National Forensic Association

The National Forensic Association is a national intercollegiate organization designed to promote excellence in individual events and debate. The NFA sponsors the NFA Nationals as well many other regional tournaments throughout the year. The 2016 NFA national tournament will be hosted by Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana. Founded in 1971, the NFA Nationals is the oldest national collegiate tournament dedicated to a full range of literature interpretation, public address, limited preparation, and debate events.

Starting with the 2007-2008 season, NFA Nationals will host Dramatic Interpretation as a trial event for a two-year period, with points accumulated in DI counting for both team sweepstakes and individual pentathlon awards. The rationale for the adding DI to NFA is to provide more students an opportunity to attend the tournament, and also so that there are as many interpretation events (currently three) as there are public address events (currently four). Additionally, the inclusion of DI includes another genre of literature in the scope of individual performance, complementing the current "individual" interpretation events of Prose Interpretation and Poetry Interpretation.

NFA is unique in its NFA-LD Policy format. High school debate is primarily divided into individual debaters engaged in values-oriented competition or teams of debaters in rapid-paced evidence-based policy analysis. Instead of choosing one of these formats, NFA offers evidence-based policy analysis in one-on-one competition.

At the beginning of each year a topic area and corresponding resolution is voted upon and subject to the entire season's debate. Each round competitors find themselves assigned to affirm or negate the resolution. Rather than affirm general ideas or values, affirmative competitors propose a particular policy to adopt as a representation of the resolution. Negative competitors will generally attempt to either demonstrate a lack of need for that policy or argue that its disadvantages outweigh their benefits.

The first affirmative and negative speeches are constructive speeches, intended to put forth the arguments which will comprise the issues in dispute. A cross-examination period of three minutes follows each of these speeches in order to clarify arguments and gain information relevant to each competitor's position. Each competitor is then given a six-minute rebuttal in which their responses and development of the arguments are finalized. At the end of the round, the affirmative is given one final three-minute speech to review why their plan ought to be passed in support of the resolution. An assigned judge will then cast a ballot to affirm or negate the resolution.

1971 - Ohio University

1972 - Ball State University

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