You've finished The Debate Guide. But finishing a book about debate is like finishing a book about swimming—you've learned the concepts, but you haven't gotten wet yet. The real work begins now: practice, application, and continued learning. This page points you toward what comes next.
Not sure where to start? Check out our Learning Paths—curated chapter sequences for specific goals like workplace persuasion, logic mastery, or Socratic questioning.
START PRACTICING
Reading about rhetoric improves your understanding. Practicing rhetoric improves your ability. Here's how to start.
Find a debate partner. One willing friend or colleague is enough. Meet weekly. Take turns choosing topics. Argue both sides. Debrief afterward using the Five-Minute Debrief from Chapter 17. Consistency matters more than duration—thirty minutes a week beats three hours once a month.
Join a debate community. SuperDebate connects adult debaters worldwide—find practice partners, join tournaments, and get structured feedback. Many cities also have local clubs; search for "debate club" plus your city name.
Practice in everyday conversations. Family dinners. Book clubs. Work meetings. Use these as opportunities to try techniques from the book. Steelman someone's position. Ask Socratic questions. Notice when you're tempted to use fallacies. The goal isn't winning—it's building skills.
Record yourself. Use your phone to record practice debates, then watch them. You'll notice verbal tics, unclear arguments, and missed opportunities you never caught in the moment. Uncomfortable? Yes. Valuable? Extremely.
Classic Texts
The ideas in this book have been developing for over two thousand years. Go to the sources.
The foundational text. Books I and II cover ethos, pathos, and logos in depth.
Free OnlineSocrates's defense speech at his trial. Short, powerful, and a masterclass in ethos.
Free OnlineSocrates dismantles the Sophists' claims. The prosecution of rhetoric.
Free OnlineThe Roman synthesis. Greek theory meets Roman practice, covering argument structure to delivery.
LibraryModern Classics
Twentieth and twenty-first century advances in argumentation theory.
The twentieth-century revival of rhetorical theory. Dense but essential.
AcademicSource of the Toulmin model (claims, grounds, warrants). Changed practical reasoning.
AcademicRigorous but accessible treatment of fallacies and argument evaluation.
AcademicPractical Guides
Accessible books that complement The Debate Guide's approach.
Entertaining introduction to classical rhetoric for modern readers.
Beginner-FriendlyWitty tour through rhetorical history. Excellent political speech examples.
EntertainingMemoir and guide from a two-time world debate champion.
Competition FocusWatch & Listen
Study rhetoric in action. These resources show skilled debaters at work.
Oxford-style debates on current issues. Watch how skilled debaters structure arguments.
Ongoing SeriesSeven debates, three hours each. Study how Lincoln and Douglas built their cases.
Free OnlineAnalyze using the rhetorical triangle: ethos, pathos, and logos in action.
Free VideoWatch skilled questioners use Socratic techniques to expose contradictions.
Free ArchiveSTART A DEBATE CLUB
If no club exists in your area, start one. Here's how:
Find 3-5 interested people. Colleagues, friends, neighbors—anyone curious about arguing better. You don't need debate experience; you just need willingness to practice.
Set a regular time and place. Weekly or biweekly works best. Evening at someone's home, lunch at work, Saturday morning at a coffee shop. Consistency builds habit.
Start simple. First meetings can be informal discussions of controversial topics. As the group develops, add structure: timed speeches, designated sides, judging criteria. Use the exercises from this book as session plans.
Rotate roles. Everyone should argue both sides of issues over time. Assign a moderator each session to keep time and ensure fair engagement. Debrief at the end: What worked? What could improve?
Connect with others. SuperDebate can help you find members, access resources, and connect your club to a larger community of debaters.
BRING DEBATE TO YOUR WORKPLACE
Organizations benefit from structured disagreement. Consider proposing:
Devil's advocate roles — Assign someone to argue against proposals before decisions are made. Rotate the role so it's not always the same "negative" person.
Pre-mortems — Before launching a project, debate what could go wrong. This surfaces risks that optimism bias might hide.
Structured decision meetings — Dedicate time to hearing cases for and against major decisions. No interruptions, equal time, explicit criteria for judgment.
Argumentation training — Suggest that your organization invest in communication training that includes debate skills, not just presentation skills. SuperDebate offers corporate programs for teams that want structured training.
THE ONGOING PRACTICE
Rhetoric is not a subject you master and then set aside. It's a practice—something you do, repeatedly, throughout your life. Every conversation is an opportunity to practice listening, questioning, and persuading. Every disagreement is a chance to steelman, to question your assumptions, to pursue truth rather than victory.
The Greeks understood this. Rhetoric was not an elective in their education—it was the core. They practiced it daily in the agora, in the assembly, in the law courts. They knew that the skill of speaking well was inseparable from the practice of thinking well and living well.
That practice is available to you. The agora still exists wherever people gather to reason together. The skills in this book are your tools. The rest is practice, patience, and the willingness to keep getting better.
The conversation has been going for twenty-five hundred years. Your voice is now part of it.
Ready to practice? Join SuperDebate — free debate community for adults.