Foster,+Ruth

__ **Rebuttal Redo from Practice Debate #4 - 2AR - 07/22/2012 - Comments by Tara** __ --Ruth is redoing a 2AR when for the Cap K. Ruth is just redoing the framework section of the debate, with a focus on word efficiency. --For the framework debate, I would start immediately with what your interpretation is. You have to state your argument before trying to win it. --I thought your word efficiency was pretty good in this 30 seconds. I think our word efficiency has issues are due to speaking off-script. Here are a few suggestions for word efficiency: (1) Script as much of the speech as possible in 2AR prep...save some of these "scripts" for future speech docs (your framework extension is going to be the same in a lot of debates); (2) Predict and script in the 2NR prep - try to predict what the 2NR is going to go for. You can be typing up stuff while they are prepping - no harm, no foul if they go for something else; (3) Remember that most analytics should be structured with (a) tag/label (i.e. no internal link), (b) warrant (1-2 sentences why there is no internal link) and (c) impact (the "so what?"...i.e. "this means that there is no spill-over"). __ **Practice Debate #3 - Neg vs. Ashwin - 07/16/2012 - Comments by Tara** __ --Think through a bit more of your 1NC decisions. Why just read defense against the economy advantage? It does not seem to help you to not answer the other advantage or solvency. There are times, based on what your off-case arguments are, when you may just address one advantage (like an advantage that the CP does not solve for). However, it does not make sense in this case to just answer one advantage. You should sprinkle case defense on the other advantage and solvency. --You have a nice rhythm and volume. You were easy to listen to and flow. You did not have long breaks between cards and positions that most debaters do. --Is the election uniqueness card in the 1NC really from April 10th? --I could not help but overhear the dialogue between the two of you during the 2NC prep. Although the discourse was polite, we could have saved ourselves about a minute by discussing BEFORE the debate how you were going to divide up the block. :) If you are still deciding that, did you get to most effectively utilize the 3 minutes of preparation that Ruth was CXing the 2AC? There are times where pre-round block splitting decisions may need to be changed up depending on what the 2AC does, but, generally, you can save yourselves that in-round time by making that decision early on. --I am not sure why we took prep time for this 1NR - you are only having to answer a couple of 2AC arguments on case and extend a few case cards. --I am glad that we have an overview on T, but I want our redo to structure this a bit more. If you are scripting out the OV before the speech, stick to what you have scripted. What about including a topical version of their Aff? This should be pretty easy with this interpretation - only federal financing. I also would like for you to rethink your case list both on the neg interpretation and the aff case list. These were not very believable nor at the heart of this interpretation. --Are there any cards in the file that helps you with "its" in regards to limits? I would like to see this T extension more card intensive- you don't need to read more definitions that its = sole possession. More cards like the P3 card you read - that was good to read that. I think we could add more if they exist. --Try to avoid jumping around on the flow so much --1NR Redo: (1) Restructure the overview - see above; (2) Try to answer the 2AC arguments in order of the 2AC; (3) We need to do MUCH more with the reasonability debate - we did not really answer this part of the 2AC on Topicality. Why is reasonability a bad standard? Why is it best for a judge to vote on the most limiting interpretation?

__ **Practice Debate #2 - Neg vs. Ashwin/Noah - 07/13/2012 - Comments by Linda** __ __**1N Comments **__ 1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: You are pretty fast, but you need to work on clarity in the text of your evidence. 2) Recommended Drills: You should do over-enunciation drills, where you slow down and emphasize every letter and syllable of every word, and you should also do the pen drill, to train yourself to move your mouth more. 3) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: I liked your set-up of the 1NC. I thought you chose good evidence, and had good specific cards on the link debate. 4) Strategic Choice and Execution of Block/1NR: - Excellent job on framework – you had the best line-by-line here than in any other speech. - But along with being defensive in response to your opponents’ arguments, you need to be offensive and extend your arguments – you need to do a better job of explaining your alternative and your role of the ballot argument. - Explain your epistemology argument better – you need to describe why specifically the plan is entrenched in capitalist ideology. 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: - Put more emphasis on why your interpretation of debate is most educational - Use specific examples from the case to explain why their epistemology is flawed – for example, you should point out how their authors that support high speed rail are often companies that have an economic incentive to hype up the plan. __**2N Comments **__ 1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: See 1N comments. 2) Recommended Drills: See 1N comments. 3) 2NC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: - Before your speech, you need to give your order. Instead of saying “I’m going to extend evidence, and then answer theirs,” you should say that the order is “the overview, the kritik proper, and then framework,” which is the order you went in. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- I liked what you did with your overview, by extending your impacts and highlighting the conceded impacts and links on top. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- On the line-by-line, make sure you answer each argument specifically, and in order. You dropped a lot of 2AC arguments on the bottom portion of the flow. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- You contradict yourself in the 2NC when you say that there are multiple causes to war (and greed isn’t one of them), because you need to win that capitalism is the root cause of their impacts. If there are multiple causes, you can’t win the root cause argument. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- You can save a lot of time by reducing the amount of cards you read – you read 8 minutes of capitalism cards in the 1NC, so make sure to really milk this evidence and use the warrants of the cards you already read to answer 2AC arguments instead of reading more cards. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- In many instances, you read more cards that you had to, such as on the inevitability debate, where you read 3 cards that all said the same thing. Instead, you could have just read one card. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2NC/2NR: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- You need to have an overview in your 2NR that flags your impacts and highlights the most important issues of the debate. You did this in the 2NC, but you need to extend these arguments. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- You also need to do a better job of going line-by-line and answering all of their arguments. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- You need to spend more time explaining your alternative and your role of the ballot. Explain why if you win your epistemology arguments, they don’t get their case. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- Give the 2AR with the above suggestions. __**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">General comments **__ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- Both teams really, really, REALLY need to work on flowing. This will prevent you from dropping major arguments on the flow, and help you organize your roadmap. Your roadmap needs to be “x flow, y flow, and z flow,” otherwise it’s impossible for the judge to follow your arguments. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">- Debaters from both teams have the problem of speaking into their computer screen – you all should slightly move your computer away from you, and make sure not to position it right between you and your judge.

__ **Research Feedback - 1st set of cards from Wave #1 - 07/13/2012 - Comments by Tara** __ <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Overall, I thought this was a good effort for your first set of research. You had some good quality evidence. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">A few broader comments: <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">(1) Really take the extra time to make sure you have complete cites. Ideally, you also want to make sure the full date is included (month and day if the website lists it) and the name of the article. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">(2) You may have done this for future evidence sets I have not gotten to yet, but try to push yourself to exceed the goal set by the lab leaders. :) <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">(3) Try to expand your tags - have your tags give more complete, warranted explanations. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Keep up the good work!

__ **Practice Debate #1 - 07/11/2012 - Aff vs. Ashwin/Avi - Comments by Nate** __ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Don’t boss your partner around too much! <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Don’t tell them what they dropped! <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Look at the judge for cx <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">CX: try <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Put case first—you need to defend your offense before going to theirs <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2) 2AC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Make theory args against states <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">More offense against the K—this opening space doesn’t make sense <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Saying you help the economy doenst totally answer their link argument on the Obama DA <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Don’t need to announce their args for so long, work on embedded clash for the 2ac on the case <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Instead of finishing with :20 left, you should answer all of their arguments on the case 3<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2AC/2AR: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You did a good job of impact calculus but none of this assume the CP—you need to have a focus on a solvency deficit to the CP that is quantifiable <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Make sure you only answer arguments that were in the 2nr even if they were in the 2nc <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Need to focus on the arguments the 1ar extended, because a lot of this is new. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Try to make the 2ar more efficient, and make sure you answer their specific arguments inteasd of these sort of broad claims.

__**Elections DA - Block Extension Speeches - 07/10/2012 - Comments by Tara**__ --Students were asked to create a five minute Negative block speech to extend an Obama Good Elections DA. Students were given the 1NC shell and a file of potential cards they could use for their extensions. They used their own 2ACs from the night before as the 2AC to answer when they gave the extension speech. --You do have good volume and good speed. Your clarity is also relatively good. There are some instances that words are running together so we want to work this out, especially in tags. We want to "punch" vocally each word in the tag (and you can still do this quickly) just to make sure the enunciation comes through. --Whenever you are extending an argument in the block (whether it is a DA or a K), you want a local overview. You want a brief explanation to the judge as to what the argument is and what the impact is. --You do reference some of the cards in the 1NC but I would like for you to make sure to extend those cards by cites as well. --Overall, you have some good analytical arguments but they were a bit lengthy. You want full, complete analytical arguments but you want them to be word efficient. --We should have used up more of our time. You should always take longer extending an argument in the block than the time the 2A took to answer it in the 2AC. Remember to build a wall...you also could have read some new impact scenarios.

__**Elections DA - 2AC Speech - 7/9 - Evan**__ --Great speed and clarity! --I think you should be more diverse in your responses to the disad - you're doing a good job on the link debate but more diversity will make it harder for the negative and give your 1AR more options as well. You had a lot of time left so you definitely have room to add more cards. --You should read a card that the economy is key in the election - there's a difference between spending and economy, and if the negative draws this distinction it could become difficult in the 1AR to win a link turn. --You were smart to point out that the 1AC also has a warming impact - the next step is to say that this means case solves the disad.