Read first:

Intro to Tech by Shaurya Kasi (or be familiar with the norms of tech debate) 

Spreading

By Jiayi Meng 

What is spreading?

Spreading is a debate practice where you speak as fast as possible while still remaining clear enough to hear what you’re saying. It is done almost exclusively on “tech judges” who are familiar with and accepting of the practice. While it is a bit of a hassle to learn/practice, being good at spreading is really key because it essentially gives you extra time (or content) per speech. 

When do you spread?

• This is usually pretty simple, actually. If a judge says in their paradigm “I’m ok with spreading,” then you should probably spread. Other variations of this would include: “speed is fine,” “I don’t care if you go fast,” “fine with speed,” etc. And if you’re confused, then asking them pre-round is always an option! 

• The exception to this would be if a judge puts in their paradigm “I’m good with speed” (or something similar) but is pretty clearly a lay judge. In that case, I’d recommend speaking slower. 

How to spread

• Read really fast (obviously), every word should be spoken in as little time as you can 

  1. The way you do this is thinking of words not as complete sets of sounds, but just as individual syllables. Don't for example, don't read "because", process it, and then say "because", just scan the word with your eyes and say each syllable out loud.

  2. Practice speed reading --- you can only talk as fast as you can read

• Don’t pause between words

• Do drills 

Drills: 

Note: every single one of these drills should be done while still attempting to spread/speak as fast as possible, since that maximizes their utility 

• Pen drill

  • Put a (clean) pen or similar item in your mouth and attempt to read your case/cards

  • This helps because it forces you to overenunciate, so when you don’t have a pen in your mouth you’re extra clear 

• Overexaggeration drill 

  • Overexaggerate each syllable of your speech =

  • Does about the same thing as the pen drill but without the pen: forces you to overenunciate which translates to better spreading when you’re speaking normally 

• Watermelon drill

  • Inject “watermelon” between every word in your speech =

  • Eg. “Affirming solves by limiting the president’s power to send troops overseas” would become “Affirming watermelon solves watermelon by watermelon limiting watermelon the watermelon president’s watermelon power watermelon to watermelon send watermelon troops watermelon overseas”

  • This helps by (1) exercising your mouth by injecting a bunch of random syllables, and (2) setting up a consistent spreading rhythm 

• Backwards drill

  • Read your case/blockfile backwards 

  • This trains you to read something completely nonsensical. This helps because when spreading you might not be reading full sentences, so learning how to ignore phrases that don’t make sense is important 

  • This drill can also be combined with other drills, especially the watermelon drill

• Spreading drill

  • Sometimes it’s helpful to ignore the other gimmicks and just spread, since doing so is the best representation of what you’d actually be doing in a round 

  • Unless you’re explicitly practicing your case, you shouldn’t spread something you’re familiar with

    • Doing so mostly gets you used to reading a specific set of cards, not spreading in general 

Spreading best practices 

• Slow down if your opponents ask you to b/c of a health condition 

  • Some people might disagree with me here, but I think this is just basic decency 

  • Spreading consent theory is also somewhat hard to beat in this scenario 

• Slow down on taglines 

  • These are the most important parts of your speech, so you really want to make sure the judge has time to hear+flow these down

  • A lot of judges will also ask you to do this in their paradigms 

• Slow down on analytics 

  • These are more “thick” with content than cards (usually) so they’re a bit harder to flow for the judge (and opponents) 

Going against spreading

Spreading can be somewhat hard to understand at first, but it gets better! Here are a couple tips to help: 

• Read the doc 

  • In the first few speeches, this should have most of the content you need 

  • However, you should still be listening to their speech, just in case they try to sneak in some analytics (or even tricks) 

• Do flowing drills

  • This helps you not get overwhelmed by the quantity of arguments you’re going against 

  • Also helps you not miss key arguments that you need to respond to