Resources for Coaches

Welcome Coaches!

Welcome to a new year with SEDA! Whether you're returning or joining us for the first time, we’re thrilled to have you as part of our debate community. Your dedication helps students find their voices and think critically.

Debate club registration and benefits 

Why register?

  • Voting privileges at our Annual General Meeting
  • Access to lesson plans and tailored support
  • Access to a club view to track your clubs registrations
  • **NEW** Access to a $200 credit for your students towards tournament registrations
  • **NEW** There is no fee for club membership!

Student membership fees

Students who want to participate in SEDA events must register as a student member and pay the student membership fee of $50. Additional fees apply for:

  • Online tournaments ($20)
  • In-person tournaments ($40)
  • Workshops (variable pricing)

Financial assistance is available and can be requested on registration forms. A parent or legal guardian must fill in the student membership form.

SEDA will provide coaches with a handout for parents to introduce them to SEDA.

Tournament registration & Schedule

The Event Calendar shows upcoming tournaments. Each event has its own detail page and registration link. Please note:

  • Registration opens a minimum of two weeks before and closes one week before the event
  • Coaches or parents can complete tournament registration. Coaches must know the student’s financial aid preference if submitting
  • You’ll receive a link to track your club’s registrations

Volunteer Judges

Our tournaments depend on volunteer judges to support debaters.

  • Each team must provide one judge (parent, family, friend, teacher) at every event they compete in
  • No experience is needed
  • We offer judge training at every tournament

National Debate Opportunities 

If your students are highly competitive debaters who would like to participate in national debate opportunities, please refer to our qualifying criteria in the programs section of our website. This page will list the national opportunities and how to qualify for them.

 

Analysis

What is Analysis?

In its most basic form, analysis is the stuff in your argument to prove that it is right. Prove, is the key word in that sentence. A lack of analysis is sometimes referred to as an assertion. 

This skill is a focus for students who have already learned to develop an argument using basic paragraph structure, or LEET. In order to prove an argument in any round, you need analysis, so this is a skill that everyone should focus on. 

In debate, we often describe analysis as building a house. If you try to build the top floor of your building before building the foundation, then your structure would crumble. This is why you need to start from the very beginning, and go through very detailed steps—brick by brick. For example:

  • My cat is making my dog sad.
  • The things that make my dog happy are: Food, Walks, and Attention
  • Since I’ve gotten my cat, it steals my dog’s food, sits on my lap so my dog cannot get attention, and keeps me too busy to walk my dog consistently.
  • Because my cat is preventing my dog from enjoying the things that make him happy, my cat is making my dog sad.

This is a very basic line of analysis. The harder something is to explain, or the more complex your analysis needs to be. If you skip a step in your analysis, it leaves room for your opponents to disprove your argument, so it is important to try and make sure all of your steps make sense, and all build on each other.

Steps to make analysis

When impacting, it is important to treat your opponent’s stance fairly. Begin your impact by examining the best-case scenario, and then as you continue to impact, move to worse outcomes. 

  1. Determine the objective of your argument: also called a burden, or the core concept of your argument. Each point you make in a debate should play a role in you case stance. That means each argument has a fundamental objective. 

    Ex: (resolution- THW ban zoos) zoos set animals up poorly for life in the wild

  2. Set up your argument: find the label and initial explanation of your argument. Think back to your lessons in argument structure. Determine where your argument starts in order to end up at your final objective. 

    Ex: in the wild, animals develop a very specialized set of skills in order to survive.

  3. Link examples: Add in examples or evidence to back up what you are saying. 

    Ex: Some skills they need to survive include: sensing predators or danger, and foraging for food 

  4. Expand: continue to expand and impact your analysis. This development of your point should be a step-by-step breakdown of your point. Make sure each idea you present directly links to the previous one.

    Ex: In zoos, animals constantly get their food provided for them, and have a safe carefree environment.

    This means that the animals will never develop the skills to survive in the wild.

  5. Tieback: link your analysis back to the central idea of your argument.

    Ex: Therefore, zoos are setting animals up poorly for life in the wild

  6. So what? After building an argument, you need to explain what its relevance is in the round. This is called impacting. Like its name suggests, you explain the implications or impacts of your argument in relation to the resolution, or the round as a whole. This is a separate skill that is commonly used by advanced debaters. 

    Ex: Because the animals are not set up properly for life in the wild, they are at a disadvantage both in gathering food, but also when threatened by predators.

    This means that as soon as you re-integrate them to the wild, they will likely be killed.

    This is especially important if the species is at risk or endangered, because then holding in the zoo has given them worse skills, which can cause species to go extinct, which will affect the whole food chain. 

    This is why it is critical to ban zoos.

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