For the sake of debate
Debate…….well….. is not only about the battle of how cool or vocal is your speech. But it is more about the substantive, the content of your speech, the power logical, philosophical, and mechanical analysis of your speech that matters.
And by writing, it can actually help you to think more fluidly because writing gives you more time to do some creativity and experimentation with your potentially mindblowing (mindgasm) ideas.
You can create any hypothesis and provide any great explanation that you want, think wider, deeper, faster, so it is like training your brain, an exercise for your mind so that you won’t stiffen up during competition and perhaps, perform even much better than your previous encounter.
With writing, there is no time limitation for you to make as many arguments and analysis that you want, testing your knowledge, logic, and creativity in the world of internet.
From seedling to the sage of debate
Debaters usually will encounter process of evolution. So it is like “Ahhh man… I feel so stupid and worthless of not understanding a thing”, “Come on you can do it! Keep practicing!”, “Oooppssy daisssyy, stage freeze, can somebody please melt me down?”, “I lose….. nooooo! I am not worthy”, “I will dissent the adjudicator!”, “This time you win, next time I will humiliate you!”, “I will defeat and become the world champion!”, “I am the king of debate! Worship me! Huahahahaha!”, “I am a smart ass adjudicator and I will not listen to simple, silly, predictable arguments. Oooohh, the puppy is cuteeee (checking Social Media)”.
Those are the level of seedling debaters since they are still self – oriented, which is pretty common and normal, so…pressure off…hahahahah…. But if you are considering being a legendary debater, then you are going to look into the path of truth to become Sage of Debate.
The sages are debaters that have achieved enlightenment to break through the desire of improving only themselves. They are in the stage of having the perception to help the debate community grow, keeping the debate community regeneration healthy by coaching (providing education platform for debaters), establishing debate organization to set up technical and professionalism standard in debate competition and adjudication, or even by just simply adjudicating debate competition (proper adjudication of course, no bias, clear result reasoning, and proper feedback).
But hey, writing can also be a great platform for contribution as well. Many senior or even legendary debaters have actually made lots of publication to help people understand theory and practical aspects of debate.
In this site, you can actually contribute by writing lots of analysis such as motion analysis to first principle analysis. Think of it as a “Think Tank” or “Research Site”. And many people will read, you will be part of this great project to help people explore more about debate realm by reading the writings in this site!
Quietly Shake the World
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world” (Mahatma Gandhi). Writing is one of the most powerful ways to express your thoughts and identity since it requires lots of analysis and reviewing process. And writing, although powerful, is also a quiet way too since you don’t have to swallow and argue with people verbally.
Although this site’s purpose is to provide supplementary materials for debate activity, however, writing can also have standalone purpose. Whether you have a debate background or not and you enjoy writing, then just write! Let yourself, your mind, your ideas, your creativity, your craziness(!) be read and known by many people.
Wrestle with the world of information! You may find it pretty nice if people will find out that your ideas are brilliant, applicable, or helpful in their debate. Kindness and compassion will always be rewarded with pure satisfaction!
Okay, I am Interested to Write, So………. How Should I Write?
Good question! We are happy that you have started to ignite the curiosity and passion in your mind, heart, and soul. Apparently, we are allowing people to have their own writing style as long the content is created with good analysis (reasonable or logical).
You can either write by providing motion analysis (what arguments can be generated in certain debate topic), first principle analysis (theoretical approach, such as what is democracy, essence of democracy, etc), and even issue analysis (you choose Brexit as your topic, so probably you will analyze the political impact of Brexit to EU and UK for example).
And before your work is published, the editor of the website will check and consult your work with you as the writer to see if things need to be fixed, edited, improvised, etc. And, here is the style of writing that we can recommend (don’t forget that you can use your own style):
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BDSM – AREL Style
This style is usually applied when debaters are actually preparing their best case to be presented in debate. But hey, it can be done in writing too!
- B (background) = the story or event that leads or related to the motion. You can tell it so people understand what is going on, why the motion appears, and what is the urgent situation required to be addressed.
- D (definition) = certain terms that you think are needed to be clarified. For example, the definition of citizen in your case is 21 years old and above. Or perhaps certain fabulous vocabulary that you may want to clarify so that people will not get confused.
- S (stance) = the severity level of your proposal to handle the problem in the motion. For example, allowing abortion only to certain limitation such as when the mother’s life is in grave danger versus allowing abortion at all cost.
- M (model) = mechanism of how you would like to solve a problem. It is more like problem solving mechanism.
Then, after you have justified or explained the BDSM part, now it’s time for you to generate arguments to support your side. For an argument to be created with good standard, the most basic way is to use AREL formula….
- A (assertion) = the heading of argument or idea that you would like to propose. For example, killing is evil.
- R (reasoning) = the logical explanation to support your assertion. For example, killing is evil because it deprives people from actually achieving their ambition and goal of life that they have actually strived to achieve, all of their hard work is futile and thus it is evil to take people’s life and destroy their life plan. All people are entitled to happiness, and so far and so on (this is where theoretical analysis is very important. People often provide assertion without analysis, and that is bad)
- E (example) = yeah, well, it is an example. Hahaha. You can take scenario or situation in the practical life that help people to understand your arguments in the real world simulation in their mind.
- L (link back) = is the summary of the assertion, reasoning, and example all together to make people understand better. This is especially needed when you have explained lots of reasoning and example to support your assertion since taking people to follow you into the huge world of ideas can sometimes be confusing. They can forget where is the beginning and ending.
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Dictatorship Style
If you want to use this style, then in discussing a motion, you will point out to the readers of which definition limit, stance, model, and arguments that you are supposed to bring or not supposed to be delivered.
This style will dictate the case strategy that will be used to solve a motion. For example, in discussing about Brexit, it will be usually be pointed out that arguments related to economic or migration should be the main highlight of the motion since those spectrums are the spirit of Brexit in status quo.
So spend your time wisely to create good arguments about the positive or negative impacts of Brexit regarding to economic and migration perspective. Don’t spend your time about security defense aspectin Brexit since it is not the main urgent point of Brexit, thus not strategic to be brought up.
Then after pointing out the importance and not importance of certain strategy, then you will have to elaborate the arguments that are strategic to be brought up, providing concrete arguments for the readers. Hey, people don’t just need command and control, but they need substantive too. Hehehe…
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Arguments King Style
In this style, the writer will provide and elaborate as many potential arguments about a motion as possible that the writer can think about. Any potential argument will do, either the most major or substantial arguments, to the level of alternative arguments.
This style will usually be used to stimulate creativity or “matter bank” development so that people won’t be running out of idea when they are quite stuck in certain motion, or perhaps when they don’t master specific topic.
Oh, and the writer also needs to highlight the importance of those generated arguments to show that those arguments are valid and logical. For example, in Brexit, apart from elaborating the arguments of economy and migration perspective, the writers can also try to highlight the importance of security and defense issue in Brexit so that the overlooked spectrum can be counted as important as well, and then try to elaborate the arguments about security and defense spectrum.
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Informative style
This style is usually used when writers are trying to write about first principle analysis (theoretical approach). So basically the writers will write all about the explanation of a topic. For example, the writer may take the topic of democracy. So writer can explain the definition of democracy, the history of democracy’s development, the fundamental ideas of democracy’s pillars (participation, accountability, etc.)
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Opinion style
You can use this style of writing if you have any critical, informative opinion to be written in respond to certain phenomena, such as your opinion toward anti vaccine movement during Covid 19 pandemic.