Parli: Advanced Fundamentals

Parli: Advanced Fundamentals

By Joshua Spivey

 

‘Excellence is doing ordinary things extraordinarily well’ -- John Gardner. We’re all waiting for the one ground-breaking nugget that will transform us from intermediate to advanced or novice to proficient... Is that really the best strategy?   


Being intentional about your execution of the basics is the theme of this blog. 


True in all things, we’ll focus today on Parliamentary. To begin: prep strategies. 


There are two types of parli prep scenarios: I call them the conspirators and congress. You already know exactly what I mean. Type 1 isolates and prepares by themselves - totally absorbed in their process but for when they glance up in annoyance at the raucous congress across the room. Congress, type 2, is a confusion of opinions obscuring rationale and dispersing cohesion. The namesake is illuminative. 


Two components define type 1.5. A limit of 3 additional voices to help with preparation and 5 minutes for just the team. Three people to come alongside works best to cultivate the necessary creativity while maintaining the environment to fashion the case. The five minutes of protected team prep time is an incredibly necessary component. Without it, you experience the confusing and frustrating rounds where judge and opponents struggle to find the decisive thread. 


Prep time can be stressful. That’s why most teams skip basic steps and certainly don’t perform them extraordinarily well. There should be a sequence of your early prep-time use. First 5-7 minutes can consist simply of identifying the rez type and speaker positions. Now, most of you think that’s far too long! Here’s what you’re missing: identifying the best speaker positions should incorporate the rez type, base knowledge, opposing team, and side of the ballot. Given that, preliminary contextualization and definitions also happen in this time. Be intentional with this time - speaker positions and rez type decide more rounds than we would like. 


To finish, I want to highlight why you should continue experimenting in debate, in your final year or... in your first. The commonest tendency for debaters is to settle into a style. Finding one that works (at least kinda) or that you’re comfortable with, experimentation is limited to desperation. And we wonder why improvement seems to drag. Persuasion is the ability to help another walk your way. Persuasion in debate then is to adapt to whoever is in front of you. How often do you experiment with adaptation? 


I’m not telling you not to do what works. I’m telling you to try doing what works. 

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