This is the order of speaking.
First Proposition - 8 Minutes Minutes
First Opposition - 8 Minutes
Second Proposition - 8 Minutes
Second Opposition - 8 Minutes
Third Proposition - 8 Minutes
Third Opposition - 8 Minutes
Opposition Reply* - 4 Minutes
Proposition Reply* - 4 Minutes
* Reply Speeches May Only Be Offered By The First Or Second Speakers Of Each Team.
 

The point of information zone starts 1 minute after the speaker starts speaking, and ends when the clock hits 0:07:00.

After the third opposition speech, the researchers (the fourth and/or fifth member/s of the team) will approach their respective teams to assist the reply speaker in the preparation for the reply speech. The teams will do this independently without aid from their coaches. This period lasts for about 2 minutes, following which the opposition reply speaker will speak. After a brief moment to allow the judges to write down the speaker's score, the proposition reply speaker will speak.
 

When the debate is over, the judges will hand in their score-sheets to the chairperson and adjourn to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the debate. The judges would have judged independently, and this adjournment would be the only conference the judges would ever have about the debate. Once the judges hand in their score-sheets, they will not be allowed to change their decision or their scores. The verdict of the debate will be awarded by democratic vote among the odd number of judges. This means that a debate can be won either 3-0 or 2-1 in the preliminary rounds, or 7-0, 6-1, 5-2, or 4-3 in the finals. The judges' tally will decide the placings for the quarter-finals. Placings for the quarter-finals will be decided first by number of wins, then by number of judges' votes, followed by mean scores of the respective teams.

1. DEFINITION

B. Place-setting (that is, limiting the scope of discussion to one country or one area) or time-setting (that is, unfairly limiting the scope of discussion to a time in history chosen by the proposition - for example, The World Is Doomed must be discussed in the present context, and not from the context of the 10th century) are not permitted.

C. If these rules have not been followed, the opposition may challenge the definition. If this is to be attempted, the first opposition speaker must make the challenge. Otherwise, it is assumed that the definitions offered have been accepted. Subsequent attempts by the opposition to challenge the definition will not be permitted, and will be marked against the opposition. Note of course, that the proposition is allowed to defend its definition.

2. BURDEN OF PROOF

B. The opposition must show sufficient reasonable doubt. It is not required for the opposition to have a counter-proposition, although since each side has been allocated almost 30 minutes of speaking time, it would be advisable for oppositions to have cases.

3. CASE DEVELOPMENT

4. REPLY SPEECHES

B. Reply speeches should be prepared only by the three debaters and the two reserves for the debate. No other member /affiliate of the school (such as debate club members, students and teachers) should pass notes, or communicate with the two reserves for the debate at any time during the debate. To facilitate this, reserves will be sequestered from the floor during the debate.

5. INDEPENDENT DEBATE

B. Coaches, teachers from the school, school mates, and other supporters are not allowed in any way to communicate arguments, rebuttals or points to the speakers or the researchers. To do so would be to defeat the purpose of forming debating teams. As such, researchers will be seperated from the supporting contingents, and will not be allowed to receive communications of any sort from their supporting contingents.

Debaters at the ICDS will be judged according to three broad categories - their content (what they say), their style (how they say it) and their strategy.

STYLE

The style of the speaker doesn't refer to the accent he adopts, or how stylish he is. In fact, what you will be looking at really is his manner. A debating competition we must remember, is not an oratory competition, but a competition judging the skills of argument. The following SHOULD NOT MATTER.

Whether The Speaker Uses Sheets Of Paper, Cards or Books.
Whether The Speaker Has A Passive Or Aggressive Manner.
Whether The Speaker Has A "Foreign", "Posh" or "Local" Accent. We are not here to look at the influence of British education, American TV or TCS sitcoms on our junior college debaters.
Whether The Speaker Stands Still On The Floor, Or Shuffles, Or Walks.

Of course, there are extremes. Speaking too slowly or too quickly works to the speaker's disadvantage. So what should you look out for?

Clarity - Is The Speaker Reasonably Intelligible?
Conviction - Does The Speaker Sound Convinced About What He Says, Or Is He Faltering?
Fluidity - Does The Speaker Speak Lucidly, Or Does He Hem And Haw And Lapse Into Long Pauses?

CONTENT

Essentially, to judge content, one should make a clear distinction between the style of the speaker, to what he actually is saying. A speaker with a lot of flourish and attractiveness, cannot be better than a speaker with less style, but with a heap load of content. So what exactly are you judging?

The Logic Used To Explain Why The Motion Is True/Untrue.
The Examples Used To Show Why The Logic Is Valid - Did They Have Enough Breadth, Global View, Relevance? Could These Examples Withstand Attack?
Rebuttal - How Well Was The Other Side's Case Attacked?

Note, that some of you will have specialised knowledge. You may be business executives, lawyers, educators or journalists. You may have certain interests in nuclear technology, space exploration or the environment. None Of This Matters! You will be judging the debaters' ability to debate one another. It is obvious that junior college students will not understand the full workings of the law for example, or public administration. Of course, highly dubious examples, ludicrous statistics or other absurdities may emerge. When the fallacies are irrefutably, absolutely false, this may work against the debater. Still, if the other side doesn't point out his mistake, they should be penalised as well.

Finally, it is important that you do not allow your own personal convictions to influence your final vote (that is, your decision). Debaters will be offering intellectual arguments, and may not personally agree with what they are arguing for. For example, if you are a pro-life activist and you are judging a debate with the motion ' This House Supports Abortion', if the side proposing abortion was better than the side opposing abortion, the proposition should win no matter what your views on the subject are.

STRATEGY

Strategy covers two main areas.

A. Time Allocation And Speech Organisation

A speaker who uses too much time (say 9 minutes for an 8 minute speech, or 5 minutes for a 4 minute reply speech), or too little time (7 minutes for an 8 minute speech, or 3 minutes for a 4 minute reply speech) is guilty of bad time allocation. Also, if a speaker deals with only small points from the other side, leaving huge chunks of important, fundamental logic and argument undemolished, also uses his time badly, because he doesn't do major damage to the other side. Generally, first and second speakers should deal with broader issues of the debate, with third speakers 'sweeping up' the remaining rubble.

A speech will naturally have different segments to it. A judge should be able to spot when the speaker starts talking about different issues and different points, or when the speaker leaves definitions and case set-up or rebuttal and advances on to his main arguments.

B. Identifying The Main Issues Of Clash

This portion of strategy marking is closely related to the 'time allocation'. If fundamental logic and important arguments are left while minute examples, verbal slips or much-discussed examples are attacked, then this would mean a poor strategy mark. Note that weak rebuttal of a main issue should be marked under content, and not strategy.

SEMANTICS
 

It is understood that before any intellectual discussion, it is important to determine exactly what the debate is about, and what the parameters of discussion are. It is also important to understand the semantics of the motion, in order to determine exactly what it is that the proposition must propose.

For example, consider the motion 'The World Is As Chaotic As Before'. The proposition here must define the points of reference in time, in order to ascertain what exactly is meant by 'before'. At the same time, the proposition must also show how it is going to prove that 'chaos now' is the same as 'chaos before'. It would be insufficient for the proposition to show that the world now is chaotic, because such a line would not address the word 'before' in the motion. Instead, the proposition must do a comparison between now and the past. The proposition must also determine what chaos is - is a little trouble 'chaos', or is it more than that?
ARGUMENT
 

It is the job of the first two speakers in the debate to advance their arguments, with the second doing more rebuttal than the first. Naturally, this means that there will be a case division. The first speaker must tell the audience what the team will say collectively, and what each speaker will say. From this, we can have several faults.
CASE DIVISION ALONG LOGIC DEVELOPMENT
E.G. : To prove the motion 'We Should Use Nuclear Energy', it would be illogical for the first speaker to say 'This is nuclear energy, this is what it is used for', and for the second speaker to say ' These uses have positive effects for both the environment and for civilisation'. This is because after what the first speaker has said, there would be no point of rebuttal, since the first speaker has merely said that nuclear energy is used for certain purposes, but has not shown why these certain purposes are good (this was done by the second speaker). If we were to look at a syllogism then (i.e - a logical development with two premises and a conclusion), the entire syllogism must be dealt with by each speaker to prove the conclusion (the motion) true, instead of it being dealt with seperately.

SEPERATION OF LOGIC AND EXAMPLES
E.G : To prove the motion 'We Should Use Nuclear Energy', it would be wrong for the first speaker to say ' Nuclear energy is good for the following reasons', and for the second speaker to say ' This is how we know the following reasons are true '. In other words, if logic is 'why' and examples denote 'how', then essentially, speaker one would merely be providing rhetoric without substantiation, while speaker two would merely be shooting off examples without showing how these examples link to the team's case or the resolution. It is strategically dangerous for a team to do this, since if the opposition's first destroys the 'why' of proposition speaker 1, then proposition speaker 2's 'hows' will not have a 'why' to stand on.

CONTRADICTION / WEAK TEAM WORK
E.G : Suppose that in order to prove the motion 'This House Would Severely Restrict Cloning Research', the first speaker says that the 'governments would prohibit research by all private parties'. If the opposition points out the weaknesses of this argument, and the second proposition speaker now says 'the government would closely monitor all private cloning research, and thus maintain very strict control', he is contradicting his first speaker, who said that no private research would be allowed in the first place. A case contradiction, or a case shift occurs when a team expands the boundaries of discussion illegally, and broadens the scope of the application of its own motion.

Although the scores range from 0-100, the range of scores you are allowed to give ranges from 60-80. 60 marks for the worst, most appalling speaker you've ever seen in your adjudication for the series, and 80 marks for the best, most excellent speaker you 've ever seen in your adjudication for th eseries. For the reply speeches, this standard if halved from 30 to 40. This is to prevent judges from using their own internal numerical scales, since the debaters would like to have a tangible and reliable point of reference for their own evaluation. In other words ...

SUBSTANTIVE SPEECHES (OUT OF 100)

Standard	Overall Score	Style / 40	Content /40	Strategy /20
Brilliant, best ever seen	80	32	32	16
Excellent	76-79	31	31	15-16
Very Good	74-75	30	30	15
Better Than Average	71-73	29	29	14-15
Good Average For The Competition	70	28	28	14
Below Average	67-69	27	27	13-14
Poor	65-66	26	26	13
Very Poor	61-64	25	25	12-13
Appalling, Worst Ever Seen	60	24	24	12

REPLY SPEECHES (OUT OF 50)

Standard	Overall/50	Style/20	Content/20	Strategy/10
Brilliant, Best Ever Seen	40	16	16	8
Better Than Average	36-39	15	15	7.5
Good Average For The Competition	35	14	14	7
Below Average	31-34	13	13	6.5
Appalling, Worst Ever Seen	30	12	12	6

© 1998 Colm Flynn. All Rights Reserved.