Back to basics education includes, among other skills, the ability to communicate; this ability can be greatly enhanced by a well-designed forensics program that incorporates argumentation and critical thinking. Forensics education can enchance development of communication competence by enlarging students' repertoire of communication acts for the five functions of controlling, feeling, informing, ritualizing, and imagining; by helping students select criteria for making choices from the repertoire; by assisting students in implementing the communication acts chosen; and by evaluating the effectiveness of the communication employed. These dimensions can serve as a framework for the development of a forensics education program which is central and critical to a curriculum concerned with basic communication competence. Debate tournaments are to be seen as one of many ways students can demonstrate competencies gained in such a program. (DF)