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Debate Class Questions for Friday/Monday Debate

These are the questions we will be debating late this week and early next week:

Make sure you are prepared to give quality, evidence-based speeches on all three topics before Friday.

September 28, 2011/by dpogreba

There are a few major issues that cropped up in the compulsory voting essays. Pay particular attention to these as you revise.

General proofreading needs to be dramatically improved. Check your paper for spelling, grammar, and usage errors before hitting submit. A number of these errors dramatically reduces your ethos.
Parallelism, especially in the thesis statements, needs to be more consistent.
Given that the essay considers a possible potential future, you should write in the present tense. Rather than saying what compulsory voting does, focus on what it would do.
Concessions need to be genuine. A number of you only offered half-hearted concessions before attacking the other side.
Use naysayers to avoid repetition and to add sophistication to your arguments. They were a specific requirement for this prompt–and many of you didn’t include a single one in your response.
Topic sentences are always arguments.
Development, development, development: make sure that you’ve provided enough analysis and evidence to support your claims.
Slippery slopes are logical fallacies, not fun summer games.

Revision Due Dates