In my opinion, this practice (spreading/speed reading) is being pretty poorly misrepresented by u/helloboseo and yourself in this thread. The first thing I would point out is that obviously audience is an important thing to consider in debating. But when a layman (for the sake of this context I mean anyone who isn't involved in competitive debate) thinks about debate they tend to be self-centered in thinking about audience. Especially in competitive debate, the "general public" is rarely the audience, it's the judge and the opponent. Spreading is legit when both teams are on the same page about it and in certain formats/regions it is the norm. It isn't always done in bad faith to "overwhelm" the opponent. Just to emphasize that, I'll point out that people do spreading drills in order to improve their enunciation at rapid speeds, and there is good spreading and bad spreading. When both teams and the judge(s) in a debate round are trained to be able to understand and spread correctly, this massively improves the quality of discourse that can be attained in the round simply because much more content can be addressed.
However, as I've stated, it's essential that this is done in good faith. It is true that there are some teams who treat spreading like it's a tactic to win the round, especially against those who aren't familiar with the practice. I assume that is what happened in the video you watched. Spreading is detrimental if it isn't done right. I will say, however, you would typically not achieve much success by doing that especially in a format where it isn't the norm, and against a team who is clearly unable to communicate in that manner. The judge would just have the same reaction that you did and vote against the bad spreaders if they were not able to understand it. Additionally, in certain formats (American policy debate for example) it's pretty much expected that you know how to understand and perform spreading, especially if you compete on the national circuits, so that might provide an explanation as to why they won.
Another common knee-jerk reaction to spreading is "this isn't useful in real world communication", but I would say they need to reframe their understanding about the goals of education. People say this about entire subjects too ("I'm never gonna use x y z that I learned in school in the real world"). In my opinion, in addition to developing communication skills, a main purpose of competitive debate is to train you to rigorously arrive at a conclusion as close to the truth as possible. When you view it from that perspective, it makes sense that spreading developed (once again, only in a minority of formats too) because it favors a type of communication that is much more focused on actual content/information (dialectic) than performance (rhetorical) and allows for a lot more depth in the process.
I hope this was helpful in giving a little more insight as to why speed reading is a thing.
Asian_Domination_11 karma
In my opinion, this practice (spreading/speed reading) is being pretty poorly misrepresented by u/helloboseo and yourself in this thread. The first thing I would point out is that obviously audience is an important thing to consider in debating. But when a layman (for the sake of this context I mean anyone who isn't involved in competitive debate) thinks about debate they tend to be self-centered in thinking about audience. Especially in competitive debate, the "general public" is rarely the audience, it's the judge and the opponent. Spreading is legit when both teams are on the same page about it and in certain formats/regions it is the norm. It isn't always done in bad faith to "overwhelm" the opponent. Just to emphasize that, I'll point out that people do spreading drills in order to improve their enunciation at rapid speeds, and there is good spreading and bad spreading. When both teams and the judge(s) in a debate round are trained to be able to understand and spread correctly, this massively improves the quality of discourse that can be attained in the round simply because much more content can be addressed.
However, as I've stated, it's essential that this is done in good faith. It is true that there are some teams who treat spreading like it's a tactic to win the round, especially against those who aren't familiar with the practice. I assume that is what happened in the video you watched. Spreading is detrimental if it isn't done right. I will say, however, you would typically not achieve much success by doing that especially in a format where it isn't the norm, and against a team who is clearly unable to communicate in that manner. The judge would just have the same reaction that you did and vote against the bad spreaders if they were not able to understand it. Additionally, in certain formats (American policy debate for example) it's pretty much expected that you know how to understand and perform spreading, especially if you compete on the national circuits, so that might provide an explanation as to why they won.
Another common knee-jerk reaction to spreading is "this isn't useful in real world communication", but I would say they need to reframe their understanding about the goals of education. People say this about entire subjects too ("I'm never gonna use x y z that I learned in school in the real world"). In my opinion, in addition to developing communication skills, a main purpose of competitive debate is to train you to rigorously arrive at a conclusion as close to the truth as possible. When you view it from that perspective, it makes sense that spreading developed (once again, only in a minority of formats too) because it favors a type of communication that is much more focused on actual content/information (dialectic) than performance (rhetorical) and allows for a lot more depth in the process.
I hope this was helpful in giving a little more insight as to why speed reading is a thing.
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