Free Online Curriculum

This page is your online debate curriculum - 10 articles jam packed with helpful tips from years of experience competing and coaching. Click through our posts to find answers to the most-asked questions about debate and learn to take your skills to the next level!

Here, you will find articles on Cases, Rebuttal, Summary, Final Focus, Cross Fire, and Research! Your curriculum consists of:

1. How To Write A Debate Case

2. How to Prepare for Rebuttal by Writing Blocks

3. How to Deliver a Rebuttal Speech

4. How to Structure a Summary

5. Five Big Tips for the Summary Speech

6. How to Deliver a Debate Final Focus

7. How Should I Decide Which Debate Contentions to Use?

8. What Questions Should I Ask To Win Crossfire?

9. Ten Tips To Improve Your Crossfire Skills

10. How Should I Research for Debate?

Ben Silvian

Mar 24, 20215 min read

How Should I Research for Debate?

The best debaters are often the best researchers, simply due to the fact that if you find strong evidence yourself, you are far more...

Ten Tips To Improve Your Crossfire Skills

Ben Silvian

Mar 23, 20213 min read

Ten Tips To Improve Your Crossfire Skills

Here are ten great tips to improve your ability to win crossfires in debate. You can read through them one by one if you like, or come...

What Questions Should I Ask To Win Crossfire?

Ben Silvian

Mar 23, 20217 min read

What Questions Should I Ask To Win Crossfire?

There are three crossfires in a debate round: the first crossfire (1CX) which occurs between the two first-speakers after the cases have...

How Should I Decide Which Debate Contentions to Use?

Ben Silvian

Mar 22, 20215 min read

How Should I Decide Which Debate Contentions to Use?

Alright, so you have learned about the structure of a debate and what you should be aiming to do in each speech. But one major questions...

Ben Silvian

Mar 22, 20214 min read

How To Deliver a Debate Final Focus

The Final Focus speech is quite similar to the Summary speech in that they are both short speeches which aim to boil down the round and...

Ben Silvian

Mar 22, 20219 min read

Five Big Tips For The Summary Speech

This article hopes to help first-speakers improve their summary speeches by providing advanced tips. For the basics on how to structure...

Ben Silvian

Mar 18, 20215 min read

How to Structure a Summary

Whoever named this speech the summary speech provided us a bit of a misnomer; your goal in the summary speech is not to summarize....

Ben Silvian

Mar 17, 20216 min read

How To Deliver A Rebuttal Speech

For many young debaters, the rebuttal speech is the toughest speech. It is the longest speech that is not pre-written and you’ll have to...

How to Prepare for Rebuttal by Writing Blocks

Ben Silvian

Mar 16, 20217 min read

How to Prepare for Rebuttal by Writing Blocks

What Are Blocks? Blocks are prepared, pre-written responses to your opponents’ arguments so that you have strong material when delivering...

Ben Silvian

Mar 15, 20217 min read

How To Write a Debate Case

Part 1: The Conventional Approach Typically, students who have just joined their school's debate team are taught the Claim Warrant Impact...