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Middle School JV Curriculum Guide
Speaking from the Packet and Workbook
When you’re giving a speech in Junior Varsity debate, you should be paying attention to more than just what you’re reading. You’ll need to keep an eye on your timer – after all, you’ve got a lot more to say. You’ll also want to keep an eye on your judge. That’ll help you pick and choose which arguments to go for.
Keeping Track of Your Time
You have a lot more to do than just keep an eye on your timer during debate rounds. You’ll need to plan ahead if you want to say everything in under four minutes. You should practice reading your speeches before your rounds with a timer – that way you can see how much you can fit in your speech.
If you can’t fit everything in, then you should highlight fewer words, or you should consider reading fewer arguments. It’s tempting to read every advantage or every disadvantage, but if you can’t get through them in your 1NC, then it’s better to focus on one than to force your partner to finish it in the 2NC.
If you’re running low on time during your speech, you should make sure to have an answer to every argument. Before your speech, decide how much time to spend on each argument. Even if you don’t say everything you would like to say, when you see that time pop up on your timer, quickly move on to the next argument.
Keeping an Eye on Your Judge
After the debate has begun, you can’t ask the judge questions about their preferences. It’s their job not to interfere with the round. However, you can gain some information from them without asking them for it! You should watch your judge during your speeches, and you should respond to what you read on their faces. Here are some examples:
If a judge looks confused, consider going back and clarifying what you meant.
If a judge nods, that’s a good sign – keep going with what you’re doing! You’ve picked an argument that they like. If they’re nodding at the other team, make sure you respond to the arguments they nodded at.
If a judge shakes their head, that’s not a good sign. You may not have picked the argument they expected you to go for. It’s hard to make changes during your speech, so stay confident and finish what you were planning to say. If you still have time, try making or extending a different argument.
If a judge looks bored during your speech, you should change up your tone of voice! Judges often need a lot of coffee to get through debate tournaments, so try to keep things interesting for them!
Extending and Comparing Your Evidence
You should have been extending your evidence before, but that you how about evidence comparison, you’ll want to do it a little differently. Here are the four parts of a good extension.
Repeat the assertion.
Summarize the reasoning.
Say the author’s name.
Compare the evidence.
Here’s an example of what to do. Let’s say you read the Schanzenbach 2005 evidence that we talked about before, and the other team only made analytic responses, or arguments without cards:
Turn, the plan causes more childhood obesity….
…because school lunches are unhealthy and increase students’ caloric intake too much…
…that’s from our Schanzenbach evidence…
…and prefer that card to their analytic arguments because she is a professor of education and public policy at Northwestern.