Researching Effective Analysis for Competitive Debate

What can I expect?

This course focuses on the core skills of debate that tend to be taken for granted or not seen as terribly important, but can be critical to making sure a beginner knows how to improve. In essence, this is a course for anyone who feels ‘stuck’ in terms of debating, and offers a large variety of different prep methods and knowledge sources. This is a course for anyone who wishes to improve at debating, but doesn’t know how to.

What’s the point of this class?

In my time spent debating, I’ve been taught a lot about the more glamorous aspects of debate, but much less so about the less ‘interesting’ aspects, so to speak. Somewhat confusing, given that it’s literally impossible give a good argument if you don’t have any information or ideas to base it off of, or if you don’t know what the motion’s about, or if you don’t understand the main themes being debated fully . . . just to name a few.

Not all aspects of improving as a debater can be accomplished through what you do in a class – the improvement you do outside of class is just as important, but is barely stressed and never taught. There’s also the stuff you’re expected to learn (such as prep methods and learning debate-related knowledge) that tends to be a bit of an afterthought in class, but makes debaters unable to build a strong foundation to improve off of.

What will I have learned by the end of this class?

Since classes tend to not work in this type of material, I’ve made this side class to answer a bunch of questions newer debaters probably have but have been too embarrassed to ask (like what even is nuance?) By the end of this course, you’ll have grooved what typically are seen as debating basics, and will be in a much better position for future debates.