Advanced High School Curriculum Guide

Welcome to the Advanced High School Curriculum Guide

You’ve been getting your rounds in and doing great at tournaments—you’re ready to start learning about more advanced debate arguments, beyond disadvantages.

What more is there to learn?

  • You’ll learn new kinds of arguments. These are counterplans and kritiks. Both give the judge a different course of action than the plan to support, which creates multiple worlds to debate about in the same round.

  • After you’ve learned about new kinds of arguments, consider looking into the next level: the HS Open Division. In this division, teams can do research and introduce their own original arguments with evidence outside of the AUDL packet. Part of preparing to transition into this division is becoming familiar with the various types of arguments that you could see.

What’s the Same?

  • Debates still follow the same speech order.

  • You’ll still have to debate four rounds – two affirmative, and two negative – at each debate tournament.

  • You’ll still be allowed to use your evidence packet and tournament workbook.

  • You’ll still be reading, speaking, taking notes, and asking questions (or answering them).

Table of Contents

PART 1: Reviewing Novice

PART 2: New Skills

  1. The Counterplan

  2. Answering the Counterplan

  3. The Kritik

  4. Answering the Kritik

  5. Research and Evidence Production

PART 3: USING YOUR NEW Skills

  1. Reading the Packet

  2. Speaking from the Packet and Workbook

  3. Taking Notes (Flowing)

  4. Asking and Answering Questions

PART 4: USEFUL MATERIALS

  1. Advanced Speech Checklist

You can access the High School Advanced Curriculum Guide as a Word document here.