is to personally withdraw from the system so as to destroy the current
power structure and ensure that those who want to solve the problems the affirmative outlines,
are able to.
• Thus, my advocacy is that students should individually remove themselves from public high
school that require them to pass standardized exit exams.