Judge Training

1. Judge Training Advanced level

2. An art form not a science • It would be a lie and a failing if I told you that judging was black and white; what might be a winning speech to one judge might be a train wreck to another. • Judging is about experience, there’s no escaping it, once you’ve seen enough debates you can compare a speech you have just heard to similar standard speeches heard in the past. • In short, it’s an art not a science, there is no magic formula that a speaker can follow to convince any judge. To the contrary a speech can only be assessed on one thing, how convinced you are by it; luckily there are a lot of contributing factors that make a speech convincing.

3. The unforgivable sin • When judging you have to remember that you’re not debating, it might be that you know a killer rebuttal to something a speaker has said but unless a speaker says the rebuttal you can’t take it into account. • That’s rule number 1: • You can’t take into account anything that hasn’t been said, if a speaker says something insane and the other teams don’t pick them up on it the argument stands. (In most cases)

4. Average Reasonable Person (ARP) • In debating ARP is a term we use to describe how much knowledge you are allowed to bring to your judging. As a judge you are allowed to give an argument lower weighting if it’s obviously untrue. • An ARP is assumed to have no specialist knowledge about a subject and importantly they have no opinion (opinions average out). • This still gives you some leeway, for example if a speaker says “All terrorists are Muslim extremists” you are totally within your right as a judge to give that a very low weighting because an ARP would know it to be false. • But what about lies?

5. Lying • Here’s where things get difficult. • On the debating circuit there are two trains of thought: • If someone lies and their opposition doesn’t point it out it stands, even if the judge knows it is a lie. • If someone lies and their opposition doesn’t point it out but the judge knows it to be false the judge can give it less weighting. • Both sides have their merits, personally I come down somewhere in between. I like to factor in intent, if it is clear that the person has lied and knows they have lied I tend to give it less weighting however if the person lied due to a lack of knowledge I give them the benefit of the doubt. • If you are unsure that it is a lie, always give them the benefit of the doubt.

6. Your toolbox • As a judge there are a number of ways you can assess the convincingness of a speech: • Does it fulfil its burden of proof? • Does it apply a sufficient burden of proof to the other side? • Was the analysis intelligible and logical? • Was there sufficient clash between teams? • Who was the most prominent? • Who has presented the most discussed material and did it stay credible?

7. Burdens of proof • When a debate begins the proposition is given a burden of proof to fulfil by default, the motion will almost always provide proposition with a burden. • THW ban abortion (Okay why?) • THBT eating meat is immoral (That’s nice, but why?) • THW invade Zimbabwe (Good for you, I hope you have a nice time over there but just out of interest… Why bother?) • The proposition’s first speaker starts off in a unique position, they know what their burden of proof is and everything they say goes to filling that burden. Some arguments will be more convincing and therefore more likely to fill the burden, your job as a judge is to decide who fills their burden of proof most convincingly. • But what about the rest of the speakers?

8. Providing others with burdens • When a speaker says anything they always provide another member of the debate with a burden of proof. When the first proposition first speaker says “we should ban abortion because life begins at conception” they provide the entire opposition bench with a burden of proof. • Opposition must now either show: • Why life doesn’t begin at conception. • Why if it does begin at conception that in not sufficient reason to ban abortion. • As a judge your job is to decide if opposition have filled their burden of proof or not by looking at the analysis they gave in support of whichever statement they chose.

9. How can burdens be given • In making some rebuttal. • In making a POI. • In making a substantive point. • In every debate when someone says something in rebuttal they provide the side that the rebuttal attacks with a burden to show why the rebuttal is flawed. • A POI is a direct burden, when a POI is given the speaker is required to fill that burden of proof there and then. • When you make a substantive point you provide the other team with a burden, they have to show why your point is wrong or it will stand at the end of the debate.

10. Burdens at the end of the debate • So the debate is over, and a lot of stuff has been said. Now as a judge you have to look over your notes and decide who has filled their burden of proof most convincingly. • But how do you decide that? • Well it comes down to analysis, who has given you the most convincing evidence to show why they are right? • Analysis is essentially what you base a judging decision on, you have to decide who has given you the most coherent argument.

11. A quick word about clash • So we know debating is about who fills their burdens the most fully, but that leads us to an interesting conclusion. • The winning team is probably the team that gave the most rebuttal, thus supplying their opponents with the most burdens and therefore making it harder for them to fill their burden. • The winning team is probably also the team that engaged with the burdens they are provided with, if they don’t fill the burdens they are given they haven’t done their job. • There are exceptions to this rule, a team might give a lot of rubbish rebuttal and might engage in a really flippant way but do so often. • However as a general rule of thumb engagement and clash will give teams a lot of pull in the eyes of you judges.

12. Bad feedback • If you have fallen asleep wake up, this bit is important and in my opinion is the difference between a good and a bad judge. • When you are judging it is tempting to say in feedback “these points were good, I liked this point but the other team was better”. • If you do this, and make no mistake I have seen every single one of us do it (including me) you are failing as a judge. • When a speaker makes a point they probably know it was good, that’s kind of why they made it, they honestly don’t need you to tell them it’s good. What might be helpful however is if you tell them why?

13. Good feedback • When you tell a speaker that their point was good, tell them why. Why did their point make a positive difference to their speech, which arguments did it directly engage with on the other team and why is that important. • When you tell a speaker that their point is bad, that’s fine by the way in fact people learn from mistakes faster than successes, tell them specifically why. Was the analysis bad? And if it was what is an example of better analysis? Was it irrelevant to the debate? And if it was what would a better point of been? Was the point taken down by the other team? And if it was explain exactly why and how.

14. Speaker points • Speaker points are subjective, you will only be able to correctly assign speakers points once you have been to numerous competitions and seen lots of speeches as a debater or a judge. • The reason is simple, until you have seen a broad range of speeches from a broad range of speakers on multiple topics, and then you’ve seen more experienced judges give them speaker points and explain why, you wont have a clue what you’re doing. • It’s blunt, yes, but unfortunately it’s the truth; there are generally 50 points to award (speaker points are given from 50 to 100 usually) and that means you have to of seen speeches which have been awarded speaker points in the full range.

15. How to pin down a number • When you do award speaker points there is a general guideline, a good (not excellent) debater will average 75 speaker points in an average tournament. • If the speech you have just seen is good it’s probably in the region of 75 speaker points, if it’s mediocre it’s probably between 70 and 75 and if it’s not great it’s likely between 65 and 70. If on the other hand it’s great it’s probably between 75 and 80 and if it’s truly excellent it’s likely to be between 80 and 85. • You wont see anything above 80 regularly, unless you attend the European and World championships. I have received an 80 twice and an 81 once in 19 competitions and more than 100 debates. • WUDC judging scale.

16. Finally • Chairing a debate is a skill you will need to pick up, but it’s something you will only learn with time. Chairs have a responsibility to take on board the opinions of the wings and to convince them to come to a consensus. • It is not acceptable for the chair to ignore the wings, in fact it is acceptable for the wings to over rule (roll) the chair. A good chair should allow them to do this, but it is totally acceptable for the chair to be offended at their lack of trust in what is usually the more experienced judge. • That leads me to a word of warning, if you roll your chair then have a bloody good reason because they probably (but not always) know better than you.