The Great Debates

Regarding our second debate topic on whether social media has a positive or negative effect on people, I think both teams did a better job preparing and stating their arguments in this debate than the first on the legal drinking age.  In this debateI think that my team's (the affirmative side) opening statement had a clear thesis that stated our argument and had some good points about why social media has a positive effect on teens.  The other team also had a good opening statement with some great specific points and statistics to back their argument up.

The next part of the debate was the rebuttal.  Compared to last time, I believe that both teams had stronger rebuttals that in the first debate.  There were definitely less fallacies than there were in the last debate rebuttals.  For the most part, both teams brought up good points that attacked what the other teams said in their rebuttals.  Around all of the  points were brought up in the rebuttals and talked about.  I know that my team tried to plan the rebuttals ahead this time because in our last debate, our rebuttals were not the best.  Consequently, I feel this prepared us more to go against the other team's argument.  There will still some points that we weren't prepared to hear in the negative side argument.  But, overall, I think the rebuttals served their purpose to say why what they said wasn't/wasn't necessarily correct. 

Finally, the last part of the debate were the closing statements.  I don't think my team (the affirmative argument) had a very strong argument compared to last time.  In this debate, the closing statement was just a list of what points were made in the argument.  There were no important points left 

Ultimately, this was a much better debate than the first but could still be improved.  After being timer for this second debate, I realized how our time wasn't utilized very effectively.  Either time ran out and people got cut off from what they were saying, or they didn't talk long enough and didn't use the whole time period to debate.  If there was a third debate, the debate could be made better if both teams used the full time to their benefit.   This also pushes the debate teams to be more organized and prepared for planning what they will say in the debate based on the maximum amount of time they can use. 

The day after the second debate, we started what is called "lightning debate round."  Overall, I think I did pretty well on this assignment because it was on the spot.  I argued my topics to the best of my ability.  By the second time I did the lightning debate, I got a feel for the little amount of time you have.  In my first lightning debate round, I got cut off in the middle of my rebuttal because time was over.  Today, when I debated for the second time, I made sure to use as much of the time as possible.  Consequently, these quick debate helped me to learn how important time is.