Let’s face it: being a second speaker is tough.
Since the first speech is the priority in casebuilding, the second speech is often neglected. Oftentimes, you get leftovers for an extension. Or in my experience, I’ve had to make extensions as the debate happened, or on the spot after I finish delivering my responses. Oof!
Because I was stuck in that condition for a long time, I had to develop a survival mechanism. And that was by having a list of common extension types that I could pull up, in the (frequent) emergencies where I couldn’t come up with an extension myself.
I would divide the list into three types of extensions:
- Different argument type
- Different actor
- Different scope of the debate
Different argument type
Practical/technical extensions
If you started with a principled first speaker case, you can go practical on your extension.
Example on the motion This House regrets the glorification of soldiers as heroes:
In the 2019 WSDC Grand Finals, both first and second speaker talked about soldiers, just with different implications. Objectification and discouragement of soldiers were rather principally grounded points, while their extension on material and social compensation for soldiers was a more practical one.
Principle/emotional extensions
On the flip side, if you started with a practical first speaker case, you can have a principled case for second speaker.
Example on the motion This House supports restrictions on free speech to combat the rise of right-wing populism:
After talking about impacts to minorities and solutions to the problems of populism in 1st, England’s 2nd speaker spoke about right-wing populism being an affront to democracy.
Different actor
Institutional changes
Some motions have changes of narrative or incentives that are so strong they can produce institutional changes. These enable extensions about reform in law, democracy, or other spheres of government.
Example on the motion This House prefers a world in which success and failure are seen as a consequence of random factors rather than personal actions:
In this motion, Canada brought arguments about agency, social progress, and holding power to account. They all were presented from LO, but there’s definitely an option to make the third argument an extension.
Market effects
There are many things to analyse from markets. You can talk about different business models, investment, monopoly, and such. The great thing is, you can bring these extensions in debates that are not purely about economy! I’ve used them in debates that talk about welfare policies, international relations, media, and even arts.
Example on the motion This House would ban users from selling their data to companies in exchange for financial returns (i.e. receiving fixed monthly rates, dividends, etc., for the use of their data by companies):
For Hong Kong in this 2021 WSDC debate, the first speech discussed the more direct impacts to customers, and the second speech discussed broader impacts about businesses in the market.
Societal impacts
A good pointer for these extensions is to see if the motion generates discourse in society. You can then talk about what kind of discourse happens and what the impacts of it are. I remember having spoken about social movements, minorities, critical mass, and politicisation for this type of extension.
Example on the motion This House regrets the glorification of soldiers as heroes:
Let’s take another example from WSDC 2019 Grand Finals. After bringing arguments about war and soldiers in their first speech, India brought a brilliant extension on nationalism that talked about broader impacts on nativism, majoritarianism, and military governments.
Different scope of the debate
Long-term impacts
Often in debates about education, social movements, and development, you’ll easily find an extension about long-term impacts. You can talk about long-term development, sustainability, or other future impacts.
Example on the motion This House believes that governments should actively prevent gentrification:
In this debate about gentrification, Singapore brought a short-term argument in 1st, talking about displacement. In 2nd, they had a more long-term extension about city development.
Best-case / worst-case
First speakers usually discuss what happens in the majority of cases in the debate. That means there’s still room to discuss what happens in the other 10-20% of cases. You can talk about economic crises, authoritarianism, poor education, and the likes. You can also engage to your opponent’s best case and claim they’re still losing when elected representatives are ideal, people have justified ownership over property, governments aren’t going to misuse a policy, etc.
Example on the motion This House would not distribute emergency and humanitarian aid through non state groups linked to terrorism:
For example, in the 2020 WSDC Quarterfinals, Singapore brought an extension that even in Opposition’s best case that they could get aid right now, they would be entrenching terrorist control.
Scenario exploration
In some debates, it’s beneficial to break down actors into spectrums, or outcomes into multiple possible scenarios.
Example on the motion This House prefers parenting models that adultify teenagers (i.e. giving them more responsibilities and autonomy, assuming higher capacity for independence) to those which emphasize their status and treatment as teenagers (i.e. refraining from giving them adult responsibilities, emphasizing they are legal minors):
Here’s Hong Kong’s extension on protection of teenagers in the 2022 WSDC Semifinals. The argument here is based on trust, and there are structural reasons for it in the first speech, but there’s a different implication in the second speech which is communication when the teenager is in their lowest lows.
What this means for you
If you’re a second speaker, you can have this as a safety net for your extension. I definitely recommend you to be creative and try to find it without these, so you can prioritise relevance. Because the goal of extensions is to have another pathway to win the debate, not just to have one!
If you’re not a second speaker, it’ll be useful if you’re a closing team in BP, or you can be kind and give your second speaker extension ideas in casebuilding.