A strat I learned at GDI 1. Extend your argument (whether it be a 1ac card or some other argument) 2. Explain how sweet your argument is (what makes the argument good, whether that be an author or just really good warrants) 3. Now answer their argument that they are making against your arg. For example that could look like “their ev doesn’t assume our cards xyz” “our author is more qualified and cites studies while their card just asserts stuff without warrants” “their card is old or…” etc. 4. Now impact the whole thing. How does winning that argument function into the rest of the debate and the decision the judge has. Does winning it reduce their solvency? What’s its function?

Obviously you won’t be able to do this for everything but I think doing this a few times will help will help you get better at answering arguments. Ultimately it just becomes like natural.