Practice Debates with only two people?

[Nodulux 54]

Hey, so my partner and I will be the only varsity team at our school next year, and we (obviously) want to prepare as much as we can over the summer. I was wondering if anyone has any tips for practice debates, considering there is nobody to debate against besides each other. Should we just have a normal debate, one on one, with extra prep time to make up for CX? Should we focus more on individual speeches? Is there even a point to this, or should we spend our energy on regular drills and argument preparation?

 

Thank you for any help!

[jenxtang 67]

you should find a team from another school who you're really chill with and maybe do some practice rounds with them; that's what my partner and I do (we're also our school's only circuit policy team) 

 

Also, do a lot of rebuttal redoes

[Dalotri 65]

I think that you should have a policy debate that is in the times of LD with one minute added to every speech, and two to the 1AC. It allows you to have more word economy skills (getting more content into a shorter amount of time) and to make you be able to accurately answer arguments in a more direct fashion in order to make the issues more resolved.

[Nodulux 54]

you should find a team from another school who you're really chill with and maybe do some practice rounds with them; that's what my partner and I do (we're also our school's only circuit policy team) 

Yeah, we will look into this, but we also wanted something we could do on our own, especially to test new args and such (we don't want to reveal all of our tricks to other teams on the circuit before the time is ripe)

Also, do a lot of rebuttal redoes

True, but for that we need rebuttals to redo XD. Hence, practice rounds

 

I think that you should have a policy debate that is in the times of LD with one minute added to every speech, and two to the 1AC. It allows you to have more word economy skills (getting more content into a shorter amount of time) and to make you be able to accurately answer arguments in a more direct fashion in order to make the issues more resolved.

This is a really good idea, thank you!

[Johnathan 101]

V debates on here also seem like a sound idea, also as others have stated do lots of rebuttal redoes.

[AltsNeverSolve 190]

hey yo conrad I'm up for a virtual practice debate. I could prolly get Soren to join me (or someone else if he's too lazy)

Edited April 26, 2016 by AltsNeverSolve

[ZakAli 5]

find a pair to debate via skype or google hangout thats what i did

[Nodulux 54]

hey yo conrad I'm up for a virtual practice debate. I could prolly get Soren to join me (or someone else if he's too lazy)

We would really appreciate that. It will have to wait till the summer, but I will hit you up for sure.

[ZakAli 5]

When season starts you should record your rounds (with other teams permission of course) and see where u messed up or what you could've done better

[Nodulux 54]

When season starts you should record your rounds (with other teams permission of course) and see where u messed up or what you could've done better

This is useful advice, but not really what I was looking for... I was specifically curious about off-season practice

[Maury 2445]

The best thing to do with 2 people is to practice individual arguments rather than full debates at a time.  Spread a debate out over a week or so and spend each session really perfecting each individual piece.  For example, start with a politics DA.  The 1NC should be constructed ahead of time and fairly simple, then work together on a 2AC block that you think a) will take a reasonable amount of time (likely 90 seconds to 2 minutes tops), only has arguments worthy of the 2AR, and c) has arguments you both fully understand.  There is no point including "fiat solves the link" if neither of you have thought that out, but there may be value in something like "intrinsicness" if you have some idea but never fully debated it out.  Your next step should be to give the 2AC out loud while the other partner flows.  Look for flow coherence: can the judge understand your arguments?  Is the order of arguments logical?  Have you dropped any key components of the DA?  Are you prepared for the block to blow up a part of the debate (often the impact, sometimes uniqueness or the link - especially if the link alone can trouble the case). Once you have the 2AC block down pat, take turns giving negative speeches against that block.  Again, one partner speaks while the other flows and listens intently.  Don't bother flowing with the intent to answer the speech, flow as if you were the judge and ask yourself: does this speech win the DA?  How ahead or behind will we be after this speech?  Did we cover everything sufficiently so the 1AR cannot blow anything up?  Did we turn and outweigh the case?  Where are we spending too much time?  What cards can be cut out, and where do we need more cards?  

 

These conversations will get you thinking at a more advanced level than a regular debate will.  At the end of a full debate there may have been a few dozen points for intervention and you will never see all of them.  Furthermore, in a full debate things can go haywire and negate the value of the exercise. If the 2AC drops an interp on T, it's probably a waste of everyone's time to follow through the rest of the debate.  Finally, because you only have 2 debaters, you need to give each other your full attention while the other speaks and prepping will only distract from that.  If you follow the pattern I've outlined above, you can perfect a debate one argument at a time, one speech at a time, until you have worked through to the final rebuttals.  This slows down intervention and makes your practice significantly more valuable because you are gaining tangible knowledge about the way arguments develop.  That knowledge transcends individual arguments and will be valuable indefinitely.  

 

This was the exact strategy I employed in high school to master theory arguments and it paid dividends in college debate.  I knew walking into any round that I could reliably beat anyone on conditionality and that skill alone got me at least 5 wins against top 10 teams over my career.  Be patient with each other, and work together to develop individual skills instead of trying to engage a full debate.  Focus on the details and the big picture will fill itself out.