<p>okay, so my school got a new coach this year cause of various reasons, but he's both I.E and DEBATE coach, but the thing is he doesn't pay attention to debate one bit. </p>
<p>instead, he put this obnoxious parent in charge, and he keeps telling all the debaters (i'm a speechie AND debater btw) to switch events from parli to policy to parli again, and NOW to ld. </p>
<p>personally, i know nothing of LD, but from some people i've heard it's REALLY boring, and from others i've heard it's really fun. so what is ld? and are there any snazzy programs out there during the summer?</p>
<p>basically i'm not really that great at debate because of the lack of coaching we've gotten.</p>
<p>LD is one-on-one debate with a set topic and there is a period of cross-examination. I remember Freshman year I did LD and the first topic I had was "The US has a moral obligation to mitigate in international conflicts." Yeah...personally, I like LD ok, but parli has definitely been my favorite throughout HS because of the variety of the topics.</p>
<p>Good luck with your coach!</p>
<p>Well, first off, I have to say sorry that you have such an uninvolved coach. I would hate to have that happen to me.</p>
<p>Any who, I don't know of any summer programs, but I can explain LD.</p>
<p>Basically, you start off with a topic that you get before the competition. You write an Affirmative and Negative speech for that topic using loads of research (not as much as policy, but still). You get to the competition and go against other debaters in a more classic style of debate. Affirmative goes first followed by Neg cross-examination. Then, Neg goes and Aff cross-examines. They both try to knock each others cases out using each contention that the opponent stated in their speech as well as their value and value/criterion. After, Neg gives a rebuttal and aff gives the last word. It is fun as long as you are prepared, and I suggest just trying it. It's considered one of the most difficult types of Forensics debates.</p>
<p>Hope this helps a little, and if not, just go to LDdebate.org.</p>
<p>-Edit: I forgot to mention, LD is basically assessing right versus wrong and more moral issues. The last topic I had was the following: The United Nations' obligation to the individual outweighs its obligation to respect national sovereignty.</p>
<p>Well LD is more commonly known as value-debate. That's what makes it different from policy debate. Policy as far as I know is much more evidence/research based, whereas LD does have evidence and research, but it forces you to analytically think about impacts and values and such. I'm an LD debater, and it's quite fun. You'd be surprised at how exciting it is. </p>
<p>Even if you aren't that thrilled about it, you should basically try it out. Rarely do people actually DISLIKE LD. haha.</p>
<p>If your coach isn't coaching you guys well, I suggest that you order some instructional tapes off the internet--there are a lot, and I'm sure that most of them are available in WMV form so that you can download them for free. Try buying a debate handbook, or you can also try to gather up a couple of others and take hold of the reigns of the budget set aside for your team to try and hire a private coach in your region.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thevbexchange.com%5B/url%5D">www.thevbexchange.com</a>
^Many people looking to coach put up ads here, and schools/teams looking for coaches put up ads here as well. You might want to try this site for coaching.</p>