| How to Adjudicate Amit Golder, Victor Finkel + Ray D’Cruz

| Your Job: 1.Decide who won the debate + why 2.Convey this to the teams clearly 3.Provide constructive feedback to teams/speakers

| Who are you? You are the average reasonable debater You do not have specialist knowledge You do have a good sense of logic You may not enter the debate

| THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS AN AUTOMATIC WIN OR LOSS!

| Who wins? The most persuasive team? The highest scoring team? The team that wins on ‘matter’ ie the issues in the debate? Answer: All of the above, to different extents

| Matter Logic (why?) –Does one thing follow from another? –Can this be reasonably inferred? Relevance (why should I care?) –Do the premises support the conclusions? –Does the conclusion support that side of the topic?

| Manner Vocal –Volume, pace, tone, clarity –Word choice (precision) –Humour? Non-Vocal –Gesture, eye contact, stance/body

| Method Structure Priority/timing Responsiveness

| How to Adj: The ‘third speech for the whole debate’ style: –Pick 2-4 themes that encapsulate the debate. –Analyse all the matter in the debate through those themes –Balance the contributions of each team, across the 6 speakers of the debate, decide which team won –When critically evaluating the matter, refer to manner and method Ie. Good method/manner can increase the persuasive effect of arguments/rebuttal

| How to Adj: Using the criteria as your guide: –Who wins on matter, manner and method? How much do they win by? Who wins the debate? Other methods (Ravi? Meredith?) Note-taking –Format –Analysis – as you go or at the end? –Dangers – don’t finish arguments or keep incomplete notes

| How to Adj: Scoring: –As you go: most people note an indication of the range of speech they saw, ie 76/7. –Be willing to change/re-evaluate preliminary scores. Your ‘instincts’ –Find ways to justify a debate without resorting to instinct! –Does not mean instincts about a decision are incorrect, just means they are not sufficient to justify a result.

| How to Oral: In our opinion, your oral decision should proceed like so: 1.The decision – who won? 2.The reasons for that, as clearly presented as possible! 3.Your feedback to the teams – about the whole debate (whole-of-debate matter, common issues) and each team (cases/tactics) 4.Individual feedback, privately, after the debate, in a sexy way.

| Feedback: Constructive feedback is feedback that can be used again! ‘You are shit’ is not as constructive as you think! The compliment sandwich is useful with younger debaters – acknowledging strengths doesn’t make you a bad adjudicator! Give examples from the debate, people like to see that you are paying attention.

| Potential Issues: Definitions: Only invalid if undebatable, but if not that reasonable, keep this in mind. Reward the negative team that tries. 3 rd Speakers + New Matter: Remember the rules, but be reasonable. Penalise, but almost never totally ignore.

| Potential Issues: Burdens: Teams can say they have whatever burden they want, and can claim burdens of other teams – only YOU may decide whether something must be proved/shown to win the debate. Negative Cases: Can’t run a ‘pure negation’ – but this is actually quite rare! Mostly there’s an implicit defence of the status quo.

| Potential Issues: False Facts: Remember, you are average reasonable person, can only dismiss false facts if they are obvious, or another team calls them on it. Be wary of entering the debate – but you can use your normal logic skillz if the logic of an argument is missing/crappy.