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018 Team Policy Debate Introduction and Overview

• Tia Hain

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In this episode, Tia Hain, a Classical Conversations Challenge 1 Director, introduces the series on Team Policy Debate. This episode covers the structure and purpose of team policy debate, outlines the upcoming episode topics, and details the content of Tia's custom supplemental guide. Topics include the basics of debate, constructing a good case, speaker roles, affirmative and negative team strategies, evidence gathering, cross-examination, flowing, and common fallacies. Tia also emphasizes the grammar phase approach to learning debate, shares a detailed first semester timeline, and provides practical tips and resources for new debaters.

00:00 Introduction to Team Policy Debate
00:25 Overview of the Podcast Series
01:03 Detailed Episode Breakdown
03:16 Welcome and Background Information
03:56 Introduction to the Supplemental Guide
06:11 New Debate Timeline
08:54 Week-by-Week Breakdown
24:51 Understanding Policy Debate
29:18 Debate Etiquette and Inventory
33:00 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

Links:

018 Team Policy Debate Series for Classical Conversations - Introduction, What Is Debate, Supplemental and Templates

Tia: [00:00:00] Team Policy Debate. Everyone's favorite, okay. A favorite of some, probably those who wanna become lawyers eventually. If you're listening to this podcast or landed on this video, I am assuming you are either starting Team Policy Debate with your Classical Conversations, Challenge 1 class, you're in the middle of it and just lost, or you are trying to get ready for next year.

 Whichever it is, this podcast series will help you. This is the beginning of the series that I am doing to walk you through Team Policy Debate, step by step. This particular recording, episode number 18, is the debate introduction. What is debate? And I'm going to go over the supplemental I made and the templates that I made to help you through debate.

I'm going to be breaking up each topic because that way if you're just searching for something in particular for debate that's confusing you, it'll be much easier to find just the video you need. Otherwise, this podcast episode would probably be a good [00:01:00] five to six hours long.

That's what this episode is gonna be about. The next episode will be elements of a good case, all about the debate itself, the order of debate, and what the speaker roles are.

Episode after that, which will be 20, will be all about the affirmative side and stock issues. So we'll really dive deep into those and how those work. The next episode, which will be 21, will be all about the 1AC, which is the first affirmative construction. If you're in the middle of debate right now, you'll understand. You're hearing the acronym 1AC thrown around a lot. I will explain all about it and how it works, and we will also go over how to build a harm because I think that's the one thing at the very beginning of debate. That's just really hard to wrap your brain around when you're doing your research. So we'll dive into that .

And then the next episode will be episode 22, which will be all about the negative side and how you handle being on the negative side. Episode after that will be 23 and that will be all about [00:02:00] evidence. What kind of evidence you need and how to do the research to get that evidence.

The episode after that, number 24, will be all about cross-examination, how to do cross-examination and how to do it well. The episode after that, which will be 25, will be how to flow because that is how you take notes during a debate. You have to do it a very specific way that is helpful, as well as able to keep up with what is being spoken.

The episode after that number 26 will be all about the common fallacies to look for in your opponent's argument. And then the very last episode in this series, which will be 27, will be all about rebuttals. Now if you're not in Classical Conversations and just wanna find out about debate, I guess you can stick around.

But if you're not interested in learning about Team Policy Debate, this will probably bore you to tears. So you might wanna move on while you can, but I know a lot of people are having a lot of issues with debate, especially when they first start learning it. [00:03:00] And I have put my supplemental on facebook groups as well as band groups, and so far it has been very, very helpful, especially for first time directors and for parents.

That is what we're going to go over today and the upcoming episodes. But first...

Welcome to Campaign, the Adventures of a Catholic family that homeschool public schools, online schools, and has one super obsessed with baseball kid currently. I, Tia Hane am a classical conversations challenge one director. I directed challenge one a few years ago as well as directed challenge A before two.

A lot of this podcast channel is related to that. I post a new podcast every Friday. Other videos as well. I also post videos about math, mostly algebra since I tutor and our life. We love our adventures, so come along for the ride and click subscribe or follow if you are a homeschooler or are thinking about homeschooling, or even if this content just interests you there, I've said the things.

Now let's move on into the content.

okay, so let's get into it. First I want to tell you that what I am going [00:04:00] through is a supplemental that I created that matches with the Tour Guide. So if you're part of Classical Conversations, you should own the Introduction to Debate Tour Guide. I've directed Challenge 1 before, and. I knew absolutely nothing about debate, and it was very difficult to use just the Tour Guide to be able to walk the students through it because I had no foundation whatsoever.

Now, to be honest, as of now, Classical Conversations has a lot of great videos and a lot more instruction on their CC Connected website, you do have to be part of Classical Conversations for that. But what I created is something that is designed to walk the person through step by step that doesn't know what they don't know.

The issue with the Tour Guide, in my opinion, is it was written by someone who really knows what they're doing, and that's great, but a lot of times when you really know what you're doing, you don't [00:05:00] really have a way to be able to put yourself back into those shoes of not knowing what you don't know.

I tried to create this supplemental and the templates from that perspective. As well as, last year's Challenge 1 director, I helped them use the supplemental to figure out where I needed to make some changes. And also walking my new class through it, I figured out where I need to make some changes and I have asked others that have used my supplemental to please let me know, like what doesn't make sense. What other things do I need to explain a bit more? This supplemental is ongoing and changing and all that long, long talk was just to tell you that you can get your hands on my supplemental and the templates, you just need to go to Camp Hain . com, C-A-M-P-H-A-I N.com.

You go to the upper right hand corner and click Challenge 1, and then when you go to the Challenge 1 site, you'll see there's one side that's all the podcast episodes and one side that is all the file. So you should be able to find it there within the [00:06:00] files. In addition, I will link directly to this podcast episode when it goes up on my website.

So that will also have direct links to the supplemental and to the templates.

Let's get into the supplemental. First thing I wanna go through is the table of contents. I'm just gonna describe what I have because it's gonna make it easier for you. The first thing that is in the table of contents, that is listed as the new debate, first semester timeline.

With this supplemental, what I did was I divided up how to learn debate a little differently than what is in the Challenge 1 guide. Just for Team Policy Debate only, I gave you a completely new timeline of what you want your students to do at home and what you want to be going over in seminar. It is mostly the first semester because that is the grammar phase of Team Policy Debate, that's where they're really having to learn the terminology and how things work and how to think a little differently when they're trying to work on debate.

For the [00:07:00] second semester, the only thing that changed was when we do rebuttals. I'll go over this timeline here in just a second, but I just want to let you know that I do write out a whole timeline for you, so it makes it easier.

The only thing that's a little different is I have listed in my timeline the setup for five full debates, because I have 10 kids and I am going to have them do the affirmative and the negative. I want them to get the idea of how to do both. because the problem that I had, the first time I directed Challenge 1 was because we only did one or the other that when we switched up partners, it ended up a few kids only ever did one side. When they moved on to Challenge 2, they hadn't experienced both sides to really understand how that worked. And then they just jumped straight into Lincoln Douglas debate. That is what I do for my students.

Obviously, feel free to use this however you want to with your students. However many debates you have, you can do other stuff. This is just what we did for our class.

Back to the table of contents. [00:08:00] That's the first thing is the new timeline. Then we talk about what is policy debate, which we will be going over in this podcast episode. Then we go over elements of a good case, which will be, I believe, the next episode, the debate itself, the order of the debate, speaker roles, all about the affirmative team, all about the negative team, all about evidence, all about research, all about cross examination.

Then all about rebuttals, then flow, then fallacies in your opponent's research and fallacies in your opponent's arguments. These are things that you can use in the debate and then inventory at table and etiquette.

In this podcast episode, we are going to go over. The timeline, what is policy debate? And then we're gonna go over the inventory at table and etiquette because I think these are some basic things that you need right off the bat. And I also go over that right off the bat with the students. It just felt odd to put it higher up in the supplemental. It was more like a appendix type of thing.

Let's jump into the new timeline. What I did is I had the students before they even [00:09:00] came to our very first week, is to read the Tour Guide pages five through 14.

Now, if you have the Tour Guide in front of you, like I do right now, you will see that pages five through 14 is Introduction to Debate, where they talk all about it, the spirit of debate. Then we go into introduction for Team Policy Debate. Realize that if you have the Tour Guide Introduction to Debate, it is Team Policy Debate and Lincoln Douglas Debate all in here.

We are just on the Team Policy Debate. It says introduction to team, policy, debate, then the player's roles. It goes over the judges, the timers, the coaches and facilitators, and the debaters themselves. And then it talks about the resolution, how to come up with your resolution and how you want to write your resolution.

So I wanted the students to have that. As a foundation before we even jumped into our first community day. Now when they got to community day that day, that's saying day way too many times. But anyway, week one I had them in class read and discuss the [00:10:00] simple mental pages four through nine, which is: what is policy debate, elements of a good case, the debate itself, the order of the debate, and the speaker roles. That was something we went over in class together. And then they also went over page 30, which is what I said before about inventory at the table and etiquette. And then we read and discussed the Tour Guide pages 15 through 22.

So 15 through 22 is the debaters roles while speaking. It goes over the roles of the actual debaters while they are speaking, and we will be going over exactly who the debaters are here in a minute. All the way through from the constructions all the way through to the rebuttals, like what they're supposed to be doing each time.

And then it says the debaters rolls while speaking, double time. It just gives you nice little pictures and arrows of how they're doing that.

That is all that we went over through the Tour Guide in that first day. And then we also chose our first [00:11:00] topic. I wanted to pick it. Right away so we could refine the resolution.

We just picked the topic and then we worked on developing the resolution over the next week. Now that's week one. They go home and they read the supplemental pages 10 through 14, which is all about the affirmative team. They get all the stuff about the affirmative team. I have them read the Tour Guide all about the affirmative team as well, and.

Separate pages all about stock issues. Now, I also had them work on watching the videos from CC Connected. If you are part of Classical Conversations, you have access to CC Connected. And there they have some really, really good videos, but I wanted them to watch certain videos at certain times.

I had them watch the stock issues video. Then I also had them read the supplemental pages 19 through 20, which is all about evidence and research because we were going to dive into that. And then also had them read the Tour Guide. For all about evidence and [00:12:00] research and then had them watch the video on how to do research, and it seems like a lot, but it really wasn't.

The videos are only somewhere between five to 10 minutes long. They're not that long, but they're really good for a nice foundation for them.

Then we come into class and then we go over the affirmative team, evidence and research. We just go into that, dive into it really well, and I answer any questions they have.

What I'll do is I will go ahead, even though they've read it at home, I will reread the supplemental for those pages. That way they get it again, and they come up with more questions, especially when they're all together, because I'm sure you know this because this is why we do Classical Conversations, but when the students are together and in conversation, one thing will spark an idea in someone else and vice versa, and you end up with more ideas and more questions.

But that's good because that way hopefully you can get your questions answered. Now we didn't have time this year to watch the CC debate [00:13:00] video their Christmas carol's Team Policy Debate with no commentary. I had that down there just in case. We did have time, but we didn't have time to do that in class because there was a lot to go over. They did have a lot of questions, which I thought was great.

After all that, I send them home for week three. They need to collect five to six articles for evidence for their 1AC or their first affirmative construction because they know how to gather evidence and they know what our beginning resolution is because as they gathered evidence, they realized they needed to refine the resolution a little bit, and then I had them watch that video with the Christmas Carols Team Policy Debate with no commentary at home.

Then we come back to class week three, and we start to write our first affirmative construction as a group. I picked a couple of articles that I found, interestingly enough. The two that I found that I really liked and I printed out for my students, it just happened to be two of my students, one each found the same articles when they were doing their research.

But what I did was I went through those articles and found [00:14:00] the things that I thought would work best to start building the 1AC so they could see as we read it together, what they're looking for to help build their 1AC. Now they needed to go home and work on their 1AC at home because I wanted them to come in with any more questions they had so we can dive into it a little bit deeper.

I also had them watch the cross-examination video from CC Connected because we were gonna talk about cross-examination when they came back into class for week four.

Now I wanna back up for just a second because something I did not explicitly state at the beginning of this, I stated over and over again to my students and to their parents that to remember that Challenge 1 for Team Policy Debate is the grammar phase. They are just learning how to do this, so don't expect it to be perfect because it's not going to be.

In fact, my students, as of recording this, they will be turning in their [00:15:00] individual 1ACS in just a couple of days. And I told them because they have a lot of questions, which is great, but I told them, don't worry about your 1AC being absolutely perfect because it's not going to be. It just can't be at this stage. They need to really learn it first before they can start perfecting it. They are just in the grammar phase and that's okay. That's what this is supposed to be. They're perfecting these techniques as they move on to Challenge 2, three, and four. This is why we do debate through all of the upper challenge levels.

Another thing that we did is because this particular year, which is 2025 through 2026 for Challenge 1, Challenge 1 is not doing the math map yet. That won't happen until next year, and since everybody is in a completely different place with math right now. What we did is sometimes we actually used that math strand time to work on Team Policy Debate because this particular year, I think [00:16:00] it's very, very important that they understand this grammar phase of Team Policy Debate.

It takes extra time of them being in class with all of them together, with me walking through all of this stuff and asking questions. Hopefully that makes sense. That's what we chose to do and I definitely needed that time for week four because we ended up using the math strand time to go over cross examination. We read and discussed the supplemental, pages 21 through 23. I did not have them do that at home. I had them work on their 1AC and I had them watch the video at home, but we actually did the supplemental about cross-examination, which I have three pages diving into cross-examination in class because I wanted them to be able to ask questions about that and go over that.

And I did relate it a lot to mock trial because obviously in Challenge B last year they did do mock trial. I also related how intense it is. The Team Policy Debate itself this year is kind of like logic [00:17:00] was for them last year. It's like you don't wanna get behind and it's a lot, but once you get this grammar phase down, then it ends up being much easier.

It's still a lot of work, don't get me wrong, to do research and everything, but it does end up being a lot easier. We did that for that strand, and then I took the actual Team Policy Debate time that we had for week four and we worked on the 1AC. And what I did with them is I did how to build the harm.

I had all the students send me all the links to all their articles because I wanted to be able to go through them and see what is this particular article good for? Oh, this has a lot of good stuff for a plan, or this has a lot of good stuff for advantages. Or sometimes this one will be really good for the negative. Not quite there yet, but keep it in your back pocket.

And I went ahead and gave all those links to everybody to be able to use because I told them that for first semester, we are doing this as a group. They are not gonna be judged on their debates [00:18:00] except for I will be giving notes on what they can do better, but it will not be a fully judged debate because I wanted to work on this together as a group. I want them to not have that stress for the very first debate.

I want them to really focus on learning the terminology and how things work and how it flows.

The second debate will be judged, the one in the second semester, but the one for the first semester, that one is not gonna be judged because I just wanted them to focus on learning how it works.

What we did is week four in class, I took a particular article that I found had some good advantages and one of those advantages, I figured out what kind of stat I would need to show that is a harm.

I walked them through how to build a harm. From that article that they had, because when you look at most articles, they're not gonna say, this is the particular harm in this situation, and we need to have this going [00:19:00] on because it will turn into this advantage. Most articles are just gonna give you the advantage, you need to figure out what you need to do to build that harm.

That is why. Another episode that I have coming up will be all about how to build a harm because it needs to be done in a very specific way. But that is what we did for week four. And then they went home and they finished their 1AC. I answered any questions they had and that actually took quite a bit of time.

That took the whole strand time to do that and answered the questions. And we also had Challenge 2 come in since they're getting ready for debate so they could learn this stuff as well.

Now week five. This is coming up for us. This is actually just in a couple days. All the students will present their individual 1ACs.

I am going to have everybody cross examine. Now what I'm gonna have them do is I'm gonna have them take notes. We're not learning flow yet. That is week seven. This is just gonna be general taking notes, and I am going to call on three individuals and they need to. Each ask a [00:20:00] question as if they are cross-examining.

They're going to do it from their seats. They're not gonna stand up there, it's not as much pressure on the person giving the 1AC, as well as not as much pressure on the person cross-examining, but this way they get to understand what they're looking for and what they need to do. As well as I'm going to make them take notes.

They have to learn how to take notes. At the end of that, I'm going to have them all turn in their 1ACs. And I am going to use those harms that they had to create a pool of possible harms for the upcoming debate. Because what I want is I don't want the negative to have to stress about learning how to account for everything that could possibly happen in this debate.

Like I said, this is why this one is not going to be judged. I have told them that I'm going to narrow it down to 20. Since I have 10 students and they should all have three harms, I could possibly have 30 of them, most likely. A lot of them will overlap. But if it is more than 20, I will narrow it down to [00:21:00] 20.

If it is less than 20, then they just have that pool to use from, and that way the students can use whichever ones they want when they get together with their partners. Now, I told them that I would assign their partners the next week for week six, but I already have their partners picked out, so I'm just gonna go ahead and let them know who their partners.

Are when we meet in just a couple of days for week five. But I want that pool of harms to be narrow because when you're first learning how to do negative, it's really hard to understand the concept that you have to research just about everything, anything that could possibly happen. This way they'll still have a lot to research because they know it has to be at least three of these harms. But they don't have to research any and every possibility. That they'll do for the second debate.

Now they're gonna go home and they're gonna read their supplemental, which I have here, pages 15 through 18 and 28 through 29, which is all about the negative team and all about fallacies in their opponent's research and fallacies in their opponent's arguments.

That means once they've done their [00:22:00] 1AC we are going to jump into the negative team. We're gonna learn all about how the negative team works and how they need to build their case. I also have them reading the Tour Guide all about the negative and I have them watching the video from CC Connected.

They do all that at home. Then we will come into seminar on week six and discuss negative because I am sure they're going to have a ton of questions. That will be week six.

 Week seven. Is page 27, which is flow. Okay, week seven we're gonna learn all about flow, I'm going to have them read about it in the supplemental as well as in the Tour Guide, and I'm going to have them watch a video on CC Connected about how to flow.

It's a very good video. And then we're going to discuss flow and how that works. Now, I went ahead and bought those legal pads that they're not regular letter size, but they're the legal ones. They can use that size paper for flow. They have it all in a pad. And if you watch the video on how to flow, it shows you how to fold it so you can follow [00:23:00] through the debate. We're gonna discuss that and what I'm gonna do is hand out those legal pads.

It's cheaper on Amazon to buy like 20 of them than it is to buy a few. I just got a bunch. And then we are going to watch that CC debate video again about the Christmas carols ones with no commentary, and they're going to practice flowing to that video.

I wanna see how well they do with that. And then the next week will be week eight. At home, they're going to continue to research with their partner. They're going to be adding to their affirmative and negative arguments. In seminar they're going to practice flowing with the Goldilocks debate.

Now, if you are on the Facebook group, or it might even be in the forum on CC Connected, there is a Goldilocks debate that is done, and it's actually pretty fun. I assign. We'll pick four students, like two for the affirmative, two for the negative, and they will be assigned different harms as well.

I don't wanna get into it too much because it's not mine. You need to go there to find it, but it's really well [00:24:00] done. Those students will go up there and do the Goldilocks debate while the other students will practice flowing. And that will also give them idea of how the debate is gonna flow and then they can also work with their partner on that.

And then week nine and week 10 are pretty much the same. They go home, they work on the affirmative and negative arguments with their partner and they improve their 1AC. And then when we are in class, I'm going to find some 1ACs to present and I want them to practice flowing as I present the 1ACs and then I'm gonna go over any questions and they're gonna work with their partner.

That's for those two weeks, that's what they're doing. Then weeks 11, 12, and 13, they are going to be. Preparing for the debates at home and doing the debates in class. And then the last thing I have on here is all the way into week 20, they're gonna read all about rebuttals, and then we're going to assign more partners and we're gonna discuss rebuttals in class.

That is the new timeline. Now what we want to do is go over what is policy debate. Okay.

 I have a nice bullet pointed [00:25:00] paper here that is in the supplemental all about what are the basics of policy debate. I'm gonna go over that right now. This is for you, especially if you're new to policy debate. This is a good, quick breakdown of how it works.

Policy debates are debates about whether or not to make a change or changes to an existing policy in response to problems in the current system. In Team Policy Debate two teams of two members each will argue about whether or not to change the current policy.

You have two teams, the affirmative team and the negative team. The affirmative team argues for change and will present arguments that will make up their case for passing the plan. The negative team argues against change. They want to keep the status quo. The negative team will defend the current policy and try to poke holes in the Affirmative's case.

Now because the affirmative team is the one who wants change, it is up to them to prove their [00:26:00] case. The negative team only has to disprove one part of their case to win the debate. The job of the debater is not to convince their opponent, though. Their job is to convince the judges.

You will have judges out there in the audience judging how good the case is that the affirmative team brings up because they need to argue for completely changing a policy. Something we have is not working, we need to change it to make it so it will be good.

But the negative says, nope. We wanna keep things exactly the way they are, and this is why you should not go for that affirmative team's plan.

But the person that is judging this is out in the audience. Your focus and eye contact is to the judges, not the opponent.

Now there are eight speeches in a Team Policy Debate round. I go into that more under order of the debate. The first four speeches are called constructive speeches. In these speeches, teams [00:27:00] construct their cases by laying out arguments, backed by evidence, logic, et cetera, to persuade the judges to their side.

The last four speeches are called rebuttal speeches. In these four speeches, no new arguments are allowed to be made. Instead, these speeches are expected to extend and apply arguments that have already been made. Each of the first four speeches, the constructive speeches are followed by a cross-examination by the opposing team.

Cross-examinations are designed to give the opposing team a chance to ask questions, to clarify their opponent's arguments, ask for credentials of sources, et cetera. Cross-examination questions can also be used to expose weaknesses in an opponent's argument.

Now I explain more in the individual parts of this supplemental, so this is just a 50,000 foot view of Team Policy Debate.

The debate round begins and ends with an affirmative side speech. The affirmative has the burden of proof, so they [00:28:00] get the advantage of speaking first and last.

In order for the affirmative team to have the final say, the negative team has two speeches back to back in the center. This is called the negative block. It is an advantage for the negative team since they will have a long stretch of time to speak without a response from the affirmative team. The second negative construction and the first negative rebuttal make up the negative block.

The teams will participate in several rounds of debate and will get a chance to argue as the affirmative team, as well as the negative team.

All the debaters should prepare to argue for both the affirmative position and the negative position.

The speaker should draw from ethos. Is it credible? Logos. Is it based in facts? And pathos. Does it feel significant? For persuasion throughout the speech.

 Now the timer, I just mentioned this because they need to know that there is a timer.

The timer is someone who will be timing each section. He, she, he or she will also make sure the speakers are going in the correct [00:29:00] order. There is someone that is going to be timing it. I will be going over how the timing works in the next episode when we really dive into the actual order of the debate and each construction, it's cross-examination, rebuttal, et cetera.

That's when you talk about timing.

 just know you do need to have a timer.

Now, that is all we're going to go over for today except for at the very end of the supplemental where I talk about inventory at the table and etiquette.

Let's start with inventory. It will make more sense why you have all these things at your table as we dive into debate more. But just to know this is just an appendices thing that you need to know.

 At the table, you can have a timer, and by that I mean like a little kitchen timer, so you can keep track of your own time. You can have a dictionary because you're going to be working on definitions.

You can have a laptop. This is up to the director whether or not you have a laptop. But technically a laptop is a allowed, but it cannot have internet access. Everything has to be [00:30:00] downloaded on the laptop and ready to go.

This is used in more formal debates, like competitions. This is actually used in debate competitions. I've already told my students that we are not doing this for the first debate. I still haven't decided if we're doing it for the second or not. It does make going through your research a little bit easier, but I don't know if it's really necessary.

They also want a flowing legal pad. They want at least four pens, two different colors because you don't wanna be up there and find out your pen is not working and you want two different colors because you can write stuff down for the affirmative team or for the negative team depending on which team you are. Or a color for your team, a color for the other team.

You also want some sharpened or mechanical pencils because you might want pencils to write. Highlighters.

Scotch tape. Now, the reason they have scotch tape is because I am going to have my students type up and print out all their evidence in the form that they need it, which is where they will actually list what the thing is, a quote from some source. They have to [00:31:00] state what that source is and then their summary of it. I want that printed out ahead of time because they should have done their research. They should know what it is, but they want it printed out ahead of time. Because I have had two many examples of somebody that's trying to write it out on a note card and their writing is not legible.

And the person that is up there having to give their next construction, they're looking at the note card having absolutely no idea what this says. The scotch tape is there to be able to tape those things into the template, which I will also link to on my website.

And they want their printed out articles because they might have other stuff like, oh wait a minute, I remember reading something about that. But they don't necessarily have it printed out because they didn't think they would need it. That is the inventory of the table.

Now, etiquette. Dress professionally. If they have a suit, it would be best to wear a suit. If not, boys should be wearing at least a jacket and nice dress pants. And girls should be wearing a skirt or a dress. If they have a pant suit, that will work just fine.

They should have good [00:32:00] posture. Imagine they are in front of Congress. They want to shake hands with the opponents at the beginning of the round.

At cross-examination, they greet the opposing speaker. They are polite during the cross-examination.

You want to refer to your opponents by their position. Are they affirmative or negative? Not by name. They also want to ask the judges and the timer if they are ready before they speak. They want to thank them for their time at the end of the speech.

They want to avoid distracting movements or excessive gestures.

They want to speak loudly and slowly because the majority of the time we are doing this in a very large room. You always speak quieter and faster than you think. You automatically lose the debate if the judges cannot hear you or they cannot understand you.

You want to pause while speaking, but pause naturally. They want to use gestures when they're appropriate. You don't wanna use big grand gestures, but you can use good hand movements that would work with what they're talking about. That is etiquette.

[00:33:00] Okay. My goodness, that was a lot. I know this podcast episode is pretty long. I actually was going to go over more in this podcast episode until I realized how long it was going. That is what we are doing for the first one.

What are we doing next week That will be episode 19, elements of a good case, the debate, the Order of the Debate, and the Speaker role.

We will dive more into all that information next week. I hope this is helpful. I hope the rest of the episodes are helpful. I know it is very specific, so if you're not doing Team Policy Debate and you've stayed this long, I guess you just like hearing the sound of my voice. I'm not sure. But anyway, we will talk next week about elements of a good case, the debate, the order of the Debate.

Until then, I hope you all have a wonderful week.