Week 5 Post 3

I was first shown something similar to the extemp structure in August of 2016 just before my freshman year of high school. I didn't understand it, I was terrible at using it, and I gave bad speeches with it almost always. Then, last year, I got the opportunity to participate in the University of Texas National Institute of Forensics and discovered the pieces that I was missing. I used to just make subpoints that were loosely tied together with little rhyme or reason. Ben Gaddis, the Director of Speech at Nova Southeastern University School gave a lecture where he explained that each point should build together like a puzzle to make a fleshed out speech that follows a logical and easily understood path. This new comprehension of what subpoints are supposed to be allowed me to flourish and become a much better speaker. I also liked my speeches much more once I started giving them with the better subpoints. I got in touch with Randy Cox, the Director of Forensics at the University of Texas at Austin last week to ask if I could use this outline for my research and he agreed so, here it is. I love this outline and I will never stop using it until the day I die or stop giving speeches. As I'm writing this blog post I finished a competition about two hours ago which I won exclusively giving speeches with this structure so... it works.
My questions for Mr. Gaddis at UTNIF were, "How can speakers reduce the roboticism of speeches given in this structure?" He suggested using emotional narratives about people who are truly impacted by the things you're writing about or adding humor. I generally try to use humor because I feel like just using people's stories without asking their permission is exploitation and rarely with limited preparation speeches is there the time to get permission to use somebody's story. I also asked, "How can speakers lengthen or shorten this speech to fit within a given time limit?" He said that in order to make the speech longer you can either add points or add sources. One way of adding sources that he advocated for was telling statistics rather than just authors' opinions. In order to shorten the speech he suggested using better 'word economy' (Basically using fewer words to get the same point across even if it makes your prose a little less nice). He said that as a method of last resort you could also cut a point but don't do that if you've already given the road map with the og amount of points.

Comments

  1. Ms. Dunley4 December 2019 at 11:23

    I think statistics also make you sound more credible. I like the idea of word economy. Some people need to use that in their writing too.

    ReplyDelete

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