Rhetoric Through Policy Debate

$20.00

This textbook is designed for the training and instruction of the beginning debater as well as the beginning debate coach.  It is not intended to be a complete debate theory text, but it should serve well to introduce students and teachers alike to the fundamentals of academic policy debate.

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Description

This text is designed for the training and instruction of the beginning debater as well as the beginning debate coach.  It is not intended to be a complete debate theory text, but it should serve well to introduce students and teachers alike to the fundamentals of academic policy debate.  We have designed this book with the goal of preparing the student for their first debate tournament.  As coaches, our goal is to cover much of this material prior to the first competition, but this is not always possible due to tournament scheduling and class frequency.

Regardless of whether this material is successfully introduced in time for the first tournament experience, most students will benefit greatly from reviewing and re-reading these pages after a few tournaments.

We wrote this book because we felt that many introductory debate textbooks failed to adequately lay important foundations that were necessary prerequisites for more advanced study.  Chief among these fundamental foundations are the concepts of “case” and “plan”.  A tremendous amount of advanced theory cannot be properly analyzed without a solid understanding of these concepts.  This book is also unique because it is directed toward a Christian audience and attempts to illustrate an explicitly Christian approach to debate.

It is our fervent belief that debate parallels the real world in many ways.  The reader will notice that we draw numerous parallels between this “academic” activity and real life.  This is an important part of good debate education.

There were two early drafts of this book that were shared only with our students.  The first published edition was released in 2008, followed by a second, expanded edition in 2009.  This third edition includes additional content that we believe is an essential part of first-year instruction.  The authors wish to acknowledge that this is still a work in progress, and confess that several topics addressed here would benefit from additional elaboration and more practical application.  These improvements, Lord willing, will be incorporated into future editions.

Mike & Mary Winther