How to Write a Team Split

What is a Team Split?

A statement of what arguments will be presented by the first and second speakers.
Also the conceptual division of the team’s arguments, whether it is said or not.

Step One – Brainstorm

Before you split up arguments between the two speakers, you first need arguments to split, so the first part of any team split is coming up with some arguments to talk about.

Example:

Let’s use the topic “That all families should have a household pet dog”, and we will say we are on the Negative team. Our brainstorm has come up with the following arguments:

• Some families may not be able to afford a dog
• Some families may not have the time to care for a dog
• There are not enough vets and puppy schools to cater for every family to have a dog
• There are not enough dog parks in most suburbs for everyone to have a dog
• Some people are allergic to dogs

Step Two – Prioritise

Which are the best arguments? You may not have time to cover all the arguments in the allotted time.

Step Three – Divide the arguments

You can divide the arguments according to stakeholders, themes, or something else entirely as long as the order and flow of arguments is announced and is easy to understand. Some common approaches are below.

Stakeholder-based Split

If we look at this through the lens of a stakeholder-based approach, we can see we have a few different stakeholders here:

• Families
• Vets
• The wider community

We can group this into two groups, one for each speaker: a “Families” group, which we can give to our first speaker who will talk about the effects this topic will have on families (the cost and time commitment), and a “Vets and Wider Community” group, which we can give to our second speaker who will talk about people with allergies, the number of dog parks available, how there aren’t enough vets, etc.

Issue-Based Split

For an issue based split instead of looking at who is affected (the stakeholders), we look at what arguments are similar. The idea is that by keeping similar arguments with the same speaker, there is less re-explaining that has to happen for the second speaker.

• Cost
  • Cost to families
  • Cost to build more dog parks
• Practicality
  • Not everyone has time to look after a dog
  • Some people may not like dogs

We have now grouped the arguments again into two groups, but this time based on issue rather than stakeholder. We can assign an issue each to the first and second speaker.

You may notice that the two splits above don’t use the exact same arguments. Not every argument fits nicely into one category, issue, or stakeholder group as another. As a debater it is your job to decide with your team as to what kind of split works better for the arguments that you have thought of.

Step Four – Write Speeches

The next step is to start preparing your arguments. Make sure your first speaker writes this team split down and presents it near the start of their speech. It’s a good idea for your third speaker to have it written down to be used in summary.