Nope, still extemp -- mikeknight dot com discussion

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1 ]

Subject: Nope, still extemp

Author:
Paul Musgrave

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 02:29:18 06/01/02 Sat
In reply to: John Jernigan 's message, "One quick argument in favor of debate" on 12:31:42 05/30/02 Thu

Briefly:

"I think policy has even made me argumentative, to the point where I'll defend almost anything just for the joy of trying to point out the flaws in other's reasoning."

But there's a difference between being argumentative, and being analytical. A good extemp speech should be analytical, as should a good debate constructive. But it's harder to be analytical, and persuasive, and an effective presenter, and knowledgeable about your subject, than to just "push back" as a negative (or affirmative 2ac/rebuttalist). And anyway, just pointing out flaws in another's reasoning doesn't make you an analyst; it just makes you boorish.

I never denied that debate wouldn't teach you valuable skills; I just think that extemp is better all-round. I also think that extemp done well -- which would require judges who actually knew something about the world -- would be much more helpful than extemp as most competitors do it now.

One offensive point to match my defensive arguing above: Nobody on this board has yet pointed out that every extemp speech is (should be) an original creation, whereas one-eighth of all debate speeches are written beforehand. Further, as regards presentation: if someone can please point to a few examples in the real world where people are impressed by quick reading of boring and out-of-context paragraphs from academic writing, it would probably help the other side.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
masterdeb...	anon	08:59:23 06/01/02 Sat