James

1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: Stand still, calm down 2) Recommended Drills: Drink some chamomile tea. Seriously. 3) 2AC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: Way too inefficient on case, also spent way too much time here, reading cards where they were not needed, etc. Needed more time on every off-case position 4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: Evidence was used as a crutch to answer case arguments where it wasn’t needed, not enough was read on the cap k, politics, or dedev 5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2AC/2AR: 2AC: Above 2AR: Either go for condo or substance, not both. You need to first and foremost do a lot of impact work. Explain in depth why wars happen because of economic collapse, and why this will access extinction impacts. Explain how it turns the warming impact. Say there’s no transition, why growth is sustainable and solves warming. 5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: Above
 * __Practice Debate #10 - Aff vs. Tiffany/Abby - 07/27 - Comments by Rahim__**

Everyone needs to be better at paperless---1AC should be solved 1a---start out slower in the 1AC. Don’t ask questions like “where does it say extinction in your card,” they could ask you the same question about your 1AC evidence. Ask about the internal links to extinction, and ask how any particular impact scenario could destroy the entire world. 1n—Clear, but need to speed up a little bit. Start with impact calculus on the elections DA. Good job with the warming impact calculus. Good specific answers to their 2AC evidence. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2a---quick and clear in 2AC. Need to read fewer cards and do more explanation on case, you have many cards in your 1AC that answer their impact defense and general case arguments, use them! <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Good questions about alt. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2AR was good. You had an organized speech that discussed your aff’s impacts and the impact turns to the K. you should have explained your impact turns in the context of the aff plan---cap is key to stopping conflict, proven by the potential for airports to avoid economic crisis and conflict <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2n---Pretty good pace---good use of case arguments in combination with the K (specifically, the arguments about drones). Could talk a little more specifically about the aff. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">2NR---try not to kick things at the beginning of your speech, at the same time, you did it efficiently and kept it well segmented. <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #222222; font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">You explicitly conceded impact defense to warming on elections and then went for a warming impact to climate…think through that one a little more next time!
 * __Practice Debate #7 - Neg vs. Ruth/Ari - 07/25 - Comments by Zane__**

-We had the students isolate goals in lab a few days ago to work on in the practice debates. James could not find his but seemed to remember something about impact calculus for the 2AR. As a lab, we are working on CX in this debate. --You are doing a good job signposting and extending 1AC cards to start the 2AC. I stopped James about :45 seconds into it and wanted some warrants extended - i.e. WHY does Next Gen solve ATC congestion? I just wanted him to go one level deeper. We had him do it again and I still was not getting it - he was going longer in his analyticals but not deeper. I stopped him again and asked him to read the 1AC card he extended on "Next Gen decreases air traffic congestion". I had him tell me why - we had him go through this conversational with me for quite a few minutes (this is a key warrant of the 1aC). We got it down. :) --You answer the drones turn well on the case. --Your answer to 1NC 2 on Heg (no transition) is not really answered with Heg Good...solves terrorism. Try to make sure we fully understand what the 1NC argument is so our 2AC arguments are more responsive. --Again, your signposting and organization is really good. --I want you to answer the barriers a bit differently - don't say that the plan goes online in three years in the squo. That non-uniques our Aff. Just say all of those barriers are overcome in a world of full funding. --What is your interpretation on Multiple Conditional Worlds bad? --You need to make an argument on the CP as to why the states can't do the plan - they don't have jurisdiction over federal airports and the CP does not mandate that they do. How does the State of llinois implement Next Gen at O'Hare? They don't have the authority. --Yay! We started CX of the 2NC immediately after the timer....good way to "command the room". Those little things matter. --Good to put your case on top in the 2AR in a case vs. K debate. Always start with what you are winning/how you will win the debate. --I am glad you had an overview on economy but you need to go more indepth. You pretty much just said we win the economy debate in about 15 different ways. What about the dropped heg advantage? Your overview needs to be more indepth about how these case advantages outweigh or denies the Cap K. --Good to hone in on the dropped permutation - I am not sure the 1aR did a lot of work here, though. 2NR may have dropped it because it was not extended. --We need to extend a lot more on the K...you just extended the perm. --The last two minutes of this speech was pretty disorganized - we kept hopping from flow to flow. Once you are done with a flow, really try to be done with it.
 * __Practice Debate #6 - Aff vs. Tiffany/Abby - 07/23/2012 - Comments by Tara__ **

Overall, I thought you had a very solid effort in this first set of cards. Some of the key things I wanted to point out from my side comments: 1 - It is hard to explain why some of these cards just weren't quite all-star. I think the primary problem is that many of your cards may be from relatively short PR bites from the FAA. The cards state a lot of reasons why Next Gen is good but they do not really go in-depth on those reasons. My first suggestion is to try to find longer articles that devote entire paragraphs to different warrants about why NextGen works.2 - Be wary of FAA cards. A lot of these cards almost just seemed to be cards of the FAA describing the Next Gen product. It is like someone working in the White House describing why Obama is a good president. Although that White House spokesperson probably has indepth knowledge of the Obama presidency, they are likely biased in that information. The FAA would never say that a technology that they are eventually rolling out is bad.3 - Avoid the 1996 cards. :)Keep up the good work - I am glad to see that your tags all are attempting to include nice, specific warrants!
 * __Research Feedback - 1st set of evidence from Wave #1 - Cards due on 07/10 and feedback given on 07/13 - Comments by Tara__ **

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">1) Speed/clarity issues with constructive or rebuttal: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Both were pretty good. You should try to break your habits of double breathing and swaying/waving your arms during the speech – practice standing still and breathing normally while spreading. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">2) Recommended Drills: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Read cards for 10+ min to improve speed and endurance <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">3) 2AC—technical skill and coverage for case and off-case arguments: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">You need to re-allocate your time to better answer politics – you can leverage the 1AC econ advantage against the econ disad, and the states pre-empts on the CP, in order to gain back some time for politics. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">4) Assess use of evidence in constructive and rebuttal: quantity, quality, and comparison: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Most of this case evidence is unnecessary – you should always look first to extend 1AC evidence to answer case args, rather than spending valuable speech time reading new cards. You should only read ev if it answers a specific argument that __none__ of the 1AC ev answers – for example, you probably need a card that people would ride HSR. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">5) Strategic Choice and Execution of 2AC/2AR: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Diversify your 2AC off-case answers – on the politics disad you can say winners win, thumpers, compartmentalization and/or theory. On the econ DA you should leverage several of your economy internal links, make link uniqueness args and answer the argument that deficits kill the economy. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">I think the 2AR approach is an uphill battle – they have kicked the counterplan, so you have to win not only that 50 state fiat is bad, but that it’s bad enough to be a voting issue. I think going for substance (winning the econ advantage and outweighing politics) might be a better strategy. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">5) Rebuttal Re-do suggestions: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Instead of 50 state fiat, center the debate around the econ advantage – how you access that impact, and why it outweighs the disadvantage. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">You all need to know your speech order before you stand up to give the speech. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">In cx, questions of the form “you said [argument], but don’t you think [counterargument] is true?” are unlikely to get the other team to just concede they’re wrong. Try to use cx to highlight __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">flaws __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> in their arguments rather than trying to get them to concede. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Negative – write counterplan texts __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">before the round __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">! You need to ensure that cp’s like states match up as well as possible with the aff so that they can’t get solvency deficits based on your using the wrong mechanism or some other accidental change.
 * __Practice Debate #3 - Aff vs. Anja Beth/Isabella - 07/16 - Comments by Connor__**
 * __<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Additional Comments about the Debate: __**

__**Practice Debate #2**__

--I did think that James had a good 1NR from yesterday, especially for the first practice debate. --I am glad that James took this exercise very seriously. He asked questions throughout the day about different ways to improve on some of the areas I isolated. --Remember to still focus on your clarity - the first few seconds need to be almost conversational speed. You need to build up into your speed. --I am glad that we had an overview on our politics DA tonight. It was a bit wordy but we will get there. There will be a lecture next week on how to write overviews. --I thought our case debate was a bit light. Although I asked for more on politics, I thought we lost too much ground on the economy flow. It is a difficult balance. :) One area that we could have gotten another card read on the case extension was just to clean up our word economy. --Overall, nice redo!
 * __Rebuttal Redo from Practice Debate #1 - 07/12 - comments by Tara__ **

--It is always difficult to know all of the norms/expectations for "paperless" but give your speech immediately to your opponents once you call an end to prep time. We gave our roadmap, etc. all before we gave the flashdrive over. It is just common practice to try to cut down on the "down time" that happens in the debate. --You have great speed and volume. Good clarity. You are easy to flow. :) --Minor but take out the label of "turn" on the internal link on the Elections DA - I know the DA turns one of the Aff advantages but you can start that discussion in the block. That card by itself is not a turn so it is a bit odd to have it there.  --I love that we were thinking in regards to the China alternate causality card (means you solve Warming since the DA sparks a global treaty on Warming - plan is only domestic) but I would not have that card in the 1NC shell. I would read that on case against the warming advantage so it is clearer what you are doing with that argument.  --Good diversity of case defense on the advantages in the 1NC  --I know this is the first round of the year on the topic AND you had to do a lot to help the 2NC during his speech but really try not to take prep time for the 1NR. :) --I am glad that our case extension in the 1NR was very evidence intensive! However, I would like more argumentation from you, not just card reading. See redo comments. --REBUTTAL REDO - Please pretend that Ari did not read any cards on this advantage. I think it will be easier for you to do this redo with a clean slate of just the 1NC args and the 2AC answers: (1) I would like for you to be a bit more clear in your line-by-line on the case arguments - for example, you had me group all of the cards that said "HSR is key to solving the economy" - the problem is that all of those arguments are distinct internal links - your 1NC did a really nice job answering many of these internal links - I would like for your 1NR to keep that specificity going; (2) I would like for you to extend by cite and explain with 1 or 2 sentences some of the key case cards that were read in the 1NC - we really just answered 2AC arguments, instead of trying to win the 1NC arguments; (3) I would like a small overview on the Elections DA - at least give me some impact calculus; (4) I thought we needed to do much more on Politics - we need to read more cards.
 * __Practice Round #1 - Negative vs. Jennifer/Kushal - 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. --Put impact calculus at the top (not sure if they were supposed to or not for the purposes of this speech) --Adjust your body so I can see your face when you speak – just try to move the computer a little off to the side if you have to use a stand that’s a little too tall --Good signposting --Don’t read an alt cause to warming – that’s also your disad impact. It MIGHT be ok in this instance – just take a second to explain why it takes out the aff’s internal link, but not the disad’s --Maybe a little nit-picky – try being a little more still when you spread. --In general, be very careful about reading new impacts to a disad in the block – especially something as easily impact turned as proliferation.
 * __Elections DA Negative Block Speech - 07/10/2012 - Comments by Robel__ **