Cool! Wasn't that fun or what? This debate is nearing its end and it's finally your turn to speak. Your biggest concern, your number one priority, is to summarise what has been said so far. Since you'll be doing this, you might just as well present things the way you want. This means that you can describe this debate in a way that conveys victory to your side of the house. The Government side, but most importantly your team, should emerge as the team that completely crushed all opposition and successfully managed to prove your extended case.

Ok, so let's talk summary. Since it is such a vital part of your role, I guess I'll have to talk about how you might go about doing it. There are two common approaches towards summarising debates. The first one, usually referred to as a "chronological" summary, is basically a speaker-by-speaker overview of what has happened in a debate. Someone employing this style would typically start with the Prime minister, explain how she formulated her case and list her arguments. Then she would move on to the Leader of the Opposition, his responses and his arguments, thus continuing to move further down the line until the entire debate had been summarised. Comments would be added here and there to emphasise the effectiveness of some points and to show why the Opposition has failed in its task. While this approach might sound straightforward, it is also lengthy, and wastes a lot of time going into the details of what was being discussed earlier on in this round. Always think of the adjudicators. You do not care if they remember what the Opening Government team did... right? Chances are they already have it all in their flow anyway, so you might just as well get to the crux of the matter.

So, what other way is there? Well, it's called a "thematic" or "context-based" summary. You'll probably have noticed how most of a debate's arguments circle around a few basic themes. First you'll have to assemble all of these arguments into context-based groups. These would typically be two to four, but it doesn't matter really as it depends totally on the preceding debate. All you have to do next, is to present those themes, and explain what was said on each side of the house about them. Needless to say, that while doing that, you are supposed to show how your team prevailed in each of these themes. This approach is not concerned with individual speakers. Rather than that, it addresses all of the arguments brought forward, in an intuitive and continuous manner. Like everything, however, this method has its drawbacks as well. One of the most prominent being that it is so short, it doesn't get to talk much about your team.

One is too long, the other one is too short... What's up with this thing? What are you supposed to do? In most cases, it would be more appropriate if you used a mixture of both. (Everyone says that, right?) Since you don't care as much about the Opening teams, you can use a thematic approach to summarise what they've been saying. You won't even need to address the actual speaker who made a specific point, just say which side it was from. After you're done with the first half of the debate, you can start being more descriptive, focus on details to show how well your team has done. Switching to a more or less chronological style, you can start commending on your partner's good work. Then, you can move on to the third Opposition Speaker. Summarise his points in a rather diminishing way. Show how he failed to properly attack your partner's case. Respond to his points and make sure the judges understand why none of them hold. There will probably be a lot of points to clash there, but hold tight, you can gain some time by drawing from conclusions you've reached in your summary.

Lastly, if you happen to have some spare time, and have a really good winning argument that just has to come out... say it! Though it shouldn't be your number one priority, you are allowed to bring up new arguments.