Preparing for a Tournament

Students and teachers may choose to attend MSPDP competitions to test and improve their debating skills in competition with other schools. Tournaments are exciting, fun, and challenging events. They normally occur on a Saturday and last from 9 until 4:30. Tournaments may feature 4 or 5 debates for students. If you are a teacher, a student, or a parent, you may be nervous about going to a competition. The purpose of this page is to help you prepare to compete and give you an idea of what to expect.

It is important to remember that students will never be completely prepared for any tournament. Some teachers are tempted to keep students out of competitions until they are totally ready to compete. However, if this were true, students would never compete. Tournaments are like laboratories for debate training. They are events that are organized to help students practice and learn. Even students who are ill-prepared can benefit from tournament experience, as they will learn the value of preparation. Most students, even the very inexperienced, leave a tournament feeling excited and energized to work hard for their next competition. MSPDP events are designed to be a safe and cooperative environment for learning. Students will get substantial feedback and instruction during the course of a tournament. They will meet and work with students from other schools. They will learn to function as a team with other students from your school. In short, the experience will be beneficial for all of your students.

Helping Your Students Prepare for the Tournament

Before your first tournament, you should make sure your students know the rules for the event. A short copy of the rules is available here . You can also give students a "cheat sheet" like this one to help them.

To understand the rules, your students need to know the order of the speeches in the debate, the time limits for those speeches, and what to do during those speeches. Your students also need to know the basic roles of the proposition team and the opposition team - they should be able to explain that the proposition's job is to make a case for the motion for debate, while the opposition's job is to refute the proposition team's case.

Students should know what points of information are, and should be able to demonstrate how to attempt to make a point of information (rise and say "Point of information," or "On that point," or something similar). Students should be able to demonstrate how to accept a point of information ("Yes, I'll take your point"), and how to reject a point of information ("No, thank you."). Students should be able to make points of information within the 15 second time limit after being recognized. Students should also know how to answer points of information ("That's a good point, but we've already addressed that concern," or "Thank you for your point," or "We disagree with that point, and let me explain why," or similarly answering the issue raised in the point of information).

In general, there are three basic skills that students should learn for competition: the A-R-E model of argumentation, the 4-step model for refutation, and how to take notes in debates. All three of these skills are covered in separate handouts that can be found in the Curriculum Center .

Most instruction to prepare students for competition can be accomplished by watching a sample videotape with students and noting how the debate process works. Students also need to prepare research and think about arguments they might make on both sides of each of the tournament topics.

Finally, students should have had practice preparing for debates during limited time. Use the announced topics before every event and have "mini-debates" with abbreviated time limits and no points of information (try 1 or 2-minute constructive speeches and 30-second rebuttals). Teach students how to effectively use their pre-prepared notes to prepare for debates.

Knowing What to Expect

Here are a few things you may need to know about a tournament, if you have not attended one before:

• Students will compete in teams of three. As you may already know, students compete in teams of three. You should go to the tournament with your students already divided into teams of three. You may divide the students into teams, or they may divide themselves. It is up to you to decide how students will be formed into teams. You will be required to present the students' names at registration before the competition day. This allows the tournament director to enter student information into the computer they use to tabulate the event. Students will be listed as a team by their last initials and school name. So, for example, if you are bringing three teams from Roswell Middle School, your teams might be listed as Roswell ABC, Roswell DEF, Roswell GHI, and Roswell JKL. Normally, your teams will not change during the course of the day. If you need to use a "sub," check with the tournament director to see if this will be okay. Also, the order your students are listed in does not necessarily reflect the order in which they will speak.

• All students will participate in all debates . The tournament will use a number of different classrooms for each "round" of debate. Each team of three students will debate at the same time on the same topic (but not necessarily on the same side) for each "round" of debate. So, if there are 5 topics for the tournament, students will debate each topic.

• Students will be assigned to one side of a topic. Many students are surprised and intimidated to learn that they will not get to choose what side of each topic they will defend. This means that students must prepare to debate each side of each motion for the tournament. Students will be assigned randomly to a side for each debate. However, over the course of a tournament, students will get to be on each side an equal number of times. If students are on the "proposition" side in Round 1, they can expect to be on the "opposition" side in Round 2. When the tournament offers 5 rounds of debate, the 5th round will use random side assignment.

• Stay in the common area for postings and topic announcement. When you arrive at the tournament, you will register with the tournament director to make sure the tournament knows you and your students have arrived safely. When the first "round" of debate is about to begin, the tournament director will post several copies of a sheet in a public place. This sheet has the "pairings" for the upcoming debate. The pairing sheet may look something like this:

Claremont McKenna Invitational, Round 1 - Topic Announcement at 9:00 AM

When the pairing sheet is up, your students should go and check to find their team name. They should write down their side (proposition or opposition) and their room . This will tell them what side they will be on and where their debate will take place. After students have had a chance to look at their pairing, the tournament director will get on stage and announce the topic for the upcoming debate. The topic will be one of the topics you were given in advance of the tournament. It will have the same wording as you were given before the tournament. Students will then have 20 minutes to prepare their notes for their upcoming debate. At the conclusion of the 20-minute "prep period," students must be in their debates ready to start speaking.