Learn to Adjudicate

Judigng a debate well is not an easy skill to learn, and requires you to work as hard than the students during the debate. You must be able to provide a substantiated and well-founded Reason For your Decision (RFD) to explain to the students who won and why.

1. Read the Adjudication Guides online to understand the expectations of an adjudicator, especially the official WSDC guide. Understand the rules of debate for the format of your upcoming competition clearly, so that you have no doubts about what the technicalities of the debate are.

2. Register yourself for an adjudicator training sessions held by DA(S) and Julia Gabriel's. Once you have been trained, practise, practise, practise. If you wish to be a shadow judge (that is, to understudy one of the judges during a competition), email the competition convener or the DA(S) and we will arrange for it.

3. Discuss and learn from other judges on the forum.

Judging a Debate

Once the debate starts, you will have to work as hard as the debaters. Judging a debate requires you to:

1. Listen carefully. You should write down the key points (such as the definitions, case divisions, key arguments and examples, etc) of each speaker. Note down what they are saying, and analyse whether it is logical, well substantiated, and relevant to the topic. Also listen for what is not being said (did they miss any key definitions? Did they rebut all the major points?) and what is being asserted without any reason or evidence. Note down the points of information - who is offering them, how many were accepted by the speaker, how were they addressed, etc. There are many different ways to track a debate - here is one sample. You may choose to track the debate in a different way, and that is fine as long as you have sufficient information to make a good decision about how the debate went.

2. Avoid joining the debate yourself. This is always a tough challenge for judges. You should be impartial and objective, and look at each point fairly without any personal bias for or against the topic. You should not reject or oppose any argument raised by a debater just because you disagree with it - you can only judge arguments that have been raised by the speakers on the floor, not by your own "debater instinct". If a bad argument is raised but is not rebutted by an opposition team, you should not "fill in the rebuttal" on behalf of the opposition team. A point that is raised (assuming it is not ridiculously fallacious) is always valid unless the other team rebuts it.

3. Score the debate objectively based on the "competition average". If you are judging at a secondary school debate competition, the average score (usually "70" for WSDC format debates) will be moderated to that competition. If you are judging at a JC or international competition, obviously you would expect a higher standard of average in order to get a "70" score. You will only learn what the competition average "looks like" after shadow judging many debates and through experience. Refer to the competition rulebook to understand in more detail what the expectations are for each score range.

Filling in the Score Sheet

The DA(S) is encouraging all competitions to use an improved variant of the WSDC score sheet.

View the new score sheet (sample) here

View the the guide on how to fill it up here.

Delivering Your Verdict

As an adjudicator, you will usually have three opportunities to provide feedback and comments for a debate:

1. Written feedback on the ballot
2. Oral adjudication summary
3. Briefing for individual teams

Of these, the oral adjudication summary places extra demands on the adjudicator in that he or she will be required to address the audience. This section will seek to provide some pointers on how to deliver a good oral adjudication summary, keeping in mind that all debates are different and a model answer on oral summaries cannot be given.
The purpose of the oral adjudication summary is as follows:

1. Explain the rationale behind the decision made by the judges;
2. Highlight the key arguments, examples and other elements that contributed to the decision; and
3. Offer suggestions on other elements that should have been introduced to make the debate a better one.

The following steps can be taken during the various stages of the debate to assist in the delivery of the oral adjudication summary.

Preparation during the debate

1. Be ready to step up. When you are judging, you must be prepared to provide an oral adjudication summary, even if you are not the chair. Some chairs would prefer not to deliver the summary if he or she is in the minority and may delegate this task to you. At the same time, you may still be required to give the summary as a chair even if you are in the minority if those in the majority prefer not to do so.
2. Prepare your notes early. You can start jotting down key factors that should be raised in the oral summary, even during the match. This would mean that you are unlikely to forget key points that were raised earlier in the match. In the same vein, this would make the deliberations with the panel quicker. When preparing your notes, you can also start to categorise your points so that they would already be in your preferred order when you deliver the summary.

Deliberations after the debate

1. Take on board separate views. When judging in a panel, it is important to include the views of all the adjudicators. On some contentious areas, it would important to highlight both the majority and the dissenting views. If you already have the preferred order of points for adjudication, it would be easy to slot the additional points into your delivery.

Delivery of the Oral Summary

1. Keep in the audience in mind. When delivering the oral adjudication summary, keep in mind that this would be the only opportunity to address the public but that there is another chance to engage the debaters later. Stick to the key issues without getting into intricate details that would be best brought up later when talking with the teams
2. Keep it concise. It is important to stick to the key issues and not ramble on. There should be the same time discipline that is expected in the speakers. Before delivering the speech, estimate how long it would take to deliver the summary and attempt to stick to that time limit.  
3. Be precise. Depending on the format of the debate and the competition, you may be required to give the verdict either before or after the oral adjudication summary.  There is a tendency to keep the comments vague so that the verdict would come as a surprise. Try to avoid vague comments that do not provide learning points for the audience and the teams. If a good oral adjudication is delivered, the audience would be able to see what the key considerations for the decision were and the verdict will not be a surprise.

 

Online Adjudication Guides

http://www.schoolsdebate.com

The official World Schools Debating Championships guide to adjudication. A Must-Read for all judges.

http://www.qatardebate.com

The 'Introduction to Debating and Judging' handouts from QatarDebate Level 1 workshops can be downloaded as a pdf file here. This handout should provide an introduction to debating and judging, introduce some coaching techniques and list sources for more information on debating.

Rules and Formats of debate competitions

See the forum for more links

- volunteering as a judge

- our adjudicator training sessions (registration and schedule)