OK Speech and Debate: Debate

NCFCA offers two types of competitive debate opportunities:

Team Policy (TP): In policy debate, competitors either advocate or oppose a resolution that calls for a change in policy regarding a current political issue.

Lincoln Douglas (LD): Although Douglas and Lincoln debated matters of policy, the core of their advocacy always involved a clash of values. Thus, in NCFCA, Lincoln Douglas debate resolutions are always constructed to create a clash of competing values rather than the adoption of a specific policy.

Click here for detailed descriptions of these debate opportunities

The fear of public speaking...

“Students of public speaking continually ask, "How can I overcome self-consciousness and the fear that paralyzes me before an audience?" Did you ever notice in looking from a train window that some horses feed near the track and never even pause to look up at the thundering cars, while just ahead at the next railroad crossing a farmer's wife will be nervously trying to quiet her scared horse as
the train goes by? How would you cure a horse that is afraid of cars—graze him in a back-woods lot where he would never see steam-engines or automobiles, or drive or pasture him where he would frequently see the machines?
Apply horse-sense to ridding yourself of self-consciousness and fear: face an audience as frequently as you can, and you will soon stop shying. You can never attain
freedom from stage-fright by reading a treatise. A book may give you excellent suggestions on how best to conduct yourself in the water, but sooner or later you must get wet, perhaps even strangle and be "half scared to death." There are a great many "wetless" bathing suits worn at the seashore, but no one ever learns to swim in them. To plunge is the only way.” ― Dale Carnegie

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Debate