By the Equality in Forensics Contributor Team
Learn more about Equality in Forensics and our mission.
Congress can be confusing sometimes, not just for you, but also your fellow competitors and judges in the round. It’s critical to improve your clarity, or the understandability of your speech and arguments. Another important factor is improving believability, or the extent to which your argument makes logical sense to others. Properly organizing and laying out your speeches, while taking time, will almost certainly pay off in round in the form of understandability and judge appeal. The person who wins the debate is not the one with the best arguments, but the one that can make their arguments best understood.
To begin, even though you may think that your speech is clearly understandable and properly formatted, others may not think the same. In a speech jumbled with arguments and clash, it’s easy for judges to lose track of your arguments and clash points even when flowing the debate. It’s always a good idea to either: preface what arguments you are introducing in your introductory thesis, or: lead into each argument with a thesis summarizing it. It’s better to use both to make sure that both judges and competitors know what your arguments are even though they may not clearly catch it in your main speech.
Sometimes, the best way to create a clear structure in your speech for judges to understand is to use a roadmap, sometimes known as a “prerequisite”, that also acts as an integrated thesis. This is usually a single sentence located at the end of the intro that goes over a highly simplified version of your clash or arguments to show what you will go over in your speech in chronological order. There’s no need to elaborate on your arguments in the prerequisite.
These are some very basic examples of you might structure a roadmap for speeches at different points in the round.
<aside> 🗒️ Authorship/constructive structure: “We take a look at how this legislation does [x], [x], and must (fail/pass)”
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<aside> 🥊 Clash structure: “Let’s take a look at the (aff/neg)’s arguments so far, and see why the (aff/neg) is wrong.”
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<aside> 💎 Crystallization/late round structure: “Let’s bring this debate to a close, summarize the arguments made by both sides, and see why the (aff/neg) wins.”
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