The Purpose of Sourcebooks

Sourcebooks are a longstanding aspect of the debate world. Each year, researchers spend hours of their summer writing debate material for sourcebooks and many debaters use them. Yet established traditions like this sometimes lead us to forget why we started doing something in the first place. In this blog series, you will get a sneak peek into how Rhetoric LLC will be creating our sourcebooks. First, however, we need to look at the purpose of sourcebooks themselves.

Learning and growing

Many coaches and parents are often concerned that sourcebooks might prevent debaters from learning and growing. After all, if a student just uses sourcebook cases and never writes his or her own, the learning that takes place when writing a case will have been missed. Thus, a “cases in a box” sourcebook can short circuit the learning process.

At the same time, sourcebooks can be valuable learning tools. Reading a high-quality case written for the current resolution can demonstrate how to write a case. Learning by example is often incredibly helpful. My introduction to debate was watching top competitors (including Ben McKay) debate at my first speech qualifier. A few weeks later, I had written my own cases and was debating by my second tournament. Observing great debaters can help you learn how to approach debate in general and can also provide ideas for what to look at in the resolution. Whether you are new to debate or very experienced, watching other debaters is one of the best ways to learn. The good news is that you don’t have to wait until January to do that! You can observe great debaters' cases (and even videos of them debating) as early as the beginning of the fall through our sourcebook.

We will soon be sharing more details about how our sourcebook specifically is a learning tool. However, there are two other primary purposes of sourcebooks to address first.

An introduction to the resolution

A good sourcebook can provide a helpful entry point to the resolution. Sometimes it is  difficult to dive into a new topic. A sourcebook can help by introducing debaters to a variety of areas of the resolution. Done well, a sourcebook not only introduces debaters to those topics, but also stimulates their interest in learning more. A sourcebook only prevents learning when the sourcebook is where the research ends.

A few Affirmative and Negative cases and briefs can be of help by serving as an introduction to the resolution. However, a sourcebook that also includes a broader array of information can expand the capabilities of a sourcebook even further.

Help for competition

The goal that might come to the forefront of many debaters' minds when it comes to sourcebooks is prep for competition, which certainly is an important goal. Researching new resolutions involves a lot of work, so having a sourcebook can help lighten the load, enabling debaters to be better prepared for arguing on a variety of issues and to have time to learn how to communicate more persuasively. A good sourcebook will be useful not just as a starting point, but continuing through the year.

In this post, we have seen the reasons sourcebooks exist in the first place. I have also hinted at a few aspects of how our sourcebooks will achieve those goals. In the next post, we will see how the Rhetoric LLC sourcebook can help you (or your students) learn and grow, gain knowledge of the new resolution, and prepare you for competition.