Rebuttal By Chanise (My favorite speech)

First Speaker Position Rebuttal You have the advantage of a full four minutes of attacking your opponents case. ALL four minutes are dedicated to refuting your opponents points. You will NEVER go over your own case unless you need to clarify something that was confusing in cross ex. Structure is extremely important- this will keep or lose the judges attention. Road map and sign posting are your best friends. Don’t forget to use them.

How to Begin You will begin your speech with a road map This will always be “I am going to go down the affirmative starting at the top with FW or RA” OR “I am going to go down the negative starting at the top with FW or RA” Nothing more has to be said. Many judges are starting to get annoyed with road maps so keep them short and sweet.

Body of the Speech If they have three contentions and framework I would allocate slightly over a minute for each contention and then 45 seconds for framework. DON’T RAMBLE ON FRAMEWORK. Put ink on the flow, contest any definitions necessary and move on. Trust me you will always want more time on the contentions.

Types of Responses Blocks – Link – impact Turns – Opponent ev works in your favor Disadvantages – Problem that happens when the argument happens. (use in tandem with other response) Burdens – Must prove x to prove point Outweighing

Second Speaker Position Rebuttal Your advantage as second position is you get to speak last. Unfortunately the rebuttal is harder for you. I would advocate two minutes on your opponents case and two minutes on yours. Cut down your attacks, it is always better to have less attacks on their case and have time to refute your own. Dropping your case is more obvious and detrimental than not putting 5 attacks on everything. Other than that throughout the contentions will be the same as being first position.

Road Map As I said 2 minutes on each case. Your road map should sound like this: “I will be going down the affirmative and then back to the negative starting at the top with framework.” OR “I will be going down the negative and then back to the affirmative starting at the top with framework.”

Sign Posting! Sign posting is when you tell the judge where you are throughout the speech. Contention one, two, or three. But you cant just say what contention you are on. Great debaters tell SPECIFICALLY what argument, impact, or piece of evidence that they are contesting. You should go straight down the order of what your opponent said. Leaving impacts for the end. If you can sign post properly, your judge will see all the attacks that you have put on their case, improper sign posting causes the judge to have to spend too much time figuring out where you are and where this argument is suppose to go and not enough time listening to the argument.

Throughout the Contentions Now the way you structure your blocks has everything to do with how you are going to structure this speech. But reading a block off isnt going to always work. Most arguments vary deep within the argument. They may say “oil prices will rise” but there are dozens of ways that can happen. NEVER just blindly read a block to answer something. Go line by line, or argument by argument. Know your blocks so well you can switch up which order you say them in. This allows you to better directly have clash with your opponents case.

Judge Adaptation Depending on the type of judge depends on how you structure your attacks 1.Lay judges will get lost in numbering arguments, they will not be able to keep up therefore make it more of a paragraph, talking to the judge and using connecting words. 2.Progressive judges don’t care about the fluffy words, they want to see you hit every part of their contention. Number each response. But DO NOT (in later speeches) refer to it as the number ___ attack. For example: We already talked about this it was my third attack. WRONG. You have to explain what the attack was. For example: My third attack on this contention talked about how…. This makes it so judges good enough to keep track and remember and flow through which attack you are talking about but it also allows for them to remember what you are talking about.

Structuring Arguments If you do not have a block for something but you have evidence and logic and other things structure it just like you would a block. Use logic and evidence to explain it. And number or use connecting words. Put your evidence papers IN ORDER before you give the speech so you aren’t sifting through papers.

Reading Evidence in a Rebuttal First tell the judge which argument you are on in the contention. Always tell the judge what the card is going to say otherwise they will get lost. Don’t read full cards, no one cares. Read specific lines that prove your point. That being said DON’T CLIP CARDS just cut them Also you can paraphrase the card if it is too long and it all needs to be said. BE CAREFUL though do not say things that arent in the card. Other teams will point you out.

Using Rebuttal Arguments in the Next Speeches ALWAYS WARRANT EVERYTHING. What this means is always re-explain the argument, if you don’t think the judge is understanding it say it a different way. Do not say I talked about this in my earlier speech. Just say what it is. This keeps judges being able to understand exactly what point you are getting across. You are painting a picture for them. DON’T PAINT HIDEOUS THINGS. Read only one lines of evidence that are to the point.