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

5:45 - Think you can remember every argument in a debate? Think again! This episode of Professor Graham's ABCs of Debate is a game-changer for anyone serious about debating. Professor Graham tackles the essential but often neglected skill of FLOWING—effective note-taking that ensures you keep track of every argument, statistic, and piece of data. Joined by his insightful co-host Kevin, the good professor debunks the myths that you can rely solely on memory or pre-written blocks, and instead, he reveals why having an organized and accurate record is the cornerstone of a successful debate.

Check out Adrian Graham's YouTube videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorGraham

Adrian's email: eadriang17@gmail.com

For more notes and details about the episode, check out the One Clap website post here:
https://www.oneclapspeechanddebate.com/post/prof-graham-and-kevin-s-abc-s-of-debate-f-is-for-flowing

If you have any ideas or requests for topics to explore on the One Clap Podcast, shoot Lyle an email at lylewiley@gmail.com or check out our blog and social media here:
One Clap Website: www.oneclapspeechanddebate.com
YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCyvpV56859lLA-X-EvHVYUg
Facebook: @oneclappodcast
Instagram: @one_clap_podcast
TikTok: @oneclapspeechanddebate

Get your cool One Clap Speech and Debate merchandise here (check out the new hat designs): https://www.bonfire.com/store/one-clap-speech-and-debate/

Transcript

Adrian Graham 0:12

Hello everybody 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 flowing , so , without further ado , let's jump into it . It's funny that this word is so far down the list for , quite literally , being the most important fundamental skill for doing debate . Flowing , in essence , is just glorified note-taking of the arguments that are being said in round . Why is it called flowing ? I don't know the history , nor does it matter , so instead we're just going to talk about why you do it and how to do so effectively . This may seem like the silliest question I've ever had to rhetorically ask into the void , but why should you take notes on the debate round ? Surely I'll be able to remember everything they said , or I'll just copy blocks from all my files and not have to write down a single word because I've already made my speech . If you sound like this , you're throwing .

Adrian Graham 1:06

Well that doesn't seem very nice , professor . Oh hi , kevin , I didn't realize that you liked throwing too . All jokes aside .

Adrian Graham 1:17

Flowing is literally the cornerstone of debate , because if you don't have an accurate record of what's going on in the round , then how are you supposed to debate ? First and foremost , saying that you can remember everything is just plain wrong . People make literally hundreds of arguments and assertions , backed up by an assortment of qualified people who advance multiple arguments of their own , citing specific examples , statistics and data . So every time you look me in the eyes and tell me that you just , quote-unquote , remembered all that , I just know that you're wrong . That's especially true because let's even give you the benefit of the doubt You're Jimmy Neutron boy genius and you remember everything they said .

Adrian Graham 1:50

Well , guess what ? You probably don't remember the exact order of those arguments . So even in this hypothetical scenario where you remember every single detail about everything they said , your speech is still going to be a disorganized mess . I also think that the other argument that you're just copying and pasting blocks to answer things so why would you flow is at least pretending to be a good argument . Realistically , though , even if you're copying over blocks , you're still missing huge chunks of the specifics of their argument that writing notes can fix . Not to mention that if you're in a partner event , having another accurate record of the round will help you fill in holes of arguments you could have potentially missed .

Kevin 2:27

Okay , jeez , I guess I'll just start flowing on my computer then .

Adrian Graham 2:31

Kevin , don't you dare touch that laptop . Sorry , I got a little heated there . Flowing on your computer is viable for some , and I'm not here to take away accessibility for those that think it's a better system for them . However , if you've always flowed on the computer or aren't sold either way , or even just a computer person , I'd say at least give some of these flowing tips a shot . I promise they're useful and I double promise that they're effective . Tip number one Get a new sheet of paper for every new position . For example , each contention or off-case position should be its own piece of paper .

Kevin 3:07

Maybe use half a sheet of paper every round . What are you on about ?

Adrian Graham 3:11

That's fair , kevin , and I ain't calling you out for not flowing , but Well , you're probably not flowing . Something that will become obscenely apparent later is that you need a lot of space as the debate goes on . Even if some pages go underdeveloped because you or your opponents don't make a ton of arguments there , there most certainly will be some arguments that are debated a lot more . In those instances , you need to make sure that you have adequate space , and it's always better to have more available space than necessary than to randomly run out . This means that every contention , no matter how big or small , should receive its own sheet of paper so you can have adequate space to write down all of your potential responses and all of your opponent's responses to your responses , and so on .

Adrian Graham 3:56

Tip number two Use legal-sized paper . This isn't meant to be gatekeeping . If you hate legal-sized paper , that's great . Use whatever makes you happy . However , this one is mostly just a quality of life suggestion . Yellow legal pad paper is personally harder for me to read off of , because the contrast is just a little bit weird , and normal printer paper just tends to not have sufficient space to write arguments . So for my money , I'd say use the good stuff , make your life easier .

Adrian Graham 4:21

Tip number three start low when flowing on paper . For some reason , people in debate love reading their overviews like it's literally their favorite pastime . Because of this again , you need to be ready to have enough space to cover everything they could say On printer-sized paper . You probably want to start about one half of the way down on the page , and if you're using legal-sized paper , like you , should be about one third of the way down . This gives sufficient space to allow for ginormous overviews , usually prevalent in less technical k-debates , or absurdly long da overviews that just love reading extra impacts . Tip number four have tight horizontal spacing . This one is certainly most applicable to policy and pf formats , where there are quite literally eight speeches to potentially have flowed on your single sheet of paper . Thus , the rule of thumb for this one is to keep everything in columns , about the size of the distance from the tip of your thumb to the first knuckle . This way you keep your flow horizontally tight , keeping your arguments condensed and leaving space for the rest of the debate .

Kevin 5:25

Well , why don't I just fold my paper into eights ?

Adrian Graham 5:29

That's not a terrible question , kevin . It's horrible . Obviously , having a paper folded into eighths is the worst thing imaginable . Imagine you're handling 12 sheets of paper in a round , and that's already so much , but now imagine all of them are folded into eighths , because you hate yourself or something . Don't do that .

Adrian Graham 5:48

Additionally , it's important that you do permit yourself some flexibility . There's times , like your final rebuttal , where you need to make things visibly bigger or draw lines or for a lack of a better term . You just need some space to cook . So allow yourself to have that flexibility to do so and leave yourself some space . Tip number five have enough vertical spacing . The flip side of keeping things tight horizontally is that you need to leave space for arguments to develop throughout the debate . Also , debate tends to get bigger in the middle as people pick and choose what arguments they want to get deeper on , and especially in policy and LD , where the negative literally has a disproportionate amount of time in the middle of the debate . Because of this , you need to leave space , assuming that your opponents could dig deeper on certain arguments .

Kevin 6:35

Typically , you want about three fingers worth of space between each new argument your opponents made earlier on to give enough space .

Adrian Graham 6:44

I don't want to be attractive brah . These are all really simple steps individually , but I understand that they can be overwhelming at first . I think just looking at examples really shows how simple this is , incorporating all the steps . But if my terrible MS Paint drawings aren't enough , I also went ahead and linked a far better explanation of this on the Wyoming Debate Roundup website . There's 100% less me there , but there's also about 300% more in-depth explanations of all these topics and it'll certainly be a lot more useful and I think that just about does it for learning how to flow . Any thoughts , kevin ?

Kevin 7:16

Well , after all that , I think that flowing will be much easier .

Adrian Graham 7:21

Easier . 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 . Just make sure you CC 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 .