by Logan Scisco
As was done for the Catholic Forensic League (CFL) national tournament, Extemp Central provides you with this topic area analysis for the International extemp portion of next week’s NFL national tournament in Kansas City, Missouri.
This is the third time that Extemp Central has broken down the topic areas in International extemp for NFL. Last year, IX runner-up Omar Qureshi broke down the IX topic areas and extempers would be wise to consult this topic area analysis as well as Omar’s thoughts, which can be found in last year’s NFL edition of The Ex Files.
If you are in the International extemp field for NFL you will be facing some of the toughest competition in the nation. Although anyone who makes the NFL national tournament is a talented speaker and has earned their way into the field, International extemp tends to have a better field than United States extemp. In looking at the National Points Race, most of the top ten are in International extemp at this year’s tournament so if you have chosen to do International extemp you will be in the midst of very elite competition and will be competing against extempers who have proven themselves at previous national circuit events during the year.
As with the CFL topic area analysis, this topic area analysis is meant to provide some insight into the thirteen topic areas that International extempers will encounter at the national tournament. According to some reports, a new batch of question writers will be putting together this year’s topics, which will hopefully eliminate the ridiculous questions seen in last year’s final round such as “Yes we can. Or can we?” Since I am putting together the USX and IX topic area analysis this year and because thirteen topic areas cover a lot of ground, this year’s topic area analysis will have a brief paragraph summary explaining each topic area and then there will be bulleted points detailing issues that extempers might confront in each topic area. Keep in mind, this topic brief is not sanctioned by the National Forensic League and I am not on any panels to write questions for the tournament. My analysis of these topic areas is through my years of experience competing at the tournament and judging rounds and merely predicts what you will encounter in the prep room in Kansas City. Unlike previous years this topic brief will not contain practice questions. This is because of the timing of the release of this topic area analysis and other constraints upon the writer. Instead, this week there will be thirteen questions for USX and IX, one for each topic area. Extempers can also look back at previous week’s questions on the site to help prepare them for the tournament. I apologize for any inconvenience that might cause.