Prof. Graham & Kevin's ABC's of Debate: GROUPING

5:46 - Ever thought you could make your debate rounds more impactful by saving time without sacrificing the quality of your arguments? You're about to discover how! Join Professor Graham and his sidekick Kevin as they unpack the art of grouping arguments—a strategic tool that can transform your debate efficiency while keeping your arguments sharp and nuanced. Through humor and practical insights, you'll learn how to identify arguments that can be grouped, simplify your judges' flows, and avoid common pitfalls that could cost you the debate.

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Transcript

Adrian Graham: 0:12

Hello debaters, and welcome back to another episode of Professor Graham's ABCs of Debate. I'm Professor Graham, here with my pal Kevin, and today the word of the day is going to be grouping. So without further ado, let's jump into it. I thought Groupon was an app or something. Hey, Kevin, until the people who make verbatim start paying me to spread the gospel of their beautiful program, we are not sponsored.

Adrian Graham: 0:35

Anyways, grouping refers to answering multiple arguments at the same time, and it's actually a quite simple concept. When grouping arguments, the goal is to be as efficient as possible without losing the important nuance of your arguments. For example, if you're answering responses to your contention and some of them look suspiciously similar or don't have enough specific warrants to deserve different answers, then you should group them. This saves you time because, realistically, in some places some of your responses tend to be very similar to each other, so save yourself the hassle of repeating yourself over and over again. Pause Before you go feral and start grouping. Every are the same, you can group, but if answers one and three are the same, don't try it. Well, why not? You really put a damper on my fun plans. Well, remember, Kevin, most of the reasons behind why we organize things in our speeches has to do with making our judges flow as pretty as possible. So if you start saying group arguments three and seven and their seventh argument is on the back of the paper now they're flipping their paper over, hunting for arguments and cross-referencing to the point where it just becomes a disaster. Save them and yourself the work. And just group arguments that are next to each other. That being said, if you want to efficiently cover arguments that are separated on the flow, just do all of the responses you would give to both arguments on the first one and when you move down to the second one, no matter where it is on the page, just say cross-apply all our responses from their first argument. They apply the same. It still saves you time and it makes it clear that these arguments don't deserve specific indicts. Again, I'm going to put an asterisk on grouping every argument at all times.

Adrian Graham: 2:30

Grouping is a powerful tool to save you time, but be careful when you use it. If you group arguments that you assume to be identical but there are some very specific warrants to differentiate them, you are not going to be happy when your next opponent stands up because nine out of ten times they will point out the difference between the arguments and explain why your lack of specific, direct responses warrants voting for them. Conversely, if someone tries to group your incredibly detailed, beautifully crafted strategies, then you're welcome to do this too. Prove to everyone that grouping your specific arguments was a mistake and make them look like fools for either misunderstanding your arguments or intentionally trying to hide how scary-slash-distinct it was. Last but not least and this should go without saying, but you shouldn't group your own arguments. Keep your warrants distinct. The more you combine them, the easier it is for your opponent to answer things. Grouping should be reserved for simplifying your opponent's nonsense, not making your own arguments weaker. It'll only hurt you in the long run.

Adrian Graham: 3:29

Well, that was fun. Grouping arguments tends to be pretty pog, so I hope you had a fun time today, Kevin. Wow, I didn't think my speech times could get any lower Lower, I hardly know her. Hey, Thanks again for watching today's episode of Professor Graham's ABCs of Debate. As always, I'm Professor Graham and that's my pal Kevin. Yeah, if you ever need any help with debate stuff at all, my email should be right up here. That's the show, so you can easily see your coach. I'll get back to you as soon as I possibly can. If I need debate tips that you might need, I'll drop that knowledge on you, Bam.