Week 12 Post 3

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 their style of speaking isn’t good enough. 
My question for Mr. MacCutcheon would be, “How much should people value their own stylistic choices compared to giving the best speech possible?” I think that he would tell me that I should value individuality above all else in a real life speech but that in competition it may be worth sacrificing some level of personality in order to get better ranks. 

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