The board of the Nederlandse Debatbond develops manuals to aid you and your society. On this webpage, you find de manuals that have been produced so far. Is there a specific subject that you’d like to see covered? Then feel free to send an email to info@debatbond.nl.
PS: Currently, some manuals are only available in Dutch. We are working on translating them as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
To help you to get sponsors, the Debatbond wrote this manual. We hope to take away the initial exploratory work for you and to hand you some nifty templates that can be used to find sponsors. The goal of this manual is for you to get a good idea of why you are looking for sponsoring, what the goals are of sponsoring, and how to think about what types of sponsoring are possible and desirable. Moreover, we provide you with practical tips to get you going.
Manual Sponsoring (English)
In the manual “Organizing a debate tournament”, we have given an as exhaustive as possible checklist for the organisation of a debate competition. This manual was developed with generality in mind so that it can be used for any tournament. We discuss the preparatory phase, the time during the tournament itself, and the period after the tournament.
Manual Organizing a debate tournament (Dutch)
Manuel Organizing a debate tournament (English)
Learning to be a better debater is more fun in an organised capacity. Is there no debating society in your city? Found it yourself!
If you have the ambition to found a debating society in your city, then you do not need to do this alone; we are eager to assist! The Nederlandse Debatbond’s primary mission is to spread debate. Of course, we will give you personal advice and give you access to the necessary tools. Previously, the Debatbond has aided in founding societies in Enschede, Maastricht, and Driebergen.
To give you some insight into what would happen, we have developed a concise manual for people who are interested in founding a new debating society.
Phased plan new debating societies (Dutch)
There are many styles of debating. The most used format worldwide (and in the Netherlands) is British Parliamentary (BP). On top of this, there are several tournaments and societies in the Netherlands that mainly utilise the American Parliamentary (AP) format. Are you curious as to what these styles are and how they differ? We have developed manuals for both styles.
Manuals AP/BP debating (Dutch)
In the end, the result of a debate remains to be resolved by a panel of adjudicators. As such, it is of critical importance to the sport of debating to have access to good judges. This manual was developed to help you to become a(n even) better judge. We elaborate on what good adjudicators are supposed to do, i.e. the rules of judging, in essence. Moreover, we give you concrete tips on how to become better at taking notes and quickly dissecting the debate at hand.
This guide is mainly focused on judging British Parliamentary (BP) debates, although there is a large overlap for judging American Parliamentary (AP) debates. Therefore, a basic understanding of the BP debating format is expected, as is knowledge of certain jargon like OG (first proposition), OO (first opposition), CG (second proposition), CO (second opposition), and chair (head of the judging panel).
Manual Adjudication (English)
These one-pagers treat some important information for (new) boards in at most two pages. These are written periodically and also take into account current affairs.