Hey! I am Harsheel and I am member of the Tompkins Speech and Debate team, and I primarily compete in CD and IX, but I have competed in everything from PF to Prose. If you have any questions feel free to reach me on desaiharsheel43@gmail.com or ask me before and or after round.

tl;dr: don't worry about mistakes, the best part of s&d is having fun, stick to the basics, and good luck!

General Thoughts:

• Don’t ever insult or demean a person

• Be yourself

• Don’t take advantage of negligence (have integrity)

• Be willing to change your perspectives

• Have fun!

Congressional Debate:

• Coherence in arguments, please warrant your arguments, don't just present a claim and forget to connect it with your speech or the legislation.

• Delivery is key, if you're argumentation is on point, but I can't understand you, there is not much I can do.

• Be active in round, whether it be through motions, speaking, questioning or refuting.

For POs:

• Don't slow down the chamber

• POs are usually 3-6 unless you stand out (positively or negatively)

Extemp

• Your speech should have some form of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to persuade the audience

• Organize your speech to address key points for your topic and follow that order

• ANSWER THE QUESTION

• Choose good sources and cite them

• Using uncredible/outdated/non-related sources is bad

• Modulate your voice and use hand gestures to show the importance

• Most importantly: Grab my attention! The earlier you grab it, the better I will understand your speech. But don’t lose me along the way!

• Use some of the bullets from Congress, since these events overlap a lot.

Speech

Info

• Pick whichever topic you feel passionate educating others about. If a topic is unique and interesting, it sets a threshold for the other competitors!

• Establish your thesis early on and make sure you keep referring to it, as your speech will be long and I may forget it

• Your job as an informative speaker is to inform. Don’t try to persuade me.

• To inform, you have to engage your audience (me), so m a y b e sprinkle in some humor, or try to connect with the audience in your speech.

• No bonus points for just having a visual aid, but it can help you earn some of those ‘engagement’ points

• Overall, make sure your speech is memorable.

OO

• Having the basic structure of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos goes a long way in my ballot

• Your speech should persuade me to support your thesis. You can do this by adding humor, analogies, etc to convey your point and convince me. Having a unique take on a topic may also help.

• A strong thesis and a relevant topic also help.

• Use Facial expressions, modulating tone, and gestures to show your passion for the topic and its importance.

• These will increase your rank

• How am I impacted by this issue?

• Make sure you convey this. Otherwise, I won’t resonate with your topic...

Debate (PF/LD)

I would consider myself a lay judge, meaning I will buy any outlandish arguments, but I try to not interfere with the warranting of arguments.

Speed is okay, but don’t spread. That being said, if your opponents or I can’t understand you, you may not have the highest speaker points. ENUNCIATE!

Here’s a breakdown of my paradigm speech-by-speech.

Constructive

• Make sure you follow a Claim-Warrant-Impact structure. WARRANTING is important

Crossfire

• Be respectful

• Answer the question. Don’t avoid it

• Crossfire IS important, but I will not flow it or consider it in my ballot unless you bring it up in a later speech

Rebuttal

• (For good speaker points) let me know what argument you are responding to. Implicate every response by telling me what your response does to their argument

• Show clear CLASH. Respond/Frontline to their arguments

Summary

• Frontline = responding to responses on your case

• Extend = reiterate your argument that you are going for

• Weigh = compare you argument/impacts to their impacts and tell me why I should prefer your impacts.

• This shows CLASH that is essential to debate

• If you don’t weigh (comparatively), I will be forced to do my own weighing

• I consider defense as sticky (meaning even if you don’t bring up the response in summary, as long as it is conceded by the other team, I will factor that into my evaluation)

• However, it is a good practice to at least mention that defense

• No new responses in 2nd summary will be evaluated. 1st summary can and SHOULD frontline

• truth > tech

Final Focus

• This speech should pretty much be a SparkNotes version of your partner’s summary speech. Weighing is the most important here.

• Compare your weighing to your partner’s weighing.

Interp (POI/HI/DI/Prose)

Perform with passion. I would like you tell me why it is significant or relevant.

I appreciate, humor when appropriate, and emphasis when required, just make sure to be dedicated to the piece and be natural while performing!

Thoughts:

As a debater, I understand how much pressure we can how before going into the round, but my greatest piece of advice is to not get tensed up, and just perform. At the end of the day, your ranks never define you, it's about the knowledge you have gained throughout, don't let your time doing speech and debate be dictated by competitiveness rather how you can learn from other people, and better yourself.

Don’t be annoying, don’t be mean, Don’t be stupid. Just be good!

I've done congressional debate for the past three years, I'm extremely experienced in the event and have pretty much competed at every level and tournament you can think of. I have a ton of experience in the debate space. Just remember to be kind and respectful.

Congress

Speech structure:
Honestly whatever you think fits the round the best. As long as it's organized in some way that is understandable to me idrc.

Argumentation:
Know what ur talking about. I will be flowing. I do check sources (don't cap I can usually tell)

Speaking:
Everyone speaks differently. As long as I can hear you and fluency is not an issue, you get the checkmark from me. Be confident, professional, and don't be afraid to show a little personality!

^^^ I will always rank the best speaker and the person I thought did the best from an argumentative perspective. Sometimes those are the same people, sometimes they aren't.

For POs: You start at my three and can only move up to my 2. You can move up or down based on how I think you are running the round. If you make too many mistakes I'm not opposed to giving you 9s. POing is a great and strategic way to break, but make sure you are good at it pls, otherwise it def hurts the round as a whole and can impact others' abilities to give x number of speeches.

PF/LD

Consider me a lay judge.

Speech

Be clear, speaking is more important here, even in Extemp. I'm forgiving to fluency breaks in extemp, less so in prepared events.