Hello, I'm Nathan. I'm in charge of the Competitive Debate Program here at KYP, and it's open to all students 12 and above. And today I'm going to be talking to you about the three types of motions.
Now in a competitive debate setting, you'll often get a motion with very little time to prepare. This can be really intimidating because you don't know what it could be. It could be on almost any topic. But one simple way of attacking the motion is by understanding the three different types of motions. You can almost sort any motion into one of these three categories.
So we'll be talking about those today and in some upcoming videos we'll be covering them in more detail. So here they are. The first motion type is a fact motion.
Second, a value motion. And third, a policy motion. So let's talk about each one of these. First of all, a fact motion.
So the fact motion is something that you have to figure out, is this fact true or false? What is the truth? It's kind of like solving a mystery. Who did it? Who committed the crime?
So you'll be arguing whether something is true or not. Some examples, this house believes that viewing violent media leads to violent behavior. Or this house believes that China and the USA will be allies in the 21st century.
Now the first one is very simple. This house believes that the violent media produces violent behavior. Is this true or is it not? That's what the debate will figure out.
Is the violent media causing this or not? Second, the one on China and the USA being allies. Now, we have to figure out this is in the future.
It's a fact, but it's not a current fact, but it's a future fact. That's okay. It's still known as a fact motion.
That's quite a legitimate motion. Okay, on the second one, value motions. Now, this is a little bit different. For this type of motion, you'll be arguing whether a certain thing has value or not. So let's think of some examples.
We have, for example, Shakespeare is the world's greatest writer. Happiness is the meaning of life. Beauty pageants do more harm than good.
So the thing that all these emotions have in common is they're trying to get you to figure out the value of that thing. So, for example, can Shakespeare's status as a writer be considered the greatest? Is happiness valued as the meaning of life, the most important?
meaningful thing in life? And can we value beauty pageants as greater? There are harms being greater than they're good in society. So these are all weighing how valuable something is.
Lastly, we have what's called policy motions. Now, this is when you're arguing that something should be done or should not be done. The policy could be enacted by a government, it could be enacted by an individual or a society as a whole.
For example, we have this house could legalize drugs, this house could execute war criminals, and this house would invade North Korea. We may value some things in these motions, we may have some facts that we're trying to argue in these motions, but ultimately what we're doing in these motions is we want to do something. We have an idea and we want to change the world in some way or another. So, now that you know the three types of motions, you can think about motions that you have... recently argued for and maybe ones that you're preparing for and figure out which of these three categories it falls into.
And in the next three videos, we're going to be talking about each of these in more detail and how you can argue for them effectively. Thanks and goodbye!