Week 8 Post 2


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 are in the top 16 in the nation for extemporaneous speaking do more work than most people also showing that hard work plays a not insignificant role in success with speaking.
This ties into the thesis that speaking is a skill rather than a talent because talents can not be improved on while skills can. If speech was a talent, the experience level of a competitor would be independent from the success of a speaker. Furthermore, competitors would get little benefit from coaching or practice. It takes time and effort to be a good speaker. The competitors who make it to the top 16 in the country are in the top 16 because they put in that time and effort.

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