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High School JV Curriculum Guide
Overviews
Overviews tell the judge what your major arguments are and why they matter more than the other team’s argument. There are 2 parts to an overview—a summary of your argument and impact comparison/MR. T. Your summary should be a quick explanation of your argument (for the affirmative, this is the plan, inherency, harms, and solvency from the 1AC; for the negative, it should be whatever offcase arguments were in the 1NC, such as uniqueness, link, and impact for a disadvantage).
Here’s an example of a 2NC overview for the Deterrence Disadvantage:
“NATO’s defense spending is on the brink now—that’s Lasconjarias. Investing in public health would take away from NATO’s defense spending and capabilities, which are key to deterring war with Russia—those are our Ceccoruli and Kochis cards. Our Schlosser evidence says a war with Russia would go nuclear and turn into World War III. We outweigh on magnitude—even though the affimative harms are important, there is nothing bigger than a war which would kill us all. Prefer magnitude over risk and timeframe because we need to be alive to solve other problems.”
When Should You Give Overviews?
An overview is the first thing you’ll do on a given flow before moving onto the line-by-line. It should be done for every one of your offensive positions starting in the 2AC. The affirmative should not be doing overviews on the disadvantages, and the negative should not be giving overviews on the case.
Affirmative offense: Case/Advantages (can do separate overviews for separate advantages)
Negative offense: Disadvantages, counterplans, kritiks
When giving the roadmap for your speech, you should mention if there will be an overview on a flow. For example, a 2AC roadmap might be, “I’ll be starting on the Disease Advantage with an overview, then going on to the Deterrence Disadvantage.” When giving the speech, make sure to indicate to when you’re done with the overview by saying something like “Now, onto the line-by-line.”
When you are splitting the block as the negative, whoever is covering the disadvantage/counterplan/kritik should be giving the overview for it. Don’t have one partner do the overview and have the other do the line-by-line. When covering an argument you should always start with the overview, then do line-by-line before moving to a new argument.