Public Speaking for the 21st Century

Ms. Nguyen is a great speech coach and unlike any other I've ever had before. They have really made our team a better place for novices as well as varsity members. Their policy of happiness before success didn't surprise me that much because they have told me time and time again to take care of myself better at tournaments and have told my team mates to take mental health breaks when they need them. Their logical justification for this policy is almost spot on with the research I've done about reducing communication anxiety and connecting to audiences as well as the things that I learned during my edX class regarding preparing for and writing speeches. I don't know if Nguyen is doing it on purpose but they're seriously being a formidably wonderful coach. My question for Nguyen would be, "Is there ever a time you would tell students to buckle down and work instead of having fun?" I'd imagine the answer is yes because they regularly have to tell their e...

High school students in 2015 were proven to be as stressed as asylum patients in 1950 and little has been done to improve the mental states of high schoolers since. This disregard for students is why its so revolutionary when someone suggests that the best way to be a good speaker is to be a good person and to be happy with the work being done. Yet that very suggestion is accurate. The results of the Roosevelt speech team alone have significantly improved following the implementation of a 'happiness before success' policy and people are less likely to quit when faced with the instruction to try to find joy in their work rather than to just be better. This policy is even backed up by science as it places speaking in a communication oriented view rather than a performance oriented view. Valuing enjoyment over success fulfills many of the steps necessary to create a good speech. This relates to speech being a skill rather than a talent because the only thing that people need to b...

An Interview with Ms. Nguyen I’ve talked a lot in the last couple of weeks about how speech is teachable, but I haven’t yet sat down with a speech teacher to discuss it. Ms. Nguyen stepped in as the teacher for our speech and debate team at the end of last summer and is totally awesome. Under Nguyen our team has grown not just in numbers but also in terms of health and diversity of success. (aka we’re winning more stuff than we used and we’re better people while doing it #score) M: Hi Ms. Nguyen, thanks for sitting down with me! You’ve done a lot to grow our team, but what have you found has been the biggest blocker to people joining? N: Probably either students being too busy or being too scared. M: You’ve been able to work around those problems for a lot of our new team members. How did you do it? N: Well when students are too busy, there isn’t much we can do but I try to offer very flexible practice hours in order to maximize the number of students who have access to...

I've never even considered the subject material that I learned about this week before. I don't really have to deal with communication anxiety/glossophobia and so I've never really considered its source. I think this will help me with being a better team leader, coach, and friend to the members of the speech squad who do deal with glossophobia because I will be able to better understand where that comes from and therefore how to best address it with them. I hope that this information will help our team both recruit and retain new members better because often people don't join due to a fear of public speaking and drop out after joining because we can't help them conquer their fear of public speaking. By addressing glossophobia one facet at a time we can be a more helpful and more supportive team. My question for this week would be, "Which cause of glossophobia is most common?" the reason I wonder this is because knowing more about the causes of glossophobia...

Glossophobia may sound more like a fear of lip gloss than of speaking but it is a real problem for prospective speakers. About 25% of people say that public speaking is one of their biggest fears. That is probably because glossophobia is multifaceted. The four main contributors to it are physiology, thoughts, situations, and skills. Human physiology is such that fear magnifies itself. For people who view their audience as even slightly threatening, the autonomic nervous system may magnify that fear causing public speaking to seem like an unperformable task. Human thoughts cause problems because people naturally are more critical of themselves than other people are of them. Speakers also often overestimate the importance of their speech and how judgmental their audience is going to feel towards them. A key way to deal with negative thinking is for a speaker to switch their view of delivering an address from performance oriented to communication oriented. This means that the person feels...

 Link to source for this week:  Why Are We Scared of Public Speaking? It occurred to me that I've talked a lot about how to overcome communication anxiety but I haven't really investigated why it happens. This week is an attempt to rectify that problem. Communication Anxiety's legal name is Glossophobia  and about 25% of people report having it 4 primary factors to this fear 1) Physiology -Autonomic nervous system responsible for fear and anxiety -Audiences can be perceived as a threat, triggering "hyper-arousal" -hyper-arousal magnifies emotions like fear and anxiety, creating a cycle in which they magnify themselves -this can cause a small fear of public speaking to be exacerbated exponentially 2) Thoughts -people overestimate the stakes of communicating their ideas to the audience -people are unnecessarily critical of themselves -performance orientation vs communication orientation --performance=public speaking is a task that requires very spe...

I wasn’t all that surprised by the drill I found this week in the Glencoe Speech book. I’ve been coached by Mr. MacCutcheon before and literally the first drill he ever told me to do was to give a speech about climate change and then had me compare it to Greta Thunberg’s speaking. What I did find interesting was the emphasis he placed on keeping individuality as a speaker. When he was coaching me he very much implied that I should try to change everything about my style of speaking necessary to best emulate whichever speaker he was having me compare myself to on any given day. It makes sense in the context of real life rather than speech competitions though to value individuality over quality speaking because live audiences are much better at telling when you’re being disingenuous than speech judges are. What’s more, while speech competitors are generally ok with changing anything necessary to win, people who aren’t used to competition may be upset or offended when you tell them that t...

Week 12 Post 2 Most people believe that in order to have an original idea, it can not be similar to any other ideas people have already come up with. This belief is false or else humans would have run out of original ideas long ago. In order to ensure that an idea is original, a speaker must keep their own rhetoric, body language, and stories but they may benefit by comparing their speech to one that has already been written. In doing so they can iron out some of the wrinkles with their speech and also find new materials to strengthen it with. For this exercise to be as effective as possible, the person doing it should attempt to find a speech similar to theirs in subject, purpose, and speaker. By ensuring that those elements are as similar as possible, the speaker can get the most success possible by running this drill because they will be able to draw comparisons to their speech much more easily.  This proves that public speaking is a skill rather than a talent because t...

Week 12 Post 1 From glencoe speech by MacCutcheon Comparing Speeches One key way to improve quality of your speeches is to watch or read other speeches You should compare both before and after a presentation.  Things that should be similar: -Structure -Agency of the speaker -life experience of the speaker -Topic (A 13 year old talking about gaming should not compare their speech to a 40 year old talking about year end stock dividends)  Things that should be different:  -Rhetorical choices -personal stories -body language  (Basically don’t try to clone the other speech)  When comparing speeches look for how to change one to make it better Look for areas where one communicates the ideas fluidly and effectively while the other one stumbles Comparing speeches may also offer new ideas/opportunities for audio visual aids You may find sources/material from the speech you’re comparing to which you didn’t find while conducting you...

I found this article really interesting. A lot of what she talked about offered justification for some of the suggestions coaches have given me over the years like making eye contact with just one individual for longer. Her suggestions also gave me ideas for new drills that I could run with my team mates such as profiling drills with fake audience members and then writing a speech based off of that audience. I think this will be really useful in building some of the skills younger members of our team are in need of. It can also help varsity members of the Roosevelt speech and debate team take their presentations from good to great. I hope to implement some of these new ideas with the team by half way through February so as to have our new and improved speeches ready for the first weekend of March which is our state tournament. Maybe having these new relatability drills will help our team appeal better to parent judges and interpretation judges. My question this week is, "What sho...

Most people believe that if they give a perfect speech it will be because the content was optimal. The truth is that a perfect speech relies as much on the speaker's ability to connect with the audience as it does on the content of the speech itself. Speakers can connect with their audience by being conscious of what the audience is and isn't looking for in a speaker. Before a presentation, a speaker should be focusing on the audience. This includes doing research on potential listeners and making an effort to interest them in the speech as fast and reasonably as possible. If the speaker is not aware of who their listeners will be they may be able to make generalizations based off of the situation they will be speaking in to craft their speech as reasonably for their audience as possible. Next, while giving the speech, a presenter should try to be as genuine as possible. Rhetoric and inflection can be great tools to display an individual's personality and interests. This is...

Link to the source article for this week:  10 tips for improving your speaking skills Marjorie North is a consultant for political candidates, physicians, and lawyers, and runs a private practice specializing in public speaking, and executive communication skills. Previously, she was the clinical director in the department of speech and language pathology and audiology at Northeastern University. This week I wanted to investigate audience engagement ideas. 1) your speech is about your audience, not you -you should try to formulate your speech with a specific audience in mind -you should research your audience as much as possible if you know who they are -people are fickle, get their attention in 30 seconds or less 2) people can tell when you're being disingenuous -let your personality shine through your rhetoric -try to be as unrobotic as possible -being as natural as possible will put listeners at ease -try to add humor or an interesting personal story to help people r...

Gus Lanz's interview was definitely the hardest to transcribe because that boy has a dirty mouth and uses sooooo many filler words. I ended up editing out like a third of the interview because of expletives or unnecessary words. That being said, it was totally worth it because Gus has a way different point of view than most of the people I interviewed. He has a lot of personal experience with barriers to public speaking and overcoming those barriers especially as someone who has lived under both authoritarian and democratic regimes. I don't know that I agree with his analysis that people don't really care about how fluent a person is in English because there are many parts of the US that are far more xenophobic than Miami where he would not be able to get away with speaking broken English on a public bus, let alone in a debate round without being bothered about it.  My question for Gus would be "How much did your parents' decision to speak out about the wrongs bei...

There are many barriers to doing all sorts of things. When it comes to public speaking, those barriers can be classified into two groups. External barriers and internal barriers. Internal barriers are things that a person deals with separate from forces around them. These are things like communication anxiety or a language barrier. External barriers are things that the world around a perspective speaker puts on them like a lack of a platform or a regime intentionally silencing their voice. There are ways to overcome these issues though. Good preparation and a healthy mindset can help with anxiety. A healthy relationship with your community and positive role models can help with language barriers. Social Media can help with the lack of platform some people face. Looking for a new audience or even knowing when to lay low can help public advocates survive under authoritarian regimes. This connects to public speaking being a skill rather than a talent because many of these barriers, espec...

An Interview with Gus Lanz Gus Lanz is a very successful competitive speaker. In November of 2019, he won The Glenbrooks tournament; the largest speech tournament hosted by a high school in the United States. His competitive success, however, is not what makes him so impressive. What makes him impressive is that Gus and his family moved to the United States from Venezuela when Gus was in 5 th grade. English is his second language after Spanish. He has clearly overcome more barriers to becoming a good public speaker than most people will ever encounter so I sat down with him last weekend to discuss what barriers exist to be a good public speaker and how to overcome them. M: Hi Gus, thanks for sitting down with me! G: Happy to help! M: Alright, lets start off slow, what kinds of barriers are there to becoming a good public speaker? G: Well, I’d categorize the barriers most people face into two groups. Internal barriers and external barriers. Internal barriers are things t...

Kay Rollins and I are pretty good friends. We met my freshman year when I was not a particularly outstanding speaker and she had already been to the most prestigious invitational tournament in the country, MBA. I found Kay's journey through speech and debate really interesting because she credits most of her interest in public speaking to people around her like her father, her brother, and her coach. Then it occurred to me that her experience may be a sign that public speaking can not only be improved by having more experience with it but may also become more inviting as people have more experience with it. That belief is corroborated by my class in which our instructors argued that people with communication anxiety may find that their fears about speaking may lessen the more that they do speaking. That finding may be extrapolated to show that people who feel lukewarm about speaking may grow to really enjoy it the more they do it which I can definitely say has been my personal expe...

Experience does not look the same in every case. It is easy to look at a 14 year old beating a 19 year old at a national level speech competition and argue that experience doesn't actually play a role in how well and individual can speak publicly. In the case of Kay Rollins, it actually proves the opposite. Kay has been learning about public speaking for as long as she can remember and had more experience by the time she was a freshman than most people have when they graduate high school. The fact that she has been a tournament of champions finalist four times simply goes to show that her long term experience does make a difference. Her experience with coaching also proves that good work makes for good speakers. She has been getting coaching from Harry Strong, a man known for being one of the best coaches in the country for the last decade. That has allowed her to beat competitors, even ones like Juliette Reyes who have had the same number of years of experience as her but have had...

An interview with Kay Rollins Kay Rollins is the single longest competing person in high school speech ever. She gave her first speech when she was in fifth grade. Kay has had massive success during her time as a speaker. She is a Tournament of Champions winner. She was the top ranked speaker in the country for all last year. Perhaps most impressively, she did both of those things as a sophomore. I called her to discuss how speech and debate have played a role in her life and what benefits or detriments she thinks that has had for her. M: Thanks for agreeing to sit down with me. Let’s start off easy, when did you first start thinking of speech as something you wanted to be involved in. K: It’s hard to pin down one single moment. My dad was a national champion in international extemp and my older brother was a three time TOC [Tournament of Champions] finalist in mixed extemp so speaking has been a huge part of my life and family for as long as I can remember. M: I know you ga...

Asdklsdklsdklsfdasasdkasd;jklasd;klasdf!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, just had to get that out of my system. Oh My Gosh! I can’t believe I won MBA. Even more, I can’t believe I’m ranked first in the country in extemp! This is literally something I’ve been aspiring to do for four years. I told my parents that I’d win by out working my competitors. I didn’t realize how much I had outworked them by until I looked at a graph of how much work we do compared to each other. I really do believe that hard work is the way to become a good speaker and I think I’ve proved that this weekend. My question about this week is, “What caused the discrepancies in my graph?” Kay and Juliette both should have been ranked higher by my calculations. I wonder if they maybe don’t work with their coaches as often as the people who have lower scores but got ranked above them do.

Most speech judges claim that an argument isn’t complete until a speaker cites quantitative data. That can be difficult to achieve when the things being argued about are mostly qualitative. Experience is one of those things that can be difficult to measure. For one thing, it has many parts. How long has an individual been doing something? How often have they been doing it? How much help have they been getting while doing it? For another thing, it can be impacted by outside factors. For example, if the speaker has been getting coaching by a team coach who is good or by a team coach who lacks experience. When each of these factors is given similar weight though, it becomes clear that whichever way experience is measured, it clearly plays a role in the success of high-level speech competitors. The competitors who have the most rigor in their speech schedules generally do the best. Years of experience seem to have an impact but it’s smaller than the rigor. Overall, the competitors who ar...

Background: The Montgomery Bell Academy (MBA) Tournament is notorious for being difficult to qualify to. Only the top 16 competitors in the country are invited. Nobody aside from the tournament staff who send out the invitations know what the exact metric for qualifying is, however, it is possible to “hunt” an invite by attending (and succeeding) at high level tournaments around the country. I qualified as a junior resulting in a 4 th place finish and as I’m writing this post it has been less than 12 hours since I won it as a senior. This year I asked around with my competitors and some of the attending coaches about experience level, coaching, and speeches given per week. Because I believe that communication is a skill and not a talent it is my hypothesis that the more experience, coaching, and speeches given per week a competitor has the more successful they will have at the tournament. To measure this I decided to create a “total experience score” which is calculated by multiplyi...