Category: Debate

Team Policy Mid-Season Workshop (NCFCA)

When: Wednesday Jan. 30 7:30pm-9:00pm CT

Instructor: Eric Meinerding

Cost: $5 members/$20 non-members

Competition season is upon us! That crazy time of year where you forget what day of the week it is, whether or not pizza is an acceptable breakfast, and any sense of a routine. You may have weeks where you are gone for an entire weekend, get back Monday, and start another tournament Thursday or Friday. It’s busy, but it’s some of the most fun you’ll ever have. However, you are investing a considerable amount of time and money into these tournaments so making the most of your time is crucial!!

Join Eric on Jan. 30 where he will hold a mid-season workshop on how to survive and thrive during your tournament season as a team policy debater. Wondering if you should write an extra brief, change your aff case between tournaments, memorize your 1AC, or just do practice debates until you’re blue in the face? Well, as someone who once did four tournaments in two weeks, traveling over 2,000 miles in the process, Eric Meinerding knows or a thing or two about making the most of this hectic time, and will help navigate these questions during the workshop. Hope to see you all there!

Second Semester Team Policy Debate Club (NCFCA)

Dates: Starting Wed. Feb. 13 (all calls will be recorded)

Time: Approx. 1 hour/ 8:00-9:00pm CT

Instructor: Eric Meinerding

Cost: $50 per member/ $75 per non-member

Looking for additional Team Policy support for the competition season? Well you’re in luck! Eric Meinerding is hosting a second semester TP debate club exclusively through Lasting Impact. He’ll be meeting with students weekly for 8 weeks, all across the NCFCA nation to work through strategies against the popular cases, find the best arguments in the current climate, go over ballots, discuss debate theory, advanced impacting, and a host of other topics. Included with your enrollment is a free coaching session with Eric at any point during the season to get direct, personalized feedback tailored directly to your team’s needs. So whether you are without a club for the season, looking to go above and beyond, or are looking for innovative strategies, this club will provide what you’re looking for.

Click HERE for more information.

Eric is studying Policy and Law at Liberty University. He competed in the NCFCA for six years focusing mostly on limited preparation events and both styles of debate, qualifying to nationals in both TP and LD his senior year, along with multiple speech events. Eric competed on Liberty’s Policy Debate Team for three semesters at both the junior varsity and varsity levels. Eric sees competitive forensics as way to develop one’s communication and argumentation skills to use in all facets life. Eric loves looking at debate from the perspective of a game, meaning he wants to help debaters process and execute the most strategic arguments and preparation methods for all styles of debate, along with effective rhetorical skills to present those arguments in debate rounds as well as forensics categories.

Humor, when used correctly, can be a huge asset in a debate round, a great tool for your debate toolbox. When used incorrectly, humor can damage your credibility and/or likability. In my opinion, those who have truly mastered debate are able to incorporate humor in seamlessly in an engaging and relevant way.

In this video I’ll be talking about how to use humor in debate: telling some pretty cringeworthy stories of my attempts at humor, giving some examples of funny quotes to use, and some do’s and don’ts…

Catherine graduated high school this past year and is taking a gap year to do a business internship through the program “Praxis.” After that, she is not sure if she will go to college or pursue other career paths, but she is interested in business, politics, and loves cooking, biking, and traveling. As a coach, she is passionate about helping debaters actually understand the arguments they are running, and focusing on quality over quantity of arguments. Catherine competed in TP with NCFCA for 5 years, and qualified to Nationals all 4 years of high school, finishing first in at-large her junior and senior years. She enjoyed partnering with both her older sister and younger brother, both of whom taught her very different skills. She won four debate tournaments over the years and was honored to get a 4th place speaker award at Nationals in 2015.

CX designed to undermine your opponent’s case is a lot like CX designed to support your case, with two key differences: you don’t know what your opponent is running ahead of time, and the questions aren’t written beforehand (usually). Judging from these differences, you may think that you’re doomed to wait until you hear your opponent’s case and then pray you come up with something intelligent to ask… let me discourage this thinking. While you can have strokes of brilliance in the moment, just ​thinking​ a bit about the resolution can give an idea of what you might want to ask.

Much like I can’t tell you what questions to ask to support your debate cases specifically, I can’t know what your opponents are going to run. However, I can give you the keys (learned over the course of several years) to attacking your opponent’s case in CX.

Continue reading “Cross X Series #4: Keys to Undermining your Opponent’s Case by: Samuel Hand” →

You have an inherent advantage when writing questions to build up your own case: you know exactly what you’re running in said case. This means that, with proper guidance, you can know exactly what to ask. While I can’t tell you which questions to write for your specific case, I can give you some principles which will hopefully make those questions much easier to formulate. Before I do, though, let me tell you what not to do.

Continue reading “Cross X Series #3: Solidifying your own Case by: Samuel Hand” →

Have you ever walked into a debate round wondering in the world are you doing? Have you ever walked out of a round thinking you won that round, but ended up pathetically losing? Or have you ever walked out of a round thinking that you lost pathetically but actually won by a huge margin?

I’ve been there before, feeling inconsistent in my debate rounds, not knowing how I won or lost. We either go through a debate round feeling rushed and nervous, or confident and pragmatic. But regardless of how we feel, sometimes the judge votes for what we least expected. Why is this? Why can’t we find consistency in our competition? How is it that the really good people keep on winning tournament after tournament and we are just chilling here getting 3-3?

If you’re in this boat and want more consistency in your debate rounds, then I have 5 tips to share with you that will lead you down a more successful path! Join me, on Thursday for my LD Online Workshop, or keep reading…

Continue reading “Top 5 Things Every LDer Should Do (Workshop Thursday)” →

I hope you found the last installment (purposes of cross-examination) helpful! Of course, understanding what you should aim to accomplish in CX is crucial to actually being effective in your rounds — but head knowledge means nothing unless you can actually implement it. The first question of implementation is this: how should you conduct yourself in cross-ex?

Continue reading “Mechanics of Cross X – Asking and Answering Questions by: Samuel Hand” →

What if we spoke less and listened more? It seems like a silly question to ask in the context of competitive speech and debate, but fortunately for us, in debate it includes a built-in Q&A segment after each constructive speech. Debate is often thought of in terms of argument, counterargument, counter-counterargument, and so on — and it is therefore easy to overlook those three minutes of Q&A after each constructive. However, those six (for LD) or twelve (for TP) minutes may be more important than any speech in the round…

Continue reading “Purposes of Cross Examination by: Samuel Hand” →