Summer is Off-Season for Debate, but it Doesn’t Have to Be: Here Are the Best Ways to Improve at Debate Over the Summer
The debate season is over, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop debating. Summer, and the abundance of free time that it brings, is the perfect opportunity to improve your skills and gain a leg up on the competition ahead of the upcoming season! Here are the six best ways to do so.
1. Attend a camp
Nothing helps you improve at parli faster than a camp. First, the volume of learning that you get from attending a full-day camp is incredible; just a single day of instruction at a camp gives you roughly the same amount of time to learn as a month of practice (assuming two, hour-long sessions per week). Second, debate camps draw some of the best and most experienced former debaters and coaches, all of whom bring unique perspectives and advice. From them, you are able to learn new skills and get feedback to help you improve in ways you would not be able to during the school year. Finally, especially since tournaments aren’t held during the summer, camps provide a great space to be able to debate (in full, competitive yet friendly rounds) against others of a similar skill level, ensuring that you won’t need any adjustment time when you enter your first tournament of the upcoming season. When I went to camp this past summer, I took advantage of office hours with my lab leaders to ask questions about frameworks and plans, since those were two aspects of debate that I was never formally taught, and was able to use their answers to experiment with different frameworks and plans during the camp’s rounds. While many local leagues run their own camps, one great option for this is the NYPDL’s summer camp, taught by coaches and former NYPDL debaters. Held from August 9-11, it is free, online, and includes a mini tournament on its last day.
2. Do practice rounds
The best way to get better at parli is to debate as much as possible. While targeted drills can help with any aspects of debate you feel particularly challenged in, nothing compares, in terms of raising your overall level of debating, to actually doing rounds. Not only do these allow you to practice every part of a debate, but they also build partner cohesion and give you experience debating a variety of topics (even if exact motions aren’t reused year-to-year, you’ll likely find yourself having similar debates to ones you’ve already had once you do enough practice rounds). So, if you have an evening or two free this summer, consider setting up a practice round with some of your friends!
3. Redo your old speeches
Redoing old speeches is another excellent way to improve. Take an old flow from a round you thought that you could have done better in, and choose a speech to redo. Read over the flow up until that point, then try to give your speech. If you still think your speech could be improved, try again. Once you’re happy with the speech’s quality, move onto a new speech, either from that same round or a different one. If you have a recording of the round, start by watching it through the speech you're redoing, then give your speech and compare. By repeatedly thinking about what flaws appear in your speeches and how to prevent them, you’ll begin to be able to do so in real time, eliminating errors and improving the quality of your debating.
4. Practice the skills you want to improve on
If you’ve noticed that a certain skill is tricky for you, summer, when you can follow whatever practice schedule you want, is the perfect time to focus on improving in that area. Spend your time doing drills that focus specifically on that area, and you should begin to see improvement. For example, if writing cases has been an issue for you, choose a random motion and side, give yourself fifteen/twenty minutes, and write a case. Repeat that process until you feel comfortable, then give yourself twelve, then ten, then seven minutes, etc. By the time you go back to a tournament, where you can prepare with a partner and the full allotted time, writing a case will feel easy.
5. Look through debate resources
In addition to being a great time to practice, summer is also the perfect time to learn. If there were any concepts that you or your team skipped or haven't gotten to yet, or anything from the year that you want to take a closer look at, summer is an excellent time to do so. In particular, many teams teach the basics of debate, but not some of the background knowledge that’s useful in different types of rounds. Reading through slideshows covering the basics of economics, international relations, politics, ethics, and more can be just as helpful in improving your debating as learning more about any debate skills; having more knowledge than your opponent in these areas can win you dozens of rounds throughout the year, as you’ll be able to prep a better case and come up with better refutations. The NPDL and NYPDL each have great collections of free resources to help you through this process.
6. Read the news
By the time the next debate season starts, a lot will have transpired with regards to current events. Tournament directors are always looking for content to inspire their motions, and what’s happened over the summer will likely show up in a decent amount of your rounds towards the start of the year. Making sure you read the news to keep yourself updated with current events (particularly US politics and international relations) will give you a large advantage in your first few tournaments. To ensure you don’t miss any significant events, I would recommend subscribing yourself to a current events newsletter, reading or listening to weekly news roundups, or scanning the headlines of your favorite newspaper each morning for any important news.
If you’re interested in learning more about the NYPDL’s summer camp, you can find that information here, and sign up for the camp here.
A guest post by
Ethan Bordoff is a student at Hunter College High School in NYC where he is the founder and captain of the parli team, incoming Executive Director of the NYPDL Board, and a National Parliamentary Debate League Correspondent.