2.1.

Advanced Argumentation
Now that we have gone through the basics of Argumentation, let’s have a look at a
more advanced way to deliver arguments in a Debate. A simple structure to use in
this regard is Claim, Analysis, Impact (CAI)

Claim:
Why claims? This seems obvious but judges often do not credit arguments that are
not properly tagged as it is difficult to identify them. This is why signposting and any
kind of structure is not just a nicety but a necessity.

Clear Claims (in a throwback to AF) should tell the judge exactly what it is you are
trying to prove, using proper nouns. It should not include reasoning (as this gets
unwieldy) but can allude to the general idea.

Example:
Unclear Claim: “My first point is about efficacy”.
Clear Claim: “My first point is that charging students 1mm RMB per class will
make students pay more attention”.

Likewise:
Unclear Rebuttal: “I’m going to rebut their point about backlash”.
Clear Rebuttal: “They said that parents will drop from the programme if we hike
prices. I’m going to argue that we attract more parents as it signals this is a very
prestigious class if it is worth 1mm RMB per session”.

The purpose of Clear Claims is twofold: it helps judges to properly credit your
arguments, and it also holds you accountable. If you say your argument is about
efficacy, you are likely to ramble about efficacy for 3 minutes. If you specifically
claim that charging more money raises the stakes of the class, and that students
pay more attention when they have paid significant money, then you are likelier to
stay on this point and to prove with reasons why it’s true.

Analysis:
After your Clear Claim, you then want multiple reasons why your claim is true. This
is because judges are more likely to buy at least one of the reasons; because
opposing teams have more to tackle to attack the reasoning; and because it lends
your argument an air of inevitability or assuredness the more reasons that it has,
even if you aren’t convinced that it is excellent.

Multiple reason generation is tricky beyond just asking yourself ‘why’. One method
is to think ‘why is this likely to happen?’. If the claim is that ‘Legalisation of drugs
will result in more people taking drugs’ you can break this down in a few ways.
The first can be ‘Why is this generally likely to be true?’ -> ‘This is generally likely to
be true as it signals to the public that drugs are safe which encourages usage’
The second can be ‘Who is this especially likely to be true for?’ or basically
stakeholder analysis -> ‘Addicts can generally steer clear of the black market

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sellers under the status quo, but when drug shops are on every street it makes it
much more likely that they will relapse.’
The third can be ‘What mechanisms make this true?’ -> ‘When drugs
are legalised the price drops significantly as they are mass produced, which makes
people more likely to use them as they are not priced out’.
The fourth could be ‘Who has an incentive in this situation?’ -> Drug stores will
have a profit incentive to sell more drugs so will use targeted advertising to attract
even more customers.’

These questions are not the only questions you can ask to help yourself create
multiple reasons, but they can prompt some ideas if just saying ‘why’ is not helping
enough.

Each of these reasons should be significantly more detailed, with each step clearly
outlined and how the change will occur.

For instance:
“My second reason is that drugs are legalised the price drops significantly as they
are mass produced, which makes people more likely to use them as they are not
priced out.
(Explanation of reason in depth) The drugs will be mass produced as the
government has an incentive to sell drugs such as marijuana and gain the sales tax.
Illicit operations are unable to mass produce as it makes them more likely to get
caught by the police, but the government can use economies of scale to
manufacture the drugs more cheaply, which in turn lowers the price. (Return to
claim) This means more people are likely to use them as pricing is a significant
concern, particularly for students or people who do not have steady incomes.

If you need to break this detailed part down, consider the argument ‘Paying
teachers based on performance helps underperforming students’.
• Why is the premise of the argument true -> ‘Teachers are motivated by
being paid more; this is because they already have a good work/life balance so
more money allows them to do more enjoyable things with their life’

• How does this work – ‘When we pay teachers by average class performance,
they will spend more time and energy working with low performing students to
bring up the class average’ 

• What does this result in – ‘This results in lower performing students doing
better due to being given more support, encouragement and explanation of
hard concepts’

• Why does this matter  - ‘This matters because improved educational

performance makes it easier to get a well-paying job and avoid poverty, less
likely that students will drop out of school and become involved in crime, and
more likely that they can advocate for political solutions for themselves and
their community’.

If you are sick of hearing ‘you just needed more analysis’, walking through these
steps will help you win with arguments.

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Activity
The purpose of this activity is to practice generating multiple reasons. Split the
students into groups and give the whole class one clear claim. Give them 5, 3 or 2
minutes (depending on the strength of your group) to generate 3 logically distinct
reasons why the claim is true. When time is up get them to read their reasons out;
if the reasons are not distinct, or are impacts disguised as reason then call them
out and ask other students to assess whether the reasons were also distinct.

Suggestions for claims;

• Banning homework will reduce student stress
• Legalising drugs decreases the number of people using them
• Commemorating soldiers as heroes makes wars more likely

Impact
You should always assume that the other teams in the room are just as good as
you. This is likely to be true anyway, given how draws work, but it also means that
you operate with the assumption that their analysis will be just as good. If both
teams (or multiple teams) have shown that their analysis is true, the importance of
that analysis will be what matters.

We will cover an entire workshop on impacting, and another one on weighing, but
students should always impact at the end of every point, as well as weighing at the
end of their speech or integrated after the impacting. Remind them that
arguments can gain importance by:
• How many people are affected
• How deeply people are affected
• How significant or vulnerable the people affected are
• Whether the harms are very probable
• Whether they occur in the short or long term.

Impacting is often the area where students lose debates as other teams out-impact or
outweigh them, so they should be identifying strategies now in advance of the full
workshop later in the semester.

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