The Summary Speech

By: Aadyot Bhatnagar Introduction

As the name may suggest, the purpose of the summary speech is to condense the round for the judge. Like the rebuttal and final focus, while you should rehearse this speech before walking into a round, ultimately, it will also be made extemporaneously. Because the speech is only two minutes, you must make sure you are very selective in the arguments you push for here; you must also make it crystal clear to the judge why (s)he should value your arguments over your opponents. Moreover, due to the short time available to you, you will need to make sure you properly budget your time to adequately cover all the arguments you intend to use during the last two speeches of the round. Often, you will feel that you have to speak faster to cram in all the information you want to convey. DONT. You must remember that this is public forum debate, where your judges could be anyone, from parents to college students. Even if you have someone who claims (s)he was a debater or coach and understands fast speech, you should still assume that their notes on fast speeches will be nowhere near as adequate as youd like. Still feel tempted to speak quickly? Just remember that if your judge cant understand what youre saying youll probably lose the round, even if you utterly destroy all of your opponents arguments. Keeping this in mind, always try to carefully plan out your summary by taking notes on your flow paper. The best time to do this is second crossfire, and if needed, take some extra prep time before you get up to speak. Finally, if youre speaking second, dont use all of your opponents summary to take notes for your own; you will want to try to address any new points they bring up during their speech during your own summary, and the only way to do this is to listen to what they are saying. The rest of this lesson will be divided into the following five sections. 1. Content 2. Organization 3. Choosing and ordering your arguments 4. Time management 5. Pre-round preparation

Content
The most important thing you will do in the summary is refuting your opponents responses to your arguments (also known as giving second-level responses). Typically, the arguments you defend are the contentions you use in your own case, but sometimes, you may want to elaborate on some of your turns to your opponents arguments. (A turn is a response that allows you to use your opponents argument against them. For instance, if my opponent were to say that the rise of China is contributing to climate change, I could turn that argument by saying that China is the worlds biggest investor in renewable energy and is actually lowering its emissions as it realizes that climate change poses a threat to its people, as well). In addition to second-level responses, you should also clarify the framework of the round; as the case-writing lesson explains, the framework debate can often decide the round. For instance, on the October 2012 topic (Resolved: Developed nations have a moral obligation to mitigate the effects of climate change), the negative may have said that a moral obligation exists to do something only if that action is feasible. If I did not have any arguments showing how developed nations could feasibly mitigate the effects of climate change, if I wanted to win the round, I would need to win the framework debate by showing that it was possible to have a moral obligation to do something, even if that action was infeasible. For this reason, it is often wise to begin your summary with a quick list of REASONS (try not to go over 20 seconds) on WHY your framework should be valued over your opponents. However, as you respond to your opponents responses, remember not to get too bogged down in the details; if you do, you will either speak too quickly or fail to adequately address arguments. Additionally, remember that although I dont cite sources for various arguments in this tutorial, you should ALWAYS do so when you deliver your actual speech. Before going more in depth into second-level responses, I will first explain the three main types of responses, in increasing order of their strength as arguments. 1. Evidence An evidence-level response is one that claims your opponents evidence is flawed in some way that renders it illegitimate. For instance, on the June 2012 topic (Resolved: Stand Your Ground laws are a legitimate expansion of the doctrine of self-defense), the following was a prominent evidence-level response to a Tampa Bay Times article saying that Stand Your Ground laws reduced violent crime:

Because the article in question only cited those statistics that supported its conclusion (instead of looking at all of the statistics available on the subject) it cannot be considered a valid piece of evidence that objectively examines the whole topic without bias. The main danger in being overly reliant on evidence-level responses is that your opponent may have a piece of evidence from an independent source that says the same thing, rendering that response a waste of time. However, this is not to say that they cannot undermine an opponents case if used skillfully with other types of responses. 2. Impact An impact-level response is meant to refute a single impact of an argument. You might use these either to turn one of your opponents impacts (say that the impact in question is good when your opponent claims it is bad, or vice versa) or to negate it (say that it wont happen for a certain reason). You can also outweigh their impacts by saying that yours are more important for some reason. For example, if, on the November 2012 topic (Resolved: Current U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East undermines our national security), one of my opponents were to say that our sanctions on Iran are resulting in anti-American sentiment and Iranian nuclearization, the following would be three different kinds of impact-level responses. a. First, I could negate the impact of anti-Americanism by saying that anti-American sentiment does not automatically result in violence against the United States. b. Second, I could turn the impact of nuclearization by saying that the fact that only Israel has nukes in the Middle East is the biggest reason that Arab nations hate us; if Iran were to get nukes, the regions stability would likely increase in the long term. c. Finally, I could outweigh the impact of anti-Americanism by saying that on net, U.S action has actually, on net, caused terrorism to decrease in the region, even if antiAmericanism has increased. Impact-level responses are the most common types of responses, as they significantly hamper your opponents abilities to gain any relevance in the round; even if what they say logically makes sense, the judge should not vote for them if their impacts have been refuted, outweighed, or turned. However, if you dont address the logical reasons, or warrants, behind their arguments, many lay judges (average people) will still not vote for you. This brings me to warrant-level responses. These are the most persuasive type of response, as most people do not believe something that cannot be explained properly.

3. Warrant The purpose of a warrant-level response is to undermine the reasoning your opponents present for a given argument. Remember, if there is no reason for what your opponents impacts to be true, most judges will not vote off the impacts linked to the reasoning, even if you didnt address those impacts individually. For example, on the January 2013 topic (Resolved: On balance, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission harms the election process), a common argument was that negative ads reduce voter turnout because they alienate voters into thinking that all the candidates are bad. The following would constitute the two main types of warrant-level responses to an argument. a. First, I could negate my opponents warrant by saying that even if voters think that most of the candidates are no good, they typically vote for the candidate they consider the least evil. b. Second, I could turn this warrant by saying that because negative ads are more often about specific policies than positive ads, they improve the quality of the voters by making them better-informed on the issues they care about this also gives them more incentive to go out and vote, since they now know much more definitively who supports their own interests the best, increasing voter turnout, as well. Obviously, far more responses of each type exist for all of the contentions outlined in the examples I gave. However, keep in mind that most of your responses should be based on research, not just seemingly logical assumptions you came up with yourself. The simple reason for this is that a professional in a certain subject is a much more credible source than a middle school or high school student. Now, lets go back to giving second-level responses in your summary. Because most advanced debaters will put at least two to three responses to each of your contentions, you must strategically choose which ones you ultimately refute. If you try to address everything, you will typically go too fast or fail to adequately address at least a few important points. For this reason, you should prioritize responding to turns and warrant-level responses over all else. Most evidence-level responses dont undermine your entire argument (the easiest way to avoid this is to have two or more pieces of evidence saying similar things), while the negation of one impact to a contention (remember, most good contentions should have more than one impact) will rarely prevent you from winning the round.

On the other hand, if your opponent turns your argument against you (either a warrant or an impact), you must make sure to address that; otherwise, the extra argument that they just gained could very well give them the extra push they needed to win the round. Finally, even if your opponent only succeeds in negating one of your warrants, if this response is left unrefuted, it prevents you from using that argument (or even entire contention) in any way. However, prioritizing responding to warrant-level responses and turns to your contentions does not mean that you should not address impact- or evidence-level responses. At the same time, you should try to rely the most on warrant-level arguments as you construct your second-level responses for the simple reason that they are the strongest and can address the broadest range of arguments. Additionally, you can reduce the amount of time you take to cover multiple responses by grouping them together and refuting them with only one response or set of responses. For instance, on the affirmative side of the April 2013 topic (Resolved: The continuation of current U.S. anti-drug policies in Latin America will do more harm than good), I might have run the following contention: The U.S.s policy of capturing the heads of cartels in Mexico has not only led to more violence and deaths due to violent power struggles between factions of the cartels no longer held together by a strong leader, but has also armed cartels, as the weapons we sell to the Mexican government to combat the drug trade often end up in the hands of cartel members due to police corruption. My opponent may have used these responses. 1. Warrant turn: The increased violence is actually a good thing, because 90% of the casualties are actually those of cartel members this weakens cartels in the long run. The reason it occurs is because killing the head of a major cartel splits it into a number of smaller groups that all compete for a certain territory and kill each other in the process. 2. Impact turn: As cartels become weaker from the deaths of their leaders, over the longer term, it becomes easier for the government to manage them. Thus, Mexican drug war deaths fell 12% in 2012. This improves the situation even if you dont buy response 1. 3. Impact negation: The only impact provided for arms sales is violence. Because we show that the violence is mainly just between cartel members and would have occurred regardless of their acquisition of U.S. weapons, arms sales provide no real impact.

Because it would probably take far too long to refute each of these three responses individually, I could group them together and respond with the following argument during my summary speech: The biggest thing my opponents ignore in their responses to our contention is that when cartels are pressured by the government, they dont submit meekly. Instead, they move to new, even more unstable countries, where neither the U.S. nor the local regime can properly intervene to curb their activity. Overall, this only drives the drug trade deeper underground and makes it harder to police, even if violence decreases in the targeted country. Here, my opponent proves that inter-cartel violence is an indicator of the drug wars success in Mexico and that the death toll will decrease in the long term. However, I point out that since the resolution asks us to look at Latin America and not just Mexico, we cannot become bogged down in the example of a single country. When we look at the whole situation, because we see that the drug trade is only being made even harder to enforce, U.S. efforts to curb it are ultimately counterproductive. Finally, remember that your second-level responses dont necessarily have to be introduced for the first time into debate during the summary. If you can respond to some of your opponents responses by using one of your own unaddressed arguments from the case, feel free to do so. While it is always strategically preferable to have some arguments that you introduce as second-level responses during the summary, never be afraid to cross-apply things you brought up in your case or rebuttal to do the same.

Organization
The summary is typically organized into two or three voting issues preceded by a quick framework analysis. The framework analysis should provide the judge with well-warranted reasons why your interpretation of the resolution should be valued over your opponents, but it should not use up a significant portion of your entire speech time. The section on time allocation will elaborate on this. Each voting issue should encompass a major argument, most typically the contentions of your own case. However, if your turns are strong enough and/or you feel that one of your own contentions has too many responses on it, you can also use one of your opponents contentions as a voting issue.

Bear in mind that when you do this, you must still make sure you address ALL of the turns your opponents have placed on any of your contentions. I typically refute my opponents turns on arguments I dont plan on using after my framework analysis but before my voting issues. Ultimately, where in your summary you discuss your opponents turns is up to you. When you speak, the voting issues themselves should be arranged in a format similar to the following: 1. Lets look to contention __ (subpoint __), where we talk about _____. (Be sure to indicate which contention and subpoint you mentioned the original argument! This helps the judge out by letting him or her figure out where to look on the flow to see your original argument.) a. Although our opponents claim _____ (a specific response or set of responses) i. They are wrong because _____. b. Continuing on (to another part of the voting issue), our opponents claim _____. i. This is untrue because _____. c. Etc. When going down a voting issue, you must also remember that almost every contention has multiple parts that are logically distinct. If your opponent responds to each part separately, and you are unable to group together those responses, you need to make sure that you specifically mention each different part of the voting issue to your judge. Although you and your opponent may know exactly what response youre talking about, chances are that the judge will not, unless you give him or her a clear indicator as to where you are on the flow.

Choosing & Ordering Your Voting Issues

Due to the short time available to you during your summary, you must be very selective in which arguments you decide to use as voting issues. Typically, if an opponent gives seven responses to one of your contentions but only one or two turns, dont talk about that contention after refuting the turns against it. That contention no longer helps either team, and thus becomes irrelevant to the round. Conversely, arguments that remain relatively untouched should be the cornerstone of your summary, especially if they have large impacts. Moreover, you should always try to tailor your resolutional analysis to maximize the impacts of the arguments you are winning on, while minimizing the impacts of the arguments your opponents are winning.

Often, it can be difficult to determine which arguments you are winning the most on, especially if your opponents respond to them equally well. At this point, you must make a judgment call on which arguments are likeliest to win you the round. You might decide to take a risk and go for the argument that has the biggest impact, though it may not be as well warranted, or you might decide to play it safer and go for the argument that has the most intuitive warrants and is thus the most convincing to the judge. When it comes to actually ordering your voting issues, there are two main strategies. First is going in the order that they were brought up during the round. While this helps prevent the judge from getting confused, it may not have as great a rhetorical impact as desired. The second strategy is ending with your strongest argument and starting with your second strongest (if you go with three voting issues, you can cram your weakest between those two). The reason for this is that people remember the end of a speech the best, but they also pay some attention to its start. In this way, you make sure that your better arguments resonate with the judge much more strongly. You may also want to speak even more slowly during your strongest voting issue (for emphasis), but this can sometimes be impractical.

Time Management
Considering the huge amount of content you have to condense into just two minutes, the struggle to properly manage your time arguably makes the summary the hardest speech in the round. Typically, you should spend no more than 15 seconds on resolutional analysis, leaving between 1:45 and the full 2:00 left. For the next 10 to 20 seconds, you should address any turns to contentions you will not be bringing up during for the rest of your round, as this prevents your opponents from extending those turns later into the round. Additionally, if you speak second, the first 30 seconds of your summary should also point out any important responses that your opponents fail to address to in their summary, as this will prevent them from using the refuted arguments in their final focus (remember, no new arguments are allowed in the FF). This should leave at least 1:30 remaining. Now, you should go on to your voting issues. At this point, how to best manage your time can vary. If you only have two major voting issues, I would strongly recommend giving each an equal time allocation, since losing even one could cost you the round.

On the other hand, if you have three voting issues, time allocation is much more flexible. Although you could give each argument an equal time allocation, this isnt always the wisest thing to do when one of your arguments is significantly stronger or weaker than the others. You should spend the most time reinforcing the arguments that gain you the largest impacts in the round, whether they are your own contentions or turns on your opponents case. However, at the same time, try to leave at least 15 seconds for each voting issue; less than this reduces coverage to little more than a quick side note in the overall round. Considering the ever-present time pressure, if you bring a timer to any speech, bring it up to the summary. It is incredibly easy to lose track of time and under-cover an argument because of it. Constantly glance at your timer as you speak, and if time for a certain portion of the summary is running short, try your best to wrap it up and move on.

Pre-Round Preparation
Although the summary should never be scripted out before the round, it is helpful to rehearse giving a summary as you research your topic. Outside of practice rounds, one of the easiest ways to do this is to prepare a flow of your own case and then flow down your blocks to the arguments in your case. Also do this for the other side. Then, based on the notes you just made on your flow, deliver a summary for each side of the topic and videotape yourself doing it. To make this drill more realistic, you should pretend that you are losing on a few arguments, as well. Because you will rarely win every voting issue in a round, you should become proficient with being able to win with fewer arguments. The best way to do this is establishing a favorable weighing mechanisms and actually using it to your advantage. Afterwards, watch the video recording while looking at your flow to see how well you responded to the things said in rebuttal. Additionally, watching yourself on video will help you pinpoint flaws in your delivery. As you give more and more summaries, you will begin to improve at judging which arguments to use as voting issues and which of your opponents responses you should group together. Finally, you should try to research responses to any possible blocks to arguments you come up with. This will not only help you see the weaknesses in both your contentions and responses, but will also be incredibly useful to refer to during your summary, since you will have research to cite for your second-level responses and not just logic.