by James Mohan

James Mohan competed for Danville High School in Danville, Kentucky.  He was the 2010 Barkley Forum extemp champion, a runner-up at CFL Nationals and NFL Nationals in International Extemporaneous Speaking, last year’s Kentucky state champion in extemporaneous speaking and congressional debate, was a finalist at the George Mason University Patriot Games Tournament, an invitee to the 2010 Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin, and last year’s National Points Race runner-up .  He currently attends Georgetown University, where he is majoring in international affairs.

The Barkley Forum for High Schools has become one of the top extemp tournaments in the country, and the field is always competitive.

So I have been asked to provide my thoughts on the tournament, and my advice is pretty simple:

1)      DO NOT SHIRK DELIVERY. And I say this emphatically for a reason, delivery will make or break you at this tournament and judging panels can incredibly variable. The best way to ensure that you don’t defeat yourself at this tournament is to remain calm, and never sacrifice the clarity of your speech for small bits of information that the judges won’t hear anyway (because you are indecipherable!). At this tournament I have watched very talented speakers who gave excellent analytic speeches not be rewarded, because I was one of three people in the room who could understand what they were saying.

2)      Treat the early rounds like they are finals. This revelation came to me late in my extemp career, two weeks before this tournament last year to be exact. I had operated on the assumption that because I thought I was good, I could take prelims less seriously than I should, and “turn it on” for break rounds. This notion was crippling, so I discarded it for the forum, and things worked out. Even still though, my prelims scores were all over the place: judges may not be the most experienced or qualified. Bring your absolute best to prelims, or you may not survive to see break rounds, regardless of how good you think you are.

3)      Prepare, Prepare, Prepare. If you haven’t been reading a lot, you should be. The questions at this tournament will be well written, they will be thought provoking, and most will be challenging to a degree. In my final round I got very lucky, I drew a question that appeared to be obscure. However, due to preparation I was very knowledgeable about the topic at hand. This is the situation in which you want to find yourself. If you prepare well, then no question can leave you in a lurch.

4)      Focus on the fundamentals. I had this preached to me when I was competing, and now that I’ve judged some I can see why: the winners have fundamentals. Now that I’ve watched whole rounds objectively, I can see, that it isn’t the wealth of sources that wins judges over, or the flashy intros. No, to be successful you have to have fundamentals first. That means appropriate time allocation, impacts, concise tags, not calling points “points”, and the plethora of other things that your coaches are probably preaching to you. They make a difference, I promise.

5)      Be creative. This is the last really good piece of advice I have to give. If you have strong fundamentals, be creative. It will take you far. Spend time thinking of a relevant, humorous, and powerful intro, and then carry it through your speech the entire way. Be clever with wordplay from time to time. Utilize your emotions when you speak, and vary your tone. Take every question in a thought provoking way, and say something new about it, don’t just regurgitate the articles you read in prep.

On the whole, the Barkley Forum is no different than any other tournament, and everyone should be gunning to have the Silver Key pinned on his or her lapel.

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