First Speaker in Debate : A Newbie's Perspective
Depending on the mindset, the world of debating can be quite simple or a bit daunting. If you’re like me, it would be the latter. In an environment where you must think quickly, efficiently, critically, and accurately to push your case, sometime you get lost in the way, especially if you have no prior experience. In this article, I would like to give you some kind of guide for the role.
As someone who is really new to the scene, I was quite interested to tap into the world. After experiencing IVED 2024 first-hand as the First Speaker of my team, there is several insight from my perspective that I would like to share about it, especially how to build your case and establishing it in the speech if you got the role on this article. What is IVED you may ask? Indonesian Varsities English Debate (IVED) is the first university-level parliamentary debate competition in Indonesia. It was held annually since 1998. Beforehand, do note that IVED 2024 uses Australasian Parliamentary debate. Australasian Parliamentary is a type of debate in which each team has 3 speakers, with either the first or second will act as a reply speaker later in the round. Thus, the whole article will use First Speaker in an Australasian Parliamentary debate as the context.
Speaking order of Australasian Parliamentary debate
IVED 2024
First Speaker Responsibilities
Let’s start with the first and foremost and why I think that the role of First Speaker is really important and crucial. The first speaker are tasked with setting the tone, framework, and direction for the entire discussion. Typically, the first speaker represents their team's stance on the given topic, outlining their main arguments and providing an initial heading for the debate.
Because of this, a First Speaker must be able to communicate well to their fellow teammates. They need to understand the case that their team trying to bring really well. All the nuances, including the angle, and possible extensions can be communicated during casebuilding. During the allocated time, the First Speaker needs to extract relevant information in the discussion for their speech. In the end of the discussion, they can review the points they will initially bring again so that fellow teammates are on the same page.
Communication is The Key
During the competition, I tried to establish my case from the following points that I extracted from casebuilding. I must address that this is in no way universal or linearly-structured, but I think it touches on a lot of aspects and helps me a lot during the competition in general.
Rebuttals
If you’re first speaker of the opposition team, rebuttals needs to be the first thing in concern before proceeding with your speech. Rebuttals needs to tackle the government team’s foundation. You must be able to identify what their main point is, its holes and try to take it down. This could be in the form of their status quo itself, the framing, or their arguments. If you don’t try to take it down then it would be a problem down the line. In the same time, you need to play your cards smartly, to not just tackle everything head on, but you need to do it with a nuanced approach. Do your rebuttals in a way that it would relate your point later. This helps your teammate to comprehend your rebuttals better.
Preemptive
Preemptive are an attempt to predict what the other team will bring to the debate and undermine it before hand. Preemptive are not exclusive for any side of the debate. If you’re the first speaker of the government team, by doing a preemptive you are predicting on how the opposition will try to tackled down your points, points which will be explained later. If you’re the first speaker of the opposition team, you can do preemptive on what the other team’s first speaker forgot or did not establish.
Let’s do an example of what my team did. On the round, we got Government team and the motion is ‘THBT PSSI should significantly allocate resources to develop local football academies as opposed to naturalizing players for the Indonesian National Team’.
My team tried preemptive by predicting that the Opposition team will bring the argument on how the naturalized players gives benefits to the national team performance. To counter this angle, we said that the benefits would be marginal and not long term due to the age and interest of said players.
Status Quo and Its Urgency
In debating, status quo simply means the current situation or the way things are right now. In essence, status quo refers to the existing state of affairs, whether it's in society, politics, or any other area being discussed in the debate. Urgency on the status quo refers to the pressing need or importance of addressing the current situation or condition. It highlights the sense of immediacy or necessity for change or action regarding the existing state of affairs.
Understanding the status quo as a team is crucial. It allows your team to analyze the motion better and frames their argument around the status quo, making the case stronger. This makes it really important to establish in your speech aswell. By establishing it and its urgency, it basically gives the judge an easier time on why they should choose your team to win in the end. You must manage to keep the credibility and urgency of your status quo during the whole debate and in turn, undermine the other team’s.
How exactly your case is going to work in your favour?
In the debate with the motion in the previous part, my team tried to establish the status quo revolving that the national team is playing in international competition with foreign player who barely relate or competes under our name or national identity, instead of their benefit. This makes the public question where is our local youth, and why is there older foreign players while we have an abundance of youth that in the first place, doesn’t get that much opportunity to develop and chance to play in the national team.
Differentiation and Actors
This point relates to building the sense of urgency from the previous part. Differentiation is building your urgency by making your status quo right now is more important now than ever. In the round, we touched on the public outcry and the nationalistic sentiment of the situation.
Actors here mean identifying who is going to be responsible for your case to work, and who is going to be affected. Not just identifying, but also pressing on why those actors matters and important in your case. In the debate, the responsibility lies within the PSSI and how they are responsible for the development of Indonesian football basis, which is the youth. The affected one will be the youth or public in general, the idea stems from nationalistic view, which we must put forward development of our youth above the interest of foreigners, thus building a stronger method in long term, and giving the public the satisfaction for the performace eventually.
Who is responsible and who is going to be affected?
Definition/Framing/Modeling
The next concern would be this. You must define your case from the motion given. Defining can be used interchangeably with framing or modeling, it basically gives some kind of mechanic or context on how your case is going to work. This is important because this is basically the foundation for your team to build their arguments upon.
In the round, we modeled our world in which the house invests more infrastructure such as grassroot local academies. Furthermore, it would invest in bringing in quality coaches to football academies in Indonesia. Last, PSSI will engineer an academic class league that incentivies participation from grassroot academies. This all is a setup to which we are trying to give incentives to young Indonesian players to pursue a career by providing facilities so they can develop better, because by the end of the day, naturalizing players for the national team is not sustainable for the long run.
Burden of Proofs and Arguments
The burden of proofs refers to the responsibility placed on a debater to provide sufficient evidence and arguments to support their position or proposition. The burden of proof typically lies with the side proposing a change or asserting a claim. This means they are tasked with presenting compelling evidence and arguments to persuade the audience or judges of the validity and merit of their position.
If you find yourself lost during the discussion or debate, you can refer back to the Burden of Proofs
Identifying the burden of proof during the casebuilding helps your team to build the argument. It gives some kind of barrier to avoid the argument strays too far from your case. During the First Speaker speech, establishing it is important, especially with numbering. It can give some kind of clarity to not just the judges, but everyone participating in general
In the round, we structured our burden of proof like this.
BoP 1 : Why PSSI has the obligation to cater to National FootballIn Conclusion
Those are the structures that helped me during the competition. I keep a note to myself to search for those during the casebuilding and my speech. Again, I acknowledge that it is in no way a universal or linear idea that everyone must follow to do their debate. Some would find it not fitting to their style and it is totally fine. But that was the perspective of me as a novice First Speaker during IVED 2024. I hope that at least it’s a bit helpful for you, especially if you really don’t know anything about debate in the first place and got the role.
Content Writer : Rafi Kyandra Atharizqi
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