Five Steps to Win an IPDA Debate Round
By Stephen Boyette; edited by Nathaniel Hooper, Mickayla Stogsdill

My name is Stephen Boyette, and I am one of the co-Senior Advisors of the UTK Debate Team. In my 3-season career with the Tennessee Speech and Debate Society, I have been fortunate to amass a fair amount of success. I have been a broken in the International Public Debate Association’s National Championship each of my 3 seasons, and this past season I was able to finish as a national semifinalist (top-4 in the nation)! In this piece, I will pass onto you the lessons I have learned over my collegiate debating career, and give you the tools to succeed in any IPDA tournament.
The International Public Debate Association’s format of debate has its own idiosyncrasies which make it extremely unique.
For instance, striking into a new topic each round is extremely uncommon in the world of competitive debate outside of IPDA. Most formats like Lincoln-Douglas or Public Forum give their competitors weeks or even months to prepare their cases and practice with teammates on each side of the resolution. In IPDA, your propensity to win is boiled down to your ability to navigate topic strike, think on your feet, and convince lay-judges that you are correct as the Affirmative or Negative. In this article, I’ll explain what makes IPDA debaters average or exceptional so that you can utilize the information to win more rounds and tournaments.
Step 1: Keep Up with Current Events

Keeping up with current events is one of the most important aspects of being a successful IPDA debater. For instance, if you go to topic strike and you are left with two resolutions which you know absolutely nothing about, your chances of winning the round decrease dramatically. Say you really want to debate on the football or movie topics, but they are both struck.
Now you are left with three topics about the current administration’s economic policy, international relations, or whether automation will completely restructure the global economy. If you haven’t a slightest clue what the strengths and weaknesses of the last three topics are, you probably will not end up on the better side of any of the resolutions left, especially if your opponent is knowledgeable on the subjects. Some things to keep in mind when studying current events are poll numbers, political rhetoric, pop culture events/spectacles, sporting events, international relations, and what’s being talked about generally in the news.
Step 2: Know and Research Your Opponent.
When you get a look at the postings, write down who you are going to face in the round and what school they attend. Then, ask your teammates about how the school operates as Affirmative or Negative. See if your teammates have competed against your opponent in previous rounds, or previous tournaments, and ask for the details of their strategies.
Step 3: Striking Topics.
This step directly ties in with the first two steps. When striking topics, you need to understand the inherent advantages and disadvantages of a given resolution as the Affirmative and Negative. Next you need to anticipate which topics your opponent would want to debate and then strike them. You can have a pretty good idea of which side benefits more from a given resolution if you are up to date on current events and you can also understand your opponent’s intentions by conducting oppositional research. This is probably the single most important step in an IPDA debate round since at the beginning your chances of winning or losing are fairly even and then after, they change dramatically for better or worse.
Step 4: Preparing Your Case.

Your case in IPDA is the foundation upon which your house is built. If your case isn’t very good, your overall performance in the round will reflect it, which means you will probably lose.
There are a few crucial things to keep in mind when you are preparing a case: First, if you’re the Affirmative debater, you want to create an equitable framework which will give both debaters fairly equal ground from which to argue. This means choosing definitions of terms and the weighing mechanism with a fair round in mind. Your opponent may object to your framework and in doing so, wastes time they could have used to attack other parts of your case or bolster their own. If you’re fair in your definitions, you retain your advantage and some of your opponent’s arguments fall outside of the scope of the argument’s framework you provided.

Next, you need to be sure to construct your case so that each argument logically builds onto the next in a linear fashion. For instance, if you’re the Affirmative and the resolution is about raising the minimum wage, you need to show: there are problems with the status quo (the current minimum wage), raising the minimum wage would address these problems, it would be possible and desirable to do so, then explain the impacts and consequences of your argument. This way, you establish everything you need to prove in order for your argument to be valid and strong.
Another crucial aspect of building a case is including linkage, which means providing tangible, logical links between what your contentions are purporting and what the resolution and framework dictate you need to prove to meet your burden. Going back to the minimum wage example, if the resolution is, “The minimum wage should be raised” as the affirmative, you need to show that: it would be a good idea to raise the current minimum wage to the new minimum wage for which you are advocating. Include studies which show that raising the current minimum wage to your desired amount would provide unique benefits such as higher standard of living/decreased poverty in American communities, and explain how these impacts make this policy a good idea.
Along this line of thought, you should include a copious amount of evidence in your cases. This is good for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it will eat away at your opponent’s rebuttal time. Secondly, it will reinforce your argument’s impacts (I.e., the stakeholders for whom a raised minimum wage will directly benefit). Thirdly, some of these pieces of evidence will undoubtedly go unaddressed by your opponent which means you can address the missed pieces of evidence in your closing arguments explaining why you won that round. Another crucial component of case building is choosing an appropriate and beneficial weighing mechanism. For instance, if the topic is economic in nature, you should choose a weighing mechanism like “preponderance of evidence,” which places a greater degree of importance on the quality and quantity of evidence you have. For such a case, you should build your case specifically to highlight all of your great evidence. Finally, you should anticipate some of your opponent’s rebuttal arguments to your case and include counter-arguments. Write down some facts or statistics which will disprove or cast doubt on your opponent’s rebuttal, that way you can adequately defend yourself.
Step 5: Presenting Your Case.

Presenting your case effectively is the defining aspect of superior debaters and run of the mill debaters. In order to be a talented IPDA debater, you must be a good speaker. Some defining traits of good public speakers are: confidence, using appropriate tone, speed, and inflection, having an innate ability to read your audience/judge, and seeming extremely likable and knowledgeable.
As far as confidence goes, you must speak with conviction. Why should your judge believe what you are saying if you don’t seem to believe it yourself? Speed, tone, and inflection are important for keeping your judge engaged in the debate as well as potentially confusing your opponent with a barrage of unique arguments. In order to see which arguments to which the judge seems to respond more favorably, you should look for visible cues like nodding, smiling, raised eye brows, etc. Whichever arguments the judge seems to react strongly to typically are the ones you need to stress. Seeming knowledgeable and likable are different from actually being knowledgeable and likable. However, if you come off that way in the 30-minute round, it will benefit you immensely.

So there you have it, a fairly comprehensive guide to becoming a superior IPDA debater. By following these tips, you should see excellent gains in your win totals, speaker points, and overall performance in IPDA debate. If you can effectively implement these strategies into your debate war chest, you should be well prepared to win your next IPDA round!
Cheers!

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