The Fullerton College speech and debate team is gearing up for the 27th semi-annual Blumer speech and debate invitationals will be held on Saturday, Nov. 10 at Cal State Fullerton.

The Blumer at CSUF is the last major tournament for the year. Fullerton College will compete against students from other colleges in multiple rounds throughout the day.

Judges will be scoring speakers bases on their speech and argument, rate at which they speak, strength of sources, memorization and eye contract. Speakers with the highest scores will advance to finals to compete for awards.

This semesters policy debate topic is if “The United States Federal Government should increase restrictions of executive powers of the United States president.”

Students have the option to participate in either policy debate or individual events. An Individual debate is when a single student competes against other students in either informative, persuasive, oral interpretation or impromptu speeches.

Jeffery Samano, communications professor, provided feedback on how to be more competitive. Samano discussed with the team on the importance of transitions, memorization and strong sources will improve the speech. Some of the subtle details that judges look at are gestures and posture.

“If you look down a lot you don’t look confident when speaking” said Samano. Our goal is to ensure that students in our program gain a better knowledge of what goes on around them at the city, state and even federal level.”

With the debate just a few days away, the students have been practicing nonstop and coming up with different strategies to beat their competition.

“Some of the drills we do help us speak faster in order to get more information out in our first constructive argument,” said student Germaine Baltazar. Baltazar was the top speaker last weekend in Cal State Northridge, for novice policy debate.

Individual speech and debate events starts at 10 a.m. at Cal State Fullerton.