How to Rebut

1. How to Rebut The Key to Success

2. Roadmapping and Sign-Posting • Roadmapping is the act of telling the order of your speech before you give it. • Sign-Posting is the act of letting both your judge and your opponent know where you are on the flow quickly during your speech. • Both are incrediblyimportant and are the only way to keep track of what your saying, scoring major points with your judge.

3. Cycle of Rebuttals

4. Attack or Defense? • The answer to this question comes in signposting. For example: • “First, I’m going to start with attacking my opponent’s case and then moving on to defend my own.” • An attack is saying someone else’s contention is incorrect. • A defense is saying someone else’s attack is incorrect. • Saying this is a roadmap/signpost really helps the judge flow your speech.

5. What your opponent said • NEVER EVER EVEREVER GIVE WORD FOR WORD DETAILS OF WHAT YOUR OPPONENT SAID! • Instead, simply recap the point in a word or two: • “In response to my opponent’s attack on my first contention….” • “In response to my opponent’s first contention stating life is more important than liberty…” • “In response to my opponent’s defense to my attacks on his first and third contention…”

6. Your response • Always respond in an intelligent manner. AND • If you have nothing good to say, throw something on the flow. • Your response should be exactly like the sandwich rule in writing your case. Explain your point, explain your evidence, read your evidence, and then summarize the evidence. Though, you have less time, so each part will be much shorter.

7. Evidence to back you up • There are three ways to back up a rebuttal • New Evidence: While you can’t bring up new points, you can bring up as much evidence as you want. • Old Evidence: You can use evidence stated in your case, but this usually only works for your first rebuttal unless your affirmative and the negative destroys that evidence or your opponent doesn’t give any new evidence after you Cross-Apply. • Logical Evidence: This only works if the argument your making is simple. You don’t need a newspaper article that says the sky is blue to prove the sky is blue.

8. “Which brings me to…” • If the flow of your speech is appropriate, you should be able to glide around the flow sheets easily. “In response to his first contention…and this brings me to his second contention.” • When your up against good opponent’s who have well-thought out and interweaving contentions or bad opponent’s who have the same contention even if they tried to make it three different points, this’ll be easy. • If not, then it won’t be.

9. Summary • Rebutting is just something you need to do to get good at, a real life example of practice makes perfect. There’s a general flow to it and cycle you get into when your giving your speech, but the actual wording and phrasing and confidence only comes with experience.