An overview in policy debate

Policy debate

Policy debate is a form of speech competition in which teams of two advocate for and against a resolution that typically calls for policy change by the United States federal government or security discourse...

 is part of a speech

Structure of policy debate

In all forms of policy debate the order of speeches is as follows:*First Affirmative Constructive *Cross-examination of First Affirmative by Second Negative*First Negative Constructive *Cross-examination of First Negative by First Affirmative...

 which is flagged as not responding to the line-by-line arguments on the flow

Flow (policy debate)

In policy debate, the flow is the name given to a specialized form of notetaking, which debaters use to keep track of all of the arguments in the round....

. An overview may be "global" if presented at the beginning of a speech or "local" if presented at the beginning of a position.

Debaters will usually inform the judge

Judge (policy debate)

A judge refers to the individual responsible for determining the winner and loser of a policy debate as well as assessing the relative merit of the participant speakers...

where they will be giving an overview before they start a speech because it can make it harder to flow the speech. A small minority of judges dislike this practice and will start speech time when a debater starts giving this order.

Many judges dislike overviews because, since many are scripted before the round begins, they tend to be non-responsive or repetitive and are often long. However, most judges and coaches support the practice for arguments which cannot be placed anywhere on the line-by-line or that need to be flagged for their importance.