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Worlds rounds are judged on a trinity of metrics: style, content, and strategy. One must have all three in order to attain victory in World Schools. We will go over what each metric means and how you might tap into Style, Content, and Strategy to win.
Let’s begin by talking about speaking style. There are a variety of affects that constitute a persuasive speaker. First and foremost, speaking fluency. A speaker that has substantial fluency breaks, stutters, “uhms” or “ahs” will not maximize their persuasiveness and fluency. In addition, changing your tonality and/or slowing down your speaking pace during important parts of your speech will increase the breadth of your persuasiveness. Speaking style takes a substantial deal of practice to develop, so the best recommendation I can give to an aspiring Worlds student is to practice, practice, practice!
Next, let’s discuss content. Content is defined by what goes into your speech itself. For example, the contents of your speech consist of the quality of reasoning behind your arguments, the empirical evidence/examples you are able to use, and the reasonability of your claims. A well-constructed argument will usually have multiple “layers of analysis” behind it.
Next, let’s discuss strategy. Strategy refers to your ability to bring only the most important arguments further into the debate. Some arguments will get at the heart of the motion and/or answer a central question in the debate. Others have a significant impact on the real world that can be fleshed out and explained for the judge. Both of these are positive characteristics and mean that you should prioritize winning these arguments for strategy’s sake. Conversely, if an argument seems tertiary to the core question of the motion, is heavily responded-to by the other team, or is unintuitive, that argument would not be a strategic choice to focus on in the debate.