two one okay well wait don't start don't not lie okay okay all right we are now um all right hello everyone thank you for coming to well wait don't start ah donut okay thank you for coming to rc2 lecture series uh you just experienced Jackie's uh inability to understand technology for a second uh so I have Matt Lew the director of forensics at the University of Wyoming with us today uh to talk about cross-examination uh so without further Ado I'll kick it over to Matt all right thanks for joining everybody uh I hope this will end up being pretty helpful for you uh and if you think the lecture is good and you want to get more into it I have my written lecture on crossx on Wyoming debates website so you can always go there for a backup I like to be pretty organized when I lecture so this lecture is divided up into three sections types of questions that you can ask in crosstex big meta tips about how to do cross-x well and focused narrow tips about how to get particular parts of crossx right so if you like to take organized notes uh then we're starting what is the the first section which is going
to be a little bit of an introduction uh and mostly the types of questions that there are in crossx now the title of this lecture is that crossx is speech time cross-x is speech time and I think that this captures a lot of the gist of what I'm going to try and point toward uh in this lecture which is that you should not think of cross-examination as something that's fundamentally different from a constructive or a rebuttal because just like every other speech it's something that you need to practice and prepare for it's something that you need to have questions written down for it's something that most judges will flow and it's an opportunity for you to persuade the judge so younger Debaters will often fall into the Trap of treating crosstex like bonus prep time or or just buying time for your partner to have extra time to prep their speech and I think that is a mistake that if you don't treat cross-x like one of the best opportunities to persuade the judge in a debate then you're going to fall significantly far behind your opponent it is also a critically important time to form Impressions
because it's it is the point of the debate that blocks are least useful so if you want to demonstrate that you are smarter than your opponent's blocks and this can be something that's terribly important for small schools where your opponents might have you know nine coaches or tons of Debaters just churning out block after block for them cross access the moment where you're going to be able to demonstrate your intellect can tear apart their blocks and I've never been a person who thought that that rep is a thing that matters in debate I know that um it's difficult to avoid sometimes thinking that uh you lost because your opponent had a you know better rep than you I've I've largely thought that's not really a thing that determines many debate rounds because I think that cred is a thing and the difference is that credibility is something that's determined in the round not before it this idea of rep is like if you're already good judges will vote for you I think that's largely both it assumes I Know Who You Are but credibility all of the little things we do to signal that we know what a debate should
look like that we've prepared for this intensely that's all determined to end round and does create a reputation like signal to the judge but it's one that you have complete control over and I think crossx is one of the most important places to establish that so I think there are three types of cross-sex questions and the first is information seeking before we can talk about how to do cross-x well we got to know what each type of question is trying to do information seeking questions are trying to figure out what your opponent has said or what their argument is and I think that you should avoid these as much as possible so let's start with the assumption that you don't understand your opponent's arguments that you literally just have no idea what it says maybe it's a literature base that you're not familiar with the critique or even a particular area of policy that that you just don't know what it is it's it's totally novel to you I understand the impulse to try and use crossx to figure it out and in a way you should but not by asking them what the argument is and the reason is your opponent
does not have your best interest in mind they are not trying to help you they are trying to win the debate your question to them of what does this say is a springboard to give the judge an advanced understanding of the position while you're still looking for a basic one instead of asking I think that you should start to make attacks against the position start to try and poke holes in it and I understand that if you don't know what the argument is your arguments as to why it's wrong well initially not be perfect but by forcing your opponent to explain why your questions are off they will actually have to do the basic explanation rather than the advanced explanation they have they are then forced to give you what you actually want which is the basic rundown of the position so they can correct why your question's wrong and as a side benefit to whatever degree that your attack is effective you've started to punch holes in your opponent's argument and that's that's obviously way more useful to you than just giving them a chance to explain which kind of like scores you zero points because they get all the time
to talk about their argument but to whatever extent you are able to effectively punch holes in it seeking understanding through attack benefits you in addition to giving them the necessary talk time a second type of information seeking question is is less about like what does this say and more about what did you read and so with younger Debaters or distressingly even older Debaters as we get worse and worse at Flowing I hear questions like did you read the Joe and 14 evidence or what's the last piece of evidence you read or where did you mark that to the folks that are asking these questions I have one piece of advice low and trust your flow because when you ask did you read this card I have started my timer and I will usually even on a zoom debate I will demonstrate this by holding the timer up because you have asked a question now I will agree it's not a question that has a lot of utility doesn't help you win the debate but you've asked a question you are using cross-examination so some timers got to be running maybe it's your prep time but it's probably going to be that cross next time which means
your speech time is depleting your time to make arguments is depleting so flow and trust your flow and if Jackie would like to bring me back to talk about flowing I will happily do that because that is of course a basic prereq skill to get all the rest of this right but you've got to flow and you've got to trust your flow the same thing is true of theory check questions way too often judges hear questions like what were the reasons to reject the team which permutations did you make etc etc flow and trust your flow there's only one Theory check question that you should ask because there's no other way to get the answer and that is under what conditions can you kick the counter plan that should be the very first question you ask in the cross section of everyone in C so you never forget to ask and you should get it out of the way immediately so you can move on to the bulk of what your cross X should be that's the first type of question information seeking the second type of question is the Trap aka the Reversed Pit of Doom in a trap question you're trying to motivate the speaker to give the answer
you want by misleading them into thinking it's the answer you don't want in other words it's reverse psychology and once you've been a debate for just a little while there's there's an element of human nature that becomes very apparent which is that Debaters are hardwired to disagree with their opponents it is it is just automatic that you are your opponent asks you a question in cross-x you're going to say they're wrong or you're going to be distrustful of them uh and so you you've probably heard the line uh the one AC doesn't take a stance on that in Cross sex and sometimes this is asked in response to reasonable things uh but I honestly think that especially with young Debaters we're we're so distrustful uh and hardwired to disagree that we'll say things like that to totally ridiculous questions like if your opponent asks hey is the sky blue uh I would not be entirely surprised if a young debater responded the one I see does not take a stance on the color of the sky now you can of course avoid ridiculous hedging like this by just knowing your arguments inside and outside because if you know your
stuff you won't be scared to defend it you'll be confident to defend the claims that you have made but we can take advantage of these psychological impulses and I'm going to give the example of when you're planning on stealing someone's impact let's say you're going to straight turn a D.A and so again I I could do a lecture on how to straight turn things and what's offensive defense but I'm going to assume for the most part that folks are going to get the idea that if I say you want a straight turn a disadvantage that you're gonna you're taking the impact for yourself so if a disadvantage is read with a climate change impact then your goal in link turning this