Debating For Everyone | Debating Training for Schools | Set up Debating Club at School | Debating Advice School Students

The judo move

How to use your opponent's strength against them.

Prebuttal

How to stop the other side's arguments before they make them.

Weighing

How to show that your values matter more than the other side's values.

World building

How building an imaginary world can help your case.

Own goals

What should you do if you accidentally help the other side?

Circular arguments

Why repetition doesn't work in debate, and how to avoid it.

Chunking

How samples can help you sell your ideas.

Externalities

How to make unplanned impacts work for you.

Analogy

How comparing one thing to another can help you explain your case.

Devil's advocate

How attacking your own arguments can make them stronger.

Down the rabbit hole

How to avoid distraction and keep focused on the key points of a debate.

How to research for debates

How can you make your long term research more effective?

Meeting in the middle

How can agreeing with your opponents help you to defeat them?

Tackling the motion #3 - quotas motions

How should you approach motions which call for quotas?

Can we afford it?

How far should debaters consider the financial cost of a measure?

The Power of Precedent

How the past can help you understand the present and plan for the future.

What sort of debater are you?

There are many different kinds of debater. Which one are you?

Feedback

How giving and receiving feedback can help debaters improve.

Tackling the motion #2 - ban motions

How to succeed at competitions

What do you need to do to win competitions?

Tackling the motion #1 - policy motions

You've been given the motion. What do you do next?

Panic in the debating chamber

What should you do if you freeze up in mid speech?

Slogans

How can summing up your case in a phrase help you?

Long term or short term?

Should debaters focus on immediate issues, or on longer term impacts?

Style or substance?

Which is more important: what you say, or how you say it?

Unintended consequences

What do you do when bad things come out of something good?

How to use time

Every second counts in a debate. How should you make the most of the time you have?

Dealing with practical problems

How much should you consider the practical problems associated with a motion?

How to make a speech

What are the key techniques that will make your speech more effective?

Cost-benefit analysis

How should you use cost-benefit analysis in debating?

How to use debating notebooks

Keeping a notebook (or three) dedicated to debating will give you an extra edge.

The burden of proof

What is the burden of proof? How can you use it your advantage?

Using statistics

How you can use numbers to make your case stronger.

Principles or pragmatism?

Should you do what is right, or what works? Both approaches can support an effective debating case.

Performing in role

Different positions in debating call for different skills. This article will tell you who needs to do what.

Building an opposition case

How do you make the case for the opposition as effectively as possible?

How to use debate in the classroom

Lessons in any subject (yes, any), can be made more engaging for students by incorporating debating. Here's how.

Rebuttal

How to tell people they're wrong.

Signposting

How to structure your speech to make it memorable and easy to follow.

Points of information

What points of information are, and how to make them work for you.

The point of clash

What the point of clash is, and how to make it work for you.

How to prepare for a debate

In a short prep debate, you have just 15 minutes to prepare. How can you make the best use of that time?

Defining the motion

The first speaker in a debate has to define the motion. If you are first speaker, how do you turn this to your advantage?

The mechanism

What is the mechanism? How can you make it work for you?

Squirrels and badgers

What are these animals have to do with debating? How do you deal with them?

Stakeholder impact analysis

What is stakeholder analysis? How can you use it?

Building a proposition case

How to make the best case you can for the proposition.

The status quo

What the status quo is and how to use it.

The counter-mechanism

What the counter-mechanism and how to use it.

Overcoming nerves

How to get past nerves, and ensure that you aren’t prevented by them from taking part in debating.

Taking notes

How to make your note taking as effective as possible.

Using media

How to use TV, radio and newspapers to make you a better informed debater.

Using stories

Everyone loves stories. How can debaters use them?