Middle School Novice Curriculum Guide

After the Tournament

You have attended your first tournament and have debated for the first time. Now what?

Sometime after the tournament, you will receive copies of all the ballots for your debates. Your ballots will tell you who the judge thought on the debate, your speaker points, and the judge’s reason for decision, or “RFD” for short. The reason for decision is why the judge voted the way they did; judges should decide debates on who they thought did the better debating, not other factors like which debaters were more polite or which ones where better dressed.

Once you have the ballots for all of your debates, you should try to practice with all of the notes in mind. The RFDs and any written feedback from the judges will tell you whether they found your arguments persuasive or not. If you lost an of your debates – or thought that you gave a bad speech that you know how to improve on – you should redo that speech during your team’s practice. Redoing a speech essentially means giving that speech again in front of your coach, so that they can tell you how far it is improved from the speech you actually gave during the debate.

There are several other drills and kinds of practice you can do to improve between your first and second tournaments. You can also do general public speaking exercises or give practice speeches.