Preparing the First Affirmative Constructive
The purpose of this lesson is to explore the many different information tools that we have available to us for debate preparation, when it comes to a researched debate event. When we use term researched debate event, or research based debate event, we are talking about those debate associations that take care to select a single topic over a long period of time. This is in contrast to limited preparation debate events which typically have different topics for every round, and may give you less than an hour to prepare for it. When you have a research based debate of events, then you could have a topic over a couple of months, or an entire season, which could be up to 10 months of an entire year.
We’re going to be focusing on one example of a research based debate event, known as the National Forensics Association Lincoln Douglas debate event, and in short it is known as NFA LD. In this particular debate event, they have one topic all season long. It is specifically a policy-based debate topic, and the one for the 2019-2020 season is:
Resolved: the United States federal government should implement an energy policy that substantially increases investment in one or more of the following domestic energy sectors: nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind, or solar.
This particular resolution is a good illustration of the care in word-choice that people use. There is a very long process that they go through where people write different policy papers, or topic papers, and they select through a series of voting in order to come to this particular topic. Since it is a one-on-one debate event, it is very well suited for video debates, and asynchronous debate.
When you’re given a topic that is somewhat dense and complicated, it might be a little intimidating deciding where to start, especially if this is your 1st time debating. So, I’m going to walk you through the typical process that I use, hoping to steer you clear of any pitfalls that you might have, and a normal debater might encounter.
The 1st thing that you want to do when you are presented with a topic like this is to sit down at a computer in order to start your research. It is not like there is a whole lot of common knowledge that you necessarily have about these things that you can start documenting, but if you do have common knowledge about any of these then you should rely on it. As a seasoned debater, I have encountered several of these different energy sources in debates before. Specifically, I have come across some very interesting information about nuclear. But, that is the extent that I am going to allow my prior knowledge to influence where I am going. I am just going to pick the 1st of the 5 different types of energy. You can imagine that after I’m done researching nuclear, I would do the same process for hydroelectric, geothermal, etc.
Before you open up any web browsers, you want to think about how you’re going to collect evidence. You can do something as simple as opening up a folder on your desktop, or opening up something in Google Drive. This is an especially good idea if you’re sharing it with people because you can simply copy and paste the information that you want, or save it as an HTML file. But, I would recommend something even simpler; an application known as Evernote which has a a free version that is well-suited for your personal needs. What it does is that it collects just the article and the source information for any evidence that you find, excludes all the advertisements, and saves it in a really simple fashion. Evernote it shows up as a little application button on the top of your web browser.
I have discovered that the best way to research things, is to put in really simple search terms into different search engines. What I mean by that, is I have my favorite political search engine, I have my favorite popular search engine, and I have my favorite academic search engine. These could be different for you. You might not have access to the same things I do, but you can still try it out. For the political search engine, I love this website called Govtrack.us. I put in the term “nuclear energy” in the search bar, and what I got as a result are the top bills that are relevant to that particular search. I’m not going to go through every single one of them, but just to let you know, inside these bills I was able browse what they were saying, and there are some interesting pieces of information in there.
The top result was the Nuclear Leadership Act. Maybe I want to read it later, so what I do is I click on my Evernote application, and it says to save the clip. The great thing about Evernote is that you can organize it according to notebooks. I created one that’s called “bills,” because this is a bill. When I save that clip it saves to the notebook. I do that a number of times.
I do that for that same process in the for the academic search engine. What I’m using for my academic search engine is the Ebscohost database. I’m using this because it’s supplied through the college that I teach at. I promise you that there is some sort of academic database that you can access, and very likely Ebcohost is probably one of them. If not, there’s others such as Lexis Nexis, and ProQuest that are also really good. When I do a nuclear energy search, I get over 46,000 results. That is just an overwhelming number of results. You will want to limit those down a number of ways. One way to do it is by only selecting full text. Another way is to limit the results by date. I highly suggest that you select within the last 5 years, especially for something as technological as a nuclear energy program.
Even with these limits, I still have over 15000 results, and some have really complicated headlines that don’t make a whole lot of sense. I would suggest doing an advanced search, and using other terms from the resolution. You will find the words “substantially increase investments” in the resolution. If I put “invest” as a search term, then I get results with headlines like “Should the United States invest in nuclear energy.” You can do the same thing as before, where you limit it to the last 5 years, and now you’re down to 35 results. When I go to Google to research, and put terms in the search engine, I take a much more natural language approach. Google has developed an algorithm that really does pretty good natural language searches. When I do that, I make sure that I’m taking notes.
Once you have collected two to three dozen articles, you have to decide which articles popped out at you. Which seemed the most interesting. From my experience, I know that any time that you have more detail in your speeches, the better. One particular area of research that is hard is finding evidence about solving problems. If you’re familiar with the stock issues, then you know that solvency is really important, and it’s difficult to find evidence for that at times. What I want to do is on a find things that are actually working right now. Looking at things that are getting the attention of the United States Department of Energy, as far as current investments, is a really good indication of things that might work in the real world.
Our government is already investing in some of these energy sources, and my 1st thought is “well…heck, why don’t we just increase that because the resolution says to substantially increase investments in one or more of the falling energy sectors.” As I’m looking through this, I found a list of companies that have received government money. This is where critical thinking comes into play, and it’s really important. I concluded that I’m going to look at each one of these companies, see what sort of information is surrounding them, and pick the ones that are the most interesting. I just went through and found every company that was receiving money, and I searched them individually under Google News. I didn’t want the 1st thing that came up to be telling me how awesome they are, but the news will give me the the good and the bad.
The first businesses talked about safe reactors, and that sounds really interesting. Another company was known as Columbia Basin Consulting Group. When I put that in, the search results were a little bit convoluted because very common words like “Columbia Basin Group” in their name taints the results. The next one had some pretty good results, but the long and short of it is that each one of these results gave me a little bit, and I started seeing as if some things that caught my eye. The last result is actually a pretty good example of the things that were interesting me: floating nuclear power plants seems really interesting and that would be a fun thing to talk about, and advanced nuclear reactors that are safe. I notice that the term–molten salt reactor–came up more than once. Thorium also came up more than once. The reason why that’s important is because I can start honing my research to more and more specific search terms, rather than just nuclear energy in general.
I’m going to start researching molten salt reactors. Just to give you a preview after a good 30 minutes to an hour of looking at these different things, I feel like settling down on a molten salt reactor strategy. Now, my research has taken on a whole new framing. Now, I’m just going to find information for thorium molten salt reactors, and that becomes the affirmative. I think it’s a really good illustration of how you will allow an organic approach to your research. Allow yourself to come to a particular conclusion. Now I have multiple sources that can can contribute to an overall narrative. I know that I have enough literature to contribute to a single case because I allowed myself to be open to going in any direction possible.