Team Policy Debate
2009-2010 NCFCA Team Policy Debate Topic: “Resolved: That the United States Federal Government should significantly reform its policy toward Russia.”
- You will work with a partner. You and your partner form a “debate team”. Sometimes you will have to be for the issue (the affirmative) and sometimes you will have to be against the issue (negative). In any instance, you will have plenty of time to get ready for the debate.
- You will deliver speeches in a format that is unique to debate. The speeches are called constructives and rebuttals. Each person on each team will speak twice. There are affirmative constructives and negative constructives. There are affirmative rebuttals and negative rebuttals.
- You will learn rules and techniques that may seem strange to you. The way we learn how to debate may at first seem difficult. But once you take on the challenge, you will begin to understand its relationship to debating. The most difficult part of debate is the first few weeks, after that it gets easier and easier once you have learned the rules.
- We will officially debate only one resolution. Most of our emphasis will be on competitive or tournament debating. In order to compete at tournaments and to give the debaters sufficient time to prepare, a standard topic or resolution is used all year. Thousands of home school students at this very minute are researching and debating the very same issues and ideas that you will be. The resolution determines the debate area. From this area there can be thousands of issues so that each debate round is different is always changing.