How to Break at an International:

an 8-step guide
JOE MAYES·SUNDAY, 11 SEPTEMBER 2016

This guide is for anyone who wants to fulfil their potential as a debater and succeed at
an international tournament.

Many new debaters experience early success, fall in love with the activity, but then
struggle.

You do well at some tournaments, poorly at others, and it starts to get to you. You
begin to doubt your intellectual ability and it might even affect your self-esteem.
Perhaps you go to an international tournament like WUDC or EUDC and miss the
break. It’s desperately disappointing.

Where to go from there? This guide hopes to provide some answers. Whilst advice
and tips on how to improve at debate do exist on the Internet, it can be very difficult to
know where to start and what’s most important. With so much you could potentially
read or do, it can be paralysing. This guide aims to break it down and put you on the
right track.

I’ll assume you understand the rules of the British Parliamentary debate format and
have some experience of speaking at BP tournaments. If you don’t, I recommend this.
I also assume you’re motivated to get better and are willing to commit time and effort
to that endeavour. As you’ll see, your personal determination and input will be the key
ingredient to your success.

Merely reading this guide won’t be enough. The most important step – Step 1 –
stresses the primacy of your personal practice. You’ll only get better at an activity by
actually doing it. Passive reading of advice will only get you so far. There are no
shortcuts. No quick fixes. Anything that was ever worth achieving required effort and
this is no different.

Don’t be fooled into thinking there’s something mystical or unique about successful
debaters. There isn’t. They’ve likely just worked at it a lot longer and harder than you
have, probably doing a lot of the things I talk about in this guide. Happily, that could
be you.

Crucially, you’ll need to practice more – and smarter – than your competitors. This
means going beyond the standard weekly training session with your debate society
and receiving feedback from judges at tournaments. This is all good, but it’s not
enough. If you didn’t get the chance to debate at school / didn’t do World Schools /
haven’t been debating at university level for several years, and you want to break at an
international tournament, you’ve got a big experience gap to close. Regular personal
practice will help close that gap.

A warning: as I explain in Step 8 - on building a healthy, winning mentality – nothing

in debate is guaranteed. It’s a game like any other, steeped in chance and probability.
Get comfortable with that. Because even if you follow the advice of this guide
diligently, practice extensively and intelligently, you still may not break at an
international tournament.

You will significantly improve your probability of breaking, for sure. But there are no
guarantees on the final outcome. A quick inspection of the exceptional calibre of lots
of the teams that narrowly miss the break at international tournaments tells you all you
need to know about the intrinsic element of chance in debating.

Another warning: there are multiple routes to success. What worked for me might not
work for you. But – trust me here – I think there’s a core set of skills that you need to
master (and indeed are mastered by successful debaters) and it would be time very
well spent to work on these skills.

There are things in this guide you might consider blindingly obvious. If so, good. But,
thinking back to when I first started debating, absolutely none of this was obvious to
me and I wished I’d known it then. I would’ve improved faster if I had.

So, if the advice here contained fast tracks your progress or makes you feel more
positive and in control about your personal development, that’s a win.

Feel free to plagiarize and disseminate this widely. Debating gets better when we
share insights, tips, advice. I didn’t like it when I felt like I didn’t know how to
improve, and I don’t want anyone else to feel like that either.
May this guide and its philosophy be a useful tool for debate coaches, trainers,
enthusiasts, school kids and university students everywhere.

Debating gives you a big high when you win. But it also gives you a big high when
you feel like you’re getting better, giving your best in every debate and you’re
fulfilling your potential. I hope this guide helps you get to that happy place.

The guide has 8 steps:

Step 1: Practice with a Plan

Step 2: Groove the Basics

Step 3: Master your Prep Method

Step 4: Fill your Analytical Locker

Step 5: Drill your Positional Strategy

Step 6: Rebut Strategically

Step 7: Have Beautiful Style

Step 8: Build a Winning, Healthy Mentality

Step 1: Practice with a Plan

Competitive debate is a game, just like chess or cricket or synchronized diving. As in
those games, the route to success is via practice. If there’s one thing you should take
away from this guide, it’s the importance of your personal practice.

When I first started debating, I thought you won debates by being the smartest person
in the room. That is hopelessly wrong. Debating is not a test of your intelligence. It is
a test of your ability to play a particular intellectual game which has quirky, often
bizarre, rules and dynamics, all of which can be improved through smart practice.

How much should I practice?

 It depends on how badly you want it. If you’re serious about breaking at Worlds or
other international tournaments, I recommend practicing very regularly, either once a
day or at least every other day. Get ready to be a nerd, and be proud of it.

Don’t just take my word for it: the best speaker at a recent WUDC once professed to
doing 7-minute speeches every morning. The top breaking team at a recent EUDC
once told me that part of their preparation was to do a Prime Minister’s speech and
Leader of Opposition speech against each other every morning. Clearly, the speakers
who put in the hard yards reap the biggest rewards.

Incorporate debate practice into your daily routine. When I was in Paris preparing for
WUDC, I woke up a little earlier and spent 30 minutes each morning working on
some aspect of debate. In the grand scheme of things, 30 minutes is nothing. If you cut
out your procrastination and organise your time effectively, it’s a drop in the ocean.
Starting is the hardest part. It gets easier with every passing day. Soon you’ll get to a
point where it’s a habit, like brushing your teeth or checking your Facebook feed. It’s
something you just do every day as part of your routine.

How do I practice?

Before you start practicing you need to self-reflect, set goals and plan.

Self-reflection

You need to sit down and make a list of the things you’re bad at. Be honest and be
brutal. There’s no point in kidding yourself. For inspiration, my self-reflection list in
mid-2015 looked something like:

 Improve matter generation. I struggle to consistently come up with arguments across a

range of motions. I also struggle to come up with the depth of argumentation that is
necessary to extend off strong teams in good rooms.

 Control my speaking style. I speak too fast, my hands are all over the place and I don’t
feel in control of my breathing.

 Improve my analysis. Too often I don’t fully explain why my arguments are true or
why they are important. This skill is so basic but I still suck at it.
 Get better at top-half strategy. I struggle to control debates from opening-half and
often lose to the team on the diagonal e.g. CO if I’m OG, or CG if I’m OO. I need to
work out how to stop this.

 Take better notes. My notes are too small, messy and disorganised. I need to practice
making better notes.

Identifying your flaws is the first step to getting better. You should do this regularly,
perhaps after every tournament you attend. Your training plan will then have specific
areas to improve on.

Setting goals

It sharpens the mind to give yourself some targets. Regardless of what your big goals
is (be it breaking at Worlds, finishing in the top half of the tab, or just scoring more
than a certain number of points) there are lots of mini-goals to aim for in the
meantime. Targeting those mini-milestones will keep you motivated. Examples might
include: getting a speaker average greater than X at your next tournament, breaking at
the next Inter-Varsity (IV) tournament you attend, giving a practice speech where you
feel in full control of your speaking style, coming up with a closing-half case that
beats your opening, and so on.Big goals are rarely met in singular, enormous leaps.
It’s all about the baby steps. Make a detailed plan Once you’ve set your goals and
self-reflected, you know where you want to get to and what you need to improve to
get there. Now you need a detailed practice plan to get you to your destination. At the
time of publication, Sunday 11th September 2016, you have 109 days until the next
international debate tournament - Dutch WUDC. If you start now, and do 30 minutes
every day, that’s around 50 hours of debate practice, not even counting the practice
tournaments or group training sessions you might attend. You could get seriously
good. Crucially, your plan needs to be specific. Just saying, ‘I’m going to do some
debate practice every morning’ isn’t enough. You need to plan exactly what you’ll do
and why you’re doing it. Without that specificity, you’ll lose focus and motivation.
Your training should be active, varied and game-specific. Active = you’re doing
something – not just passively reading. Remember, getting better requires effort.
Varied = you mix it up to keep it fresh. Game-specific = you’re practicing skills that
are directly relevant to what you might do in a debate. Cristiano Ronaldo gets better at
football by kicking footballs. You’ll get better at debate by giving speeches, practicing
prep time and filling your analytical locker. Coming up with your plan should take a
good amount of time. Don’t be concerned by this. It’s time very well spent. You might
feel like you’re wasting time because you’re not actually doing any debating, you’re
just planning. But the plan is so important, so make it. And see if you can plan for all
the way up until Worlds, being aware you can make tweaks to the plan as you go
along. What would a good plan look like? Its content should be driven by the results
of your self-reflection. Throughout the guide I give suggestions as to how to practice
different aspects of your debating. Go to the relevant sections for inspiration. Much of
the advice I give assumes you’re on your own. If you’re able to coordinate your
training with your debate partner, that’s great, but I recognise that can be tricky. To
give an example of the specificity, activeness and variety I think you should be aiming
for in your plan, here’s what an example week might look like. Let’s assume this
speaker is working on improving their OG strategy, making their speaking style more
persuasive and filling their analytical locker. Let’s further assume they’re deciding to
do 30 minutes each morning, have training with their society on Wednesdays and this
is a week with no tournament at the weekend. Example week Monday - OG
practice: do a 15-minute prep for the PM speech on the motion “This House would
legalise all drugs” (or another motion drawn at random – a useful bank of motions is
available here). Record the speech and watch it back. What did you do well? How
could you do better? Tuesday - Style and OG practice: Re-do the speech you did on
Monday, but this time focus on improving one aspect of your speaking style e.g.
speaking slowly, controlling your hands or using persuasive emphasis. Record
yourself, and when watching back, don’t worry about the analysis. Solely assess the
speech in terms of the aspect of your speaking style you were trying to improve.
Wednesday: group training session with your debate society Thursday - OG
practice: watch and take notes on 3 Prime Minister speeches from WUDC/EUDC
outrounds, looking out for how they structure the speech, set up the debate and hit the
main clashes. What did you learn from their speeches? Friday - OG practice and
Analytical locker: do a 30-minute long prep for the OG case for a major
WUDC/EUDC outround (such as the Manchester EUDC final: THW give more votes
to citizens according to their performance on a current affairs test). Use the Internet to
help you. Try writing out the PM speech. Saturday - OG practice: watch the
WUDC/EUDC outround for which you prepared the OG case. What did you get right?
What did you miss? Go back to the case you prepared and add what you think is
necessary. Now give the PM speech, also keeping in mind the aspect of your speaking
style you want to improve. Record, reflect, critique. Sunday - Analytical locker:
Before watching a high-quality debate from a major IV or international tournament,
spend 5 minutes brainstorming how you’d try to win from either side. Then take notes
on the top-half of that debate. Were you right about the strategic burdens? This is just
an example week. After reading this guide you should be able to come up with similar
plans for each of the week’s leading up to WUDC, practicing the skills you want to
work on. Your training workload is entirely up to you – perhaps you can only do one
session a week, perhaps you can do something every day. Either way, something is
better than nothing and any time you dedicate will significantly improve your
debating. I repeat: going to tournaments and training with your society once a week
isn’t enough.

Step 2: Groove the Basics

Two basic and fundamental skills that you can and should prioritise in your personal
practice are analysis and structure. They are foundational. If you do either of these
things poorly, you're unlikely to succeed at an international debate tournament.
Analysis Persuasive, relevant analysis is the currency of victory in debating. If you
win games of football by scoring more goals than the other team, you win debates by
doing better, more persuasive, more relevant analysis than the other teams. Of all the
skills you should look to practice as you prepare for an international debate
tournament, I think this is the most important. What does it mean to analyse an
argument persuasively, in a way that will win a debate? In brief, it is to explain: a)
why the argument is true b) why the argument is important, and c) why the argument
is more important than the other arguments being made in the debate. Practicing: a)
why your argument is true If you watch the best speakers, you'll notice many share a
common trait: they frequently ask themselves 'Why?' aloud during their speeches. To
take just one example, watch the Opp extension speech in the Vienna EUDC final. So
much good 'Why'ing!

This is a very useful tic. It forces you to explain and give reasons for the claims you
are making. It’s also something that's actually very unnatural - you've probably gone
through most of your life expressing opinions and ideas without having to fully justify
or explain them. But that's exactly what you need to do in debates. If you don't, other
teams will explain why your arguments are wrong or unimportant, and those teams
will beat you. Since it's unnatural, it's something you should practice. So when giving
your practice speeches at home, ask yourself 'Why?' aloud. Record yourself giving
your speeches: do you sufficiently explain 'Why' your claims are true? During your
prep time, you should also be constantly challenging yourself and your partner to
explain why what you're saying is true. And you should practice this questioning so
frequently that it becomes a habit. It's a skill that becomes grooved. That's to say, you
start doing it without even thinking about it. Asking 'Why?' during a debate speech
becomes reflexive, like tying your shoe laces or some other form of muscle memory.
That's where you want to get to, and you only get there through regular, repeated
practice. Practicing: b) why your argument is important My advice is much the
same as for a). Successful debaters also often have the tic of asking themselves aloud
the question ‘And why is that so important?’Which is usually followed by explaining
the impact of the argument. Failing to explain the impact of your argument is a
common pitfall, and is again something you need to groove. Without an impact the
judge is left asking ‘Why should I care about this argument?’ Make sure you always
answer that question. Practicing c) why your argument is more important than the
other arguments in the debate Intermediate level debaters often succeed in going
through steps (a) and (b) when explaining an argument. Step (c) is where the magic
happens. It’s often called ‘framing’ or ‘providing a metric’, but that’s just jargon for
‘Here’s why our arguments are more important than the other arguments in the
debate’. It’s so important to winning debates that I would usually put my framing on a
separate sheet of paper from my (a) and (b) stages of the analysis, because I knew I’d
likely lose the debate if I didn’t say it. Adam Hawksbee, half of the winning team at
EUDC 2014 as Sheffield A, once gave an excellent seminar on framing, which excels
for its clarity and pertinent examples. I recommend one of your training sessions being
to watch, take notes on and reflect on this workshop.

So in your practice speeches you should be regularly assessing how well you do steps
(a), (b) and (c). It’s the most basic and crucial skill in debating, and you need to
groove it. Structure The best speakers often have immaculate structure in their
speeches. Judges better recall the intricacies and nuances of a well-structured speech
compared to a messy one and, perhaps sub-consciously, are more likely to deem its
content persuasive. Two types of structure are important: holistic and internal.
Holistically, your speech should have clear sections e.g. 3 overall points or 2 points of
clash or an introduction and 2 clear points etc. This structure should be clearly
enunciated at the start of the speech and then followed. On internal structure, you can
provide extra clarity by breaking your broader themes / points into sub-parts. For
example, if your first point is about proving argument X, you might say that you’re
going to give 2 or 3 distinct reasons why X is true. The judges then expect that sub-
division and those reasons are more likely to stick in their notes. Aiming for good
holistic and internal structure should be a regular feature of your practice speeches.
It’s another thing to groove and reflect on when you’re watching your speeches back.

Step 3: Master your Prep Method

I saw my biggest improvements as a speaker when I developed and practiced a regular
method to follow in prep time. I strongly recommend you do this too. Having a good
prep method has numerous benefits. First, it calms you down. It’s a process to go
through no matter how perplexing or scary a motion looks. It should give you the
confidence that – no matter what the topic – you’ll always come up with a solid case.
Second, it reduces the likelihood of making silly mistakes. Under the stress and
pressure of tournaments, it’s easy to forget the simple questions in prep time and miss
key features of the debate, which can seriously throw you off course. Third, it saves
time. You’ve only got 15 minutes in prep and you don’t want to waste a moment of it.
Having a rigorous, practiced process you always go through with your partner will
ensure every moment is used strategically and well. What are the ingredients of a
successful prep method? Above all, it needs to come from you. I can advise you on
the things I think you should be asking yourself in prep time, but it’s down to you to
organize the process in the way that best fits your particular style, preferences and
weaknesses. You may put more emphasis on some questions compared to others.
Good. Experiment, practice and tweak until you’re happy with your method. And
once it’s set, stick to it and use it every time you’re doing your practice speeches. It’s
another thing that needs to be grooved, that needs to become reflexive. In terms of the
successful components of a prep method, these are the key questions I would ask, and
the order in which I would ask them. Feel free to use them as a guide. 1. Carefully
read, at least three times, each of the words in the motion and agree with your
partner on their meanings. Do a quick check also if it’s a 'This House Would', 'This
House Believes', 'This House Regrets', or 'This House, as Actor X' type of motion.
Skip this step and you risk confusion/going off on the wrong track. 2. Ask the
fundamental, first principles questions: Who is affected by this? How will they
react? What changes in the world? These questions help ground you in who and
what's going to be talked about in the debate. They will also start to spark ideas for
arguments. 3. Think in depth about the best things the other side are going to say:
what will they stand for? What are the obvious arguments they’re going to make?
What’s their case? This step is essential for understanding what the comparative in the
debate is going to be, what's going to be thrown at you and what you’ll need to beat to
win. 4. Now think about your side: what will you stand for? What's your goal?
Given the obvious things the other side are going to say, what will you need to show
to win? In my head, the process was distilled into 4 simple parts: Words,
Fundamentals, Other Side, Us. If we were closing-half, I would add the questions:
What are top-half obviously going to say? And what will we need to do to beat it?
Discussing these questions generally took the first 6-8 minutes of prep. Then I felt
ready to start analysing the key claims we'd identified that would win us the debate.
Minutes 8 - 15: collaboratively with my partner, we'd thrash out: why are our
arguments true? Why are they important? And why are they more important than the
other arguments that will be made in the debate? Should I use a prep sheet? Having
this process written down on a standard page - multiple copies of which I would print
out and bring with me to tournaments - definitely helped me. It made me feel prepared
and encouraged me to be disciplined in going through the process. For the sake of
reference, here's the sheet I used. Big warning: I strongly encourage you to make your
own. We all think in slightly different ways and your prep method will be most
effective if it's come from you. Debate Prep Sheet - Warsaw EUDC You'll notice I
also had some reminders at the bottom of the sheet about good habits - such as how I
should speak (calm, slow etc.) and some trigger ideas for arguments e.g. balances of
harms/rights/incentives. Customize your prep sheet in the way that's best for you.

Step 4: Fill your analytical locker

You win debates by having the most persuasive, most relevant arguments in the
debate. Persuasive and relevant arguments are built with compelling analysis. A key
focus of your training programme should therefore be to fill your analytical locker i.e.
to build up your repertoire of the things you could explain and impact persuasively to
win debates. The array of ideas you will likely be called upon to explain and analyse
over the course of your time as a debater is fairly extensive. That’s not a problem. If
you’re doing some form of debate practice regularly, such as every day or every other
day, you’ll steadily work through these ideas and build up your repertoire. One of the
primary reasons why older, more experienced debaters succeed is because they’ve
spent more time thinking about and answering the core questions and themes I give
examples of below. It’s not about them being intrinsically more intelligent or talented.
They’ve just been playing the game longer and have accumulated more in their
analytical locker – either through simple exposure or training – than you have. You
can work to close this experiential gap, as stressed in Step 1, through your personal
practice. You might not have been to all the tournaments that they have, but you can
make up the time by practicing at home. In terms of how you build up your bank of
analytical capability, you’ll need to do targeted practice. Think of it as doing “motion-
driven matter prep”. In other words, you reflect on, think about and research ideas and
arguments that are likely to crop up in all sorts of debates, while always having
specific motions in mind. I think motion-driven matter prep is a more productive use
of your time than reading The Economist or Foreign Affairs magazine from cover-to-
cover each week. There’s certainly a role for that in your overall personal training
plan, but it should only make up a small part relative to the time you spend doing
motion-driven prep. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of examples of what I’m talking
about. It’s based around themes and clashes that crop up regularly in debates: Politics:
What is the purpose of democracy? Why is it valuable? When can it be damaging?
What are the virtues of a liberal, democratic political system compared to an
authoritarian one? And vice versa? What are the pros and cons of making decisions
via referenda? Why do we have the principle of ‘one person, one vote’? Why not give
more or less votes based on socio-economic status / age / intelligence / gender?
Relevant to debates about: voting, elections, political parties, referenda, restricting
democracy Economics: What are the virtues of free-market, capitalist economies with
limited state intervention? What are the harms? What are the benefits of economies
with extensive state intervention and redistribution of wealth? What are the harms?
What are the pros and cons of free trade? Relevant to debates about: capitalism vs
communism, taxation, free trade vs protectionism, nationalization vs privatisation
The individual and the state: Why is individual liberty valuable? When should the
state interfere in an individual’s liberty, and why? Why is privacy valuable? How
much state surveillance is justified? Why? Relevant to debates about: the state
banning/legalizing anything, privacy vs surveillance War: when is military
intervention justified? What’s necessary for such intervention to be successful? What
are the dangers of such intervention? What are the pros and cons of using private
military contractors? Relevant to debates about: military intervention, ethics of war,
use of private military contractors Criminal Justice: what are the purposes of the
criminal justice system? Why do we value those purposes? Could you explain why
one purpose is more important than any of the others? In a post-conflict situation, how
best to deliver justice? Why do we have jury systems for deciding guilt? What are the
problems with those systems? Relevant to debates about: making punishments
stricter/more lax, tweaking the criminal justice system, truth and reconciliation, juries
Animals: how should we treat animals? What do we owe them, if anything, and why?
Relevant to debates about: giving animals more/less protection, vegetarianism, the
environment Identity politics: what are the aims of feminism / the LGBT rights
movement / the Black Lives Matter movement? What are the best tactics to adopt to
achieve those aims? The aggressive pursuit of social change often risks backlash: why
does that backlash happen and why is it harmful? Relevant to debates about: how to
best achieve the goals of oppressed groups Don’t be intimidated by the length of this
list. You likely already have half-formed thoughts and answers to all of these
questions already. And, as I said, if you’re dedicating regular time to practice then
you’ll soon have done some thought and research on all of these, and you’ll be much
better placed to succeed in debates. I repeat: you won’t find the answers to these
questions by aimlessly reading The Economist or a newspaper. You need to target
your efforts. Here are some tips on how to go about answering those questions: 1)
Think for yourself. Have a go yourself at writing mini-essays in response to
questions like these. It’s best when it comes from you because you’re more likely to
remember it and express it in language that makes sense to you. It’s likely you’ve
already got the intuitions and ideas in your head, you’ve just never forced yourself to
consciously explain them. And it’s better to do this work of figuring things out in your
practice time, rather than when you’re hit with the motion for the first time at a
tournament. You want to be prepared, and if you’ve already thought about, you’ll
have a head start. 2) Watch debates online. If you’re struggling to come up with
answers yourself, it’s very likely that a high-quality WUDC/EUDC/HWS round exists
online where experienced speakers discuss these issues. Take notes on those debates
and use their analysis as inspiration for your own. 3) Discuss these ideas with other
members of your debate society and your friends. It’s likely they’ll have
perspectives on these issues. 4) Do online research. Google is a powerful tool and
will direct you to newspaper articles and academic journals that deal with these issues.
In terms of how you fit filling your analytical locker into your training plan, I
recommend making a personal list of the areas where you feel weakest analytically,
and then targeting those areas. For your inspiration, here are two examples of bundles
of personal training sessions directed at stocking your analytical bank: 1) Imagine
you’re trying to boost your analytical capacity on debates regarding the individual vs
the state. You might dedicate a 30-minute session to writing down your thoughts on
when the state should interfere in people’s liberty, and why liberty is valuable. Your
next session might then involve taking notes on a good debate about the issue, such as
the WUDC out-round, THW ban racial reassignment surgery. Your third session
might be to give a mock LO speech on a relevant motion e.g. THW ban alcohol. After
these three training sessions, you’ll likely be much better prepared and feel much
more confident about debates regarding the individual vs the state. And when that type
of debate comes up at a tournament, the probability you’ll take points from the round
has gone up significantly. 2) Imagine you want to get better at debates about the
military and war. Your first session might be to spend 30 minutes reflecting on and
planning the OG case for a motion such as ‘THW invade Zimbabwe’, using the
internet to help you. Your second session might be then to watch and take notes on the
WUDC Botswana final which was on that very issue, and compare the analysis of the
teams in that final with the analysis you came up with. Your third session might be to
do a mock PM speech on the motion ‘THBT South American states should give
material support to a coup against the Venezuelan government’, putting into practice
some of the analysis you might have picked up in sessions 1 and 2. Your fourth and
fifth sessions might be to Google newspaper and academic articles on the merits and
dangers of humanitarian intervention. Spend time reading those articles and adding
notes to your Google doc. After these five sessions, when the military intervention
debate comes up at a tournament, you’ll be much better prepared to take points in the
round. You should be able to come up with similar bundles of training sessions for the
areas where you feel analytically weak. Deep-diving into an issue, where you do it for
several training sessions in a row like in the examples I’ve given, is an effective way
of making it stick.

Step 5: Drill your Positional Strategy

To succeed at an international debate tournament, you’ll need excellent positional
strategy. That is, you need to be well versed and drilled in the particular strategic
dynamics of each position in a BP debate, and you know what strategies to pursue to
win. A few pointers on how to get better at each position: Opening Government The
position most frequently feared by beginner and intermediate debaters is Opening
Government. It’s unsurprising: you go first, you have the shortest time to prepare your
speeches and you dread drawing a motion you know nothing about. That fear often
correlates with weak performance. Teams panic when they are OG, make poor
strategic decisions and fail to give speeches that are analytically robust and debate-
winning, resulting in placing 3rd or 4th in the round. It need not be so. A key aim of
your training programme should be to come to love drawing Opening Government.
Once practiced, drilled and mastered, it’s probably the best position to be in a BP
debate. Fortunately, it’s the easiest position to practice in your own time. All you need
is yourself, a motion, 15 minutes of prep time, and hey presto: you’ve got a Prime
Minister’s speech. Practicing PM speeches should be a bread and butter feature of
your personal training programme. The more you do them, the more your confidence
will grow. Your performance in Opening Government will also improve as you fill
your analytical locker. The more debates and arguments you‘ve thought about in your
practice time, the more likely it is you’ll see a motion at a tournament and go ‘Yup, I
know what this is about’. In terms of specific advice on how to succeed in Opening
Government, there’s a lot of good stuff out there. Try these two for starters: Will
Jones, a WUDC winner, on OG and “How to win Worlds from Opening Government”
- find it on p.22 of this edition of the Monash Debate Review Opening Opposition
As with Opening Government, this is a straightforward position to practice. Mock LO
speeches should be a regular feature of your personal training programme. Again,
many good and insightful things have been said about the strategy of Opening
Opposition. For a starter, try this excellent seminar by WUDC finalist Duncan Crowe.
I think his notion of treating OO like a reverse OG is a particularly useful one.
Closing-half On the face of it, it’s hard to practice being Closing Government or
Closing Opposition in your own time. Of course, you could watch the top-half of a
debate online and try to extend off of it, but that’s quite time-consuming. Not to
worry. If you’re regularly working on filling your analytical locker, your performance
in closing-half will very likely improve. Having a deep stock of persuasive and
impactful analysis at your disposal makes it more likely you’ll have the arguments or
particular analytical links that your top-half team didn’t have, and so you will beat
them. Also, if you’re regularly practicing your prep method and increasing its
productivity, you’re also boosting the chances that you’ll win from closing-half.
Having a stellar prep method that regularly turns out good arguments – no matter what
the motion – makes it more likely you’ll come up with a better case than your top-
half. In terms of specific strategic advice on how to win in closing-half, try for
starters:
Olivia Sundberg Diez’s excellent powerpoints with advice for extensions and on
summary speeches. Fred Cowell’s advice on extensions. Adam Hawksbee on framing
– I flagged this earlier, he rightly points out how winning extensions are often
extensions driven by good framing.

Step 6: Rebut Strategically

You win debates by having the most persuasive case in the room. If a team on the
opposing bench has developed persuasive arguments, part of your winning strategy
may require diminishing the persuasiveness of those arguments. That’s the aim of
rebuttal. What makes rebuttal persuasive? It must be analytic, developed and
targeted. Analytic = it’s fully explained, using the frequent question of ‘Why’, just as
you would if explaining your own argument. Novice and intermediate debaters often
fall into the trap of simply asserting a counter-claim to an argument, but then failing to
explain why the counter claim is true. Developed = it’s not 4 or 5 one-line responses
to an argument (as has become increasingly popular amongst debaters), but it’s
instead 1 or 2 well-developed, thoroughly analysed responses. These are more likely
to be robust and less vulnerable to counter-response. Targeted = it’s aimed at the most
important arguments being made by the other side, taken at their most persuasive.
Time spent rebutting less relevant or less impactful arguments is time not being used
to develop the persuasiveness of your own arguments. How to practice rebuttal? Of
course, you’ll have the chance to practice rebuttal when you speak in debates in your
society’s training sessions and at tournaments. If you’re looking to add more training
on rebuttal in your own time, when you do your mock LO speeches, you can do it in
response to a high-quality PM online, and you rebut that speech as part of your LO.
Record yourself and check the analytic quality of your rebuttal. You can also watch
the *actual* LO from the video, and compare their responses to your own for more
inspiration.

Step 7: Have Beautiful Style

Over the course of a debate tournament – and particularly an international – I reckon
having good style – the way you deliver your speech - picks you up at least an extra 1
or 2 team points. That’s because good style facilitates the persuasiveness of an
argument in many ways. A few examples: A speaker who speaks clearly and slowly is
more likely to have the intricacies of their argument understood and fully written
down by the judging panel, compared to a speaker who doesn’t speak clearly and
speaks at 100mph. Speaking clearly and slowly requires practice. A speaker who is
calm and in control of their speech is less likely to skip over key analytical links in an
argument. Calm and control comes from practice. A speaker who has good control
over their breathing during a speech is more likely able to use subtleties of tone,
intonation and volume to add persuasive stress and emphasis to their arguments.
Controlled breathing and emphasis requires practice. A speaker who is in control of
their hands during a speech is less likely to make erratic, expansive gestures that
distract the judges from the analysis being delivered. Controlling your hands requires
practice. For these reasons, practicing style should feature in your training
programme. As a guide for where you want to get to, watch the World Schools kids.
Their style is class. Their control, speed, clarity and emphasis is often fantastic. But
they’ve only got there through lots of practice, which is what you need to do too. If
you’re going to spend practice sessions working on your style, as I encourage, focus
on one particular element and then solely assess the speech in terms of how well you
did that element. For example, you might prep a PM speech for a debate and, when
giving the speech, make your primary focus to be, say, speaking slowly. Record the
speech, watch it back, and see how well you did on speaking slowly. If the analysis in
the speech is a bit naff, don’t worry – your primary focus is how well you did at the
skill you were working on, which was speaking slowly. As with the other skills
mentioned in this guide, like analysis, structure or your prep method, good style needs
to be grooved. In other words, you need to keep practicing it until it becomes second
nature. You just automatically speak slowly, for example, when you’re giving a
speech. It’s effortless and natural. But you only get there through grooving the skill
i.e. practicing it over and over.
Step 8: Build a Winning, Healthy
Mentality
Half the battle at a debate tournament – and particularly an international – is retaining
a positive, happy mind-set. If you can maintain that strong, upbeat frame of mind -
regardless of the results you’re taking - you’re much more likely to break. And, most
importantly, enjoy yourself. Think of debate like a sport where the primary muscle
you use is your brain. The healthier, happier that muscle is during the competition, the
more likely it is you will perform well. Your aim is to avoid psychological depletion.
There is a very long list of things at a debate tournament that will deplete you at a
mental level. Here is a list of top tips to avoid such things:

Don’t worry about things you can’t control. The other teams you might debate
against, the judges, the delays, the motions, the points you’re on, the points other
teams are on… debaters love talking about these things yet you can’t control any of
them. Don’t waste time dwelling or stressing over them. Simply focus on the things
you definitely can control: your own prep method, your strategy, your speeches. The
rest is just noise. Switch off between rounds. Debate is mentally draining. You focus
intensely for around an hour in each debate. Conserving your mental energy should be
a priority in between rounds. Find something that really calms you down and puts you
in a happy place. Non-debate chat with your friends, listening to music, taking a walk,
reading a book – it’s up to you. Noisy announcement rooms are – by their nature – just
a bit stressful to be in, so try to be in there as little as possible, or listen to music to
block out all the noise. Only care about the next debate. When a round is done, it’s
done. Forget it. Sure, have a quick debrief with your partner after the round and
perhaps get extra feedback from a judge. But then it’s gone. You don’t care about it.
All you care about is the next debate. Agonizing over what you could have done or
said is only likely to further deplete you psychologically, and you don’t want that. I
recommend throwing away your debate notes as you leave a round: it’s a nice
symbolic way of saying ‘This no longer matters. Onwards.’ Have faith in your
practice. If you’ve been regularly training in your own time as this guide suggests,
you should go to Worlds with no fear. You know you’ve prepared as well as you
could have done. Whatever happens, happens. But you know that you’ve done all you
can. Sleep well. If you’re serious about breaking at an international, you want your
mind to be in the best physical condition possible. Long sleep is crucial. You’re going
to be putting your mind under more intense pressure than usual, so you want to be
getting at least the same amount of sleep as you get at home, if not more. Whilst
you’ll undoubtedly face lots of well-intentioned and good-spirited peer pressure to go
to the socials on each night of WUDC and stay long into the night, say no. And don’t
feel bad: all the other teams that are serious about breaking will be turning in early
too. Don’t let them get a competitive advantage over you. Only drink alcohol once
you’re out. It can be very hard to say no to the plethora of free drinks opportunities at
an international, but I advise saving it until you’re out of the competition. Your mind
will already be strongly depleted after a day of debate and alcohol will only
exacerbate that depletion. Even the very tempting ‘one drink’. No-one serious about
succeeding in an activity drinks the night before doing it. You shouldn’t either.
(Caveat: if you’re not really too fussed about breaking and are just there for the
parties, go wild!) Stay hydrated. Your brain is mostly made up of water. If your
hydration levels drop, so will its performance. So you should be drinking water
regularly throughout. Debate tournaments like WUDC are also rife with dehydrating
factors – spending long periods of time in places where there’s lots of air conditioning
(the airport, the plane, your hotel room, university buildings, classrooms) is a big one.
Proactively combat that by regularly drinking water. Accept the element of chance.
Debate is a game steeped in chance and probability. Be comfortable with that. The
particular configuration of motions, positions and opposing teams you’re handed on
the final day of the international will be strong factors in determining your likelihood
of breaking. But that’s fine. Just do your best. That’s all you can ask of yourself. Your
aim is to give yourself the highest probability of breaking that you can. Once you’ve
done that, you’ve just got to roll the dice and accept that what will be, will be. Take
enjoyment from the success of others. If you take a loss in a debate, or fail to break,
or experience any other debate-related disappointment, a very good antidote to any
blues is to take joy in the success of others. If debate matters to you, it very likely
matters to them too. Be glad for them. They’ve likely worked just as hard as you have.
Having a chilled out perspective where you recognize debate is just an intellectual
game and you take joy in the success of others is a good step towards a healthy, happy
mentality.