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HS Open Curriculum
Giving the 2AC
In the 2AC, you have 3 jobs as the speaker: extend your offense, defend your case, and attack the negative’s offcase positions.
The Overview
The first part of the 2AC should be the overview, in which you explain to the judge why they should vote for you. This has 2 parts:
Summarize the 1AC for the judge. In a few sentences, remind them what’s happening in the status quo (inherency), what bad things happen without the plan (harms/advantages), and how your plan fixes those bad things (solvency).
Whenever you reiterate something from the 1AC, remember to explicitly cite the author of the evidence you’re extending.
Tell the judge why your impact(s) are the most important one(s) in the round.
Defend Your Case
The judge only has a reason to vote affirmative if the plan solves a problem that wouldn’t otherwise be addressed in the status quo. Answer all 1NC arguments against your case (inherency, harms, solvency) to keep your offense alive. Go line-by-line, looking at your case flow(s) and doing the following for each 1NC argument:
Extend relevant 1AC evidence – if evidence from the 1AC answers the argument, explain how to the judge, being sure to explicitly cite the author for the evidence you’re extending.
Indict their evidence – point out any weaknesses in their evidence. Is it outdated or from a biased source? Does it make claims without backing them up? Does it make broad, general arguments rather than saying anything that specifically applies to your case?
Read new evidence if needed – if nothing in your 1AC answers the argument, read a new card that does.
Don’t spend time reading new evidence if you don’t need it.
Once you have answered all 1NC arguments against the case, move on to attacking the negative’s offcase position(s). Don’t spend time answering arguments that the negative didn’t make.
Attack the Offcase Positions
Just as one dropped argument can make the case fall apart, one good argument against an offcase position can take out the negative’s offense. Therefore, the 2AC does not have to answer every part of the 1NC’s offcase positions; you should make sure to make at least one argument against each offcase position.
Each disadvantage, counterplan, kritik, or topicality violation is an offcase position which must be answered.
Make you strongest arguments now so the 1AR can extend them. Your best evidence against the offcase positions should be in this speech.
Do not have the 1AR read whatever evidence you don’t get to.
Think about how quickly you can speak and how many offcase positions you have to answer when deciding how many arguments to make against each offcase position. You may only have time to make 1 or 2 arguments on each flow.