this video we're going to be talking about debate structure uh the basic format for collegiate lincoln douglas debate essentially what i'm what that means is uh understanding the logistics of who speaks and when how is the debate format actually going to work uh there will be a sample video that you can watch to get a better sense of this because uh you know me just talking about it may not be good enough so you're gonna want to watch the demonstration debate for sure but we will go over piece by piece all of the elements of the debate structure so let's begin uh let's start with a little bit of history why is it called lincoln douglas debate that can sometimes be a little bit confusing for people um although it doesn't really matter that much we're i'll talk a little bit about the history of it so uh lincoln douglas debate is named after it's a reference to a very famous set of debates that occurred between abraham lincoln and steve stephen douglas in 1858 these were not presidential debates uh abraham lincoln was the challenger for the u.s senate seat that was held at the time by stephen a douglas stephen a douglas was a he was an abolition not an abolitionist he was opposed to abolition he wanted to make sure that new states coming into the union could still practice slavery while lincoln was the abolitionist right he wanted to you know he made arguments that that that should not be the case that that states should be able to uh prohibit slavery that the united states should prohibit slavery these debates weren't solely about that issue although it was prominent within the debates but the main thing to understand here uh is not necessarily and i could spend a lot of time talking about lincoln and douglas and and this famous series of debates in 1858 we're not following the same format that they did unless i guess you want to uh the first speaker in the debate had an hour to speak the second speaker had an hour and a half to respond followed by a 30-minute rebuttal from the first speaker that is a tremendously long debate that i don't think you really want to engage in the only real resemblance and structure that we have for our class is the one versus one format meaning that your debates will be one-on-one there are a number of different competitive collegiate debate styles that follow a lot of different formats a lot of different times they all involve turn taking right they all involve uh you know sides affirmative and negative um but this one that we will be focusing on is the one versus one format so uh and we'll talk a little bit more about the the specific details of that just know that lincoln douglas debate in college uh is specifically one versus one uh where we'll be talking about specifically a policy issue and uh it's it's not the same as say collegiate policy team debate which is two versus two or parliamentary style debate that's talked about in your textbook which is also two versus two okay so let's talk about the basic structure this is a little chart that i've drawn up for you to understand taking a look at this chart you probably don't know exactly what it means unless you have some debate experience in your background if you have done competitive debate before either in college somewhere or in high school previously you may know what some of this means but that's okay if you don't right this is an introduction to our basic structure and i'm going to talk about what each one of these things means let's begin with the fact that each one of these columns here represents a speech in the debate these two smaller columns aren't really full speeches these are points of where we ask questions of our opponents and i'll talk about that at the end but each of the other columns is a speech in the debate and by speech i just mean it's an opportunity for the debater to speak it doesn't mean it's a full speech the way you would give a speech say in a public speaking course or what you tend to think of you're not going to need to have something uh specifically like written out word for word it's very we'll talk more about uh specifically what goes into these speaking times as we as we go forward but understand that each one of these represents a speaking time for the debaters so uh first let's talk about these right the a in 1ac or 1ar or 2ar stands for affirmative so where you see the a's those are affirmative speaking times so if we're doing a one-on-one debate that means that the affirmative debater has one two three different speeches okay so they have their first speech their second speech their third speech so if a equals affirmative you've probably guessed that n here in the red equals negative the negative has two different speeches their first speech and their second speech now they have a different amount of speaking times because in a one-on-one debate in order to have the affirmative speak both both first and last there is always going to be an unequal amount of speeches right you can't have an even amount of speaking times and still have the affirmative speak last there there's just no way to do that in a one versus one format but that's okay because the times add up where it's it's really not all that different so if one a equals first affirmative right what does the c stand for the c stands for constructive right this is the type of speech that you are giving in this section so if the affirmative is the first speaker this first speech is called the first affirmative constructive speech and we'll talk more about what constructive means in a minute but constructive is really just introducing right introducing the arguments you'll see the affirmative has its first affirmative constructive speech and then we have the first negative constructive speech so c in this here is for constructive whereas the r stands for rebuttal so we have constructive speeches we have rebuttal speeches so the first affirmative constructive the first affirmative rebuttal the affirmative gets a second rebuttal whereas the negative gets one constructive and one rebuttal so cx here that stands for cross-examination that's these smaller columns the cx stands for cross-examination so in this section the negative will cross-examine the affirmative right the person who did not give the speech asks the questions of the person who just gave the speech that makes sense right if i just gave a speech my opponent then gets some time to ask me questions about what i said and we'll go more into depth as to what cross-examination is the final thing on this chart that you want to understand here is these numbers these numbers are just the times of the speeches that we're going to use so i'm just using the same official times that we use in our intercollegiate competitive debate tournaments so this first speech from the affirmative is six minutes followed by three minutes of cross-examination then the negative speaks for seven minutes uh followed by three minutes of cross-examination by the affirmative then the affirmative rebuttal the first affirmative rebuttal is six minutes the negative rebuttal is six minutes and the final affirmative rebuttal is three minutes long okay you're going to want to learn this you're going to want to know these different elements these different times how many times you're speaking who speaks when uh because getting this right is a big part of your final debate uh there's probably also some questions about this that will show up on your exam uh your final exam so you wanna know what these things are what they mean and you want to know how much time you're speaking for so if you add it all up right because cross-examination doesn't really count as speaking time it's just asking some questions right questions asked and answered a little q a so the affirmative has 15 minutes of speaking time where the negative has 13 minutes of speaking time so it's a little bit of a two-minute difference not that big of a deal okay so let's break down the speeches individually what each one does you can sort of see this chart still in the background uh but let's go through them one at a time so the one ac the first affirmative constructive what you do in that speech is you would present the affirmative case we've already worked on how we build our affirmative brief we've talked about ship cell which is the stock issues significance harms inherency plan solvency advantage all of that so presenting your affirmative case in that first six minutes you need to get through all of it right that is the point of this first affirmative constructive speech is to present the entirety of your case you don't have to write up a speech you don't have to paraphrase it's literally reading the brief that you presented so it is the cards that you have organized in that order you present them to make your case so you'll start with uh you know observation one significant harms subpoint a you read the outline labels so that everyone can follow along right this is not uh supposed to be a flowery sounding speech it's literally essentially presenting an outline so that everybody can follow it but you read the evidence cards word for word okay so you'll present the affirmative case you will then be cross-examined if you're affirmative you'll be cross-examined by the negative if you're negative you will cross-examine the affirmative and cross-examination again not that complicated you're just asking your opponent questions you're answering questions that your opponent asks you so the first negative speech is called the one nc the first negative constructive this is where you present the negative brief you need to be specific to the affirmative this isn't just presenting any random negative argument these negative arguments should be a response to the affirmative case that you just heard so a disadvantage to that presentation right or a counter plan that works for the plan that they presented make sure your on case arguments are in response to that on case you will have time you'll know who your opponent is uh in advance so you'll have time to make sure that your negative brief matches up and is an actual response to the argument that they are making it's the reason why we're all working on the same topic so that you can be prepared everybody's going to have sort of their own approach to their affirmative case but we're all going to be arguing about the same ideas so you can tailor your negative brief in response to the affirmative that you are paired up against uh you get seven minutes to present that negative brief again after the negative constructive there's cross-examination so the negative will have to answer questions about their arguments that the affirmative asks the affirmative then engages in what we call the 1ar the first affirmative rebuttal so a rebuttal is a response it is a specific response to the negative brief um you're not supposed to make new arguments here in your rebuttal you're uh supposed to be talking about what your affirmative case is don't just complete anything that you may have left out of the affirmative case you need to respond to the negative arguments the negative will have probably presented a disadvantage what's your response to that disadvantage how will you compare your affirmative case uh is that disadvantage really true is that actually a risk um maybe the negative presented a counter plan in which case you want to talk about why your plan is better than what the negative presented and go through it specifically right go through point by point what the negative argued and respond to it right we need to have a debate full of refutation of clash of responses right uh you have six minutes for this speech the next speech is the 1nr and the 1nr is the first negative rebuttal so your first primary job here in the speech is to respond to the one ar the negative should be responding back to everything the affirmative just said uh you know this is a debate you're going to refute the arguments that you just heard the affirmative just made some arguments you're going to respond back to them you can also point out any arguments that you made in your first speech in your constructive speech that maybe the affirmative missed uh maybe they misunderstood maybe they just didn't respond to it at all but you can point that out re-explain yourself and finally you need to summarize your case talk about overall why you think you should win the debate on the negative side you get six minutes for this final negative speech and then finally we have the two ar this is the affirmative's last rebuttal speech it's your opportunity to respond to the 1nr but primarily to summarize your case this is only three minutes long uh that's not actually very long in the scheme of the whole debate um so you're going to want to be efficient with your time here but you need to respond to the the final negative arguments and summarize on the affirmative side your case point out anything that the negative is misunderstanding or maybe has completely missed about your case way impacts compare uh risk right so that's that's the whole point of that so that's what the speeches should do um specifically now you're going to get a lot more detail about what to put in those speeches throughout some of the other lecture material and through discussions in our weekly zoom meetings we'll go over this and make sure you're watching the sample debate uh but i wanted you to understand the the fundamental structure of the debate who speaks when and for how long so let's talk a little bit more about cross-examination i just want to address this because oftentimes there is confusion um it's simple just ask questions uh oftentimes people will say well what if i don't have any questions you should have questions you should always have questions your opponent just spent a bunch of time uh making arguments you should have questions about those arguments um even if you kind of think you know the answer it's okay to ask them a question start with points of clarification that's this right here that just came out points of clarification are genuinely like asking them about things you don't understand from their argument arguments that they made that you are unclear about maybe it's something you didn't get you didn't hear them say very well or you're not understanding from what you're reading or from what you've researched ask them for some clarification points of clarification are good questions to ask during cross-examination also you can ask them questions where you know the answer it's not a question that you have because you need clarification or you need information to be filled in but because you want to expose inconsistencies in their arguments they may be making one point in one place and a in a contradictory point somewhere else and by asking the right questions you can expose those inconsistencies you can expose those those flaws in their in their logic quiet so you can ask questions that demonstrate flaws in logic that show up uh points of logical fallacies or just gaps in their reasoning something that's missing maybe an assumption that isn't supported by evidence or maybe even just demonstrating that their evidence doesn't really say what they think it says so you can expose or demonstrate flaws uh finally you can ask questions that advance your strategy uh that where their answer to the question can help you to make the points you're going to make in your speech so if you've got a disadvantage up your sleeve that you're ready to argue there might be some questions that you can ask that will help benefit that argument so questions that advance your strategy any of those type of questions can more than easily fill up your three minutes of cross-examination because it's question answer you ask a question they answer it you'll probably get through maybe three or four questions it depends uh how thorough their answer is but it's not a lot three minutes it's just not very much time uh next let's talk about a little bit more detail on constructive versus rebuttal these are the two separate two different types of speeches that you have in a debate there's really not a lot to the difference here uh a constructive speech is the first speeches in a debate where the debaters construct their cases by presenting initial initial positions and arguments right this is you building your case that's why we call it constructive right you are constructing your argument this is where you present your brief that brief is already set to go you just need to read it you don't need to memorize it you don't need to deliver this as a speech per se like you would in a public speaking class it needs to be loud and clear i need to be able to hear you and understand you um and you need to speak at a rate where you can be understood by your opponent and anybody who is watching the debate at the advanced levels of competitive debate we will see speakers speaking very very quickly particularly through their constructive speeches that is not an expectation i have for this class in fact i would discourage it for this class you want to make sure that you can get through everything you need to get through in your constructive speech without speaking so rapidly that you can't be understood by your audience so that means you'll probably want to speak a little bit faster than conversational rate uh you know you're reading something you can read it at a little bit faster pace and still be very easily understood but you don't want to be so fast that nobody can follow you but a constructive speech again introduces arguments it builds arguments whereas oh and in this right we understand that each debater gets one constructive speech uh the affirmative gets to introduce their case the negative gets to introduce their case and the rest of the debate is for rebuttals so each debater gets one constructive speech for rebuttal speech a rebuttal speech are the last speeches in a debate where debaters summarize arguments and draw conclusions about the debate no new arguments are allowed right you should not be introducing new arguments in your rebuttal speeches now there's a little bit uh of confusion that sometimes happens here when you're looking at your first affirmative rebuttal this is your first opportunity to respond to arguments that the negative has introduced so technically these aren't new arguments when you are responding to an argument introduced by your opponent uh and it's the first opportunity that you have to respond those don't count as new lines of argumentation so you're as long as you are responding to arguments at your first opportunity then you're okay if you wait until your second affirmative rebuttal to address an argument that was introduced in the negative constructive you've made a mistake right now that's new arguments coming up in the rebuttal or if in the first affirmative rebuttal you're bringing up arguments that should have been in your constructive speech those are new arguments and not allowed um and then the negative will get to point out hey that's a new argument and it's not allowed or vice versa depending on when that new argument was raised right no new arguments allowed you need to respond to arguments that are introduced in the constructives at your first opportunity the negative gets one rebuttal while the affirmative actually gets two now remember the whole point of this is because of the burden of proof because the the affirmative has to overcome that right they have to present a prima facie case to meet their burden of proof and to overcome the presumption for the negative they get the opportunity to speak both first and last and logistically the only way to do this is if they speak three times so the last two affirmative speeches are rebuttals whereas the last one negative speech is a rebuttal so the negative gets one rebuttal the affirmative gets two okay so that's the end of this i would suggest if you just kind of watch this through uh there's a lot here go back through this video again if you need to take good notes ask questions we'll talk about this more in our weekly zoom class uh so that you understand it but having an understanding of how the debate's going to work is really important