Jacqueline Wei competed for Plano West Senior High School in Plano, Texas, and graduated in 2019. She is the 2018 & 2019 NSDA USX national champion & President’s Bowl winner, the 2019 MBA champion, the 2018 Texas and 2019 UIL State champion, and the 2019 Northwestern Extemporaneous TOC champion. She is currently a first-year student at Harvard University and plans to study applied math and economics.
Jacqueline kindly agreed to talk with Extemp Central about her career, sharing her thoughts on how younger extempers could improve as well as the future of the activity.
Thanks for chatting with us, Jacqueline and congratulations on your accomplishments on the national level the last few years.
Thank you very much! Super excited to talk with ExtempCentral.
How did you get started in extemporaneous speaking?
I’m very fortunate in that my school district has a middle-school program, and we had a very similar event in middle school called “current events” that was essentially extemp without the improvisation aspect. I actually started doing real extemp in freshman year after I was told there wouldn’t be enough spots for a tournament in Public Forum debate and that I would need to find another event to go in, so really I owe my entire extemporaneous speaking career to the PF captains at my school.
What do you love about extemporaneous speaking?
For me, extemporaneous speaking is a great challenge that combines improvisation, quick thinking, personality, and organizational skill. On the content side, it’s very challenging already—you have to provide well-reasoned points, create nuanced and specific analysis, sometimes address multiple actors, think of strategic framing—and not only do you have to come up with smart points, you have to organize them in such a way that they are understandable, compelling, and intuitive to the audience. And you have to do this all in half an hour. A standard speech may not seem like too big of a challenge, but a truly perfect speech is near-impossible to accomplish because of all of these factors.
Is there a specific moment when extemp “clicked” for you and you knew you had the potential to be a great speaker?
This moment came very late for me—actually at MBA of my senior year—but it’s when I realized how complex the event could be. I didn’t know how nuanced and complex my analysis could be until I encountered some pretty difficult questions and was forced to use some framing, some pretty intense substructure, and really focus on giving concise and organized points. That was when I really started appreciating how challenging the event could be.
In observing rounds over the years, what do you think are the biggest errors that speakers make, whether they are novices or varsity competitors?
There are two pretty standard ones: the first is that people try to emulate what they think an “extemper” should act like in a speech and they come off very stilted or rigid. I’m a huge fan of incorporating genuine personality in a speech; I should be able to guess what your personality is like in real life just based off your speech. I think too many students try to emulate what they think an “extemper” should sound like, but they lose the ability to sound conversational in the process.
The second is specificity in analysis, and the classic example for this is the corruption point. I’ve heard a very standard corruption point many times, and the analysis for the point is almost always very broad and could be applied to any country. Speakers really should try to add specificity to their analysis, whether that be focusing on a specific aspect of corruption or providing context to their analysis. A good example of this is a point I heard about corruption within South Africa’s agricultural department and its impact on water scarcity; instead of just generalizing about corruption in South Africa, the speaker really went in-depth on why/how/where the corruption was happening and the specific impact it had. In general, if you could swap out the name of the country and the point would still be true, it probably isn’t specific enough.
What was your normal practice routine like on a weekly basis? How did you try to remedy any deficiencies in your style?
Because I also competed in Public Forum Debate, my practice time was severely limited, so I tried to target my practice to specific goals or styles in preparation for upcoming tournaments. If I had a big tournament coming up, I’d give anywhere from three to five speeches per week in preparation; if the tournament wasn’t as important, I would usually give one or two speeches beforehand to prepare. In general, I think the quantity of practice speeches is not nearly as important as the quality of practice speeches. What is it that you want to get out of the practice speech? Having a clear goal in my mind makes for a more focused and targeted practice.
Personally, I struggled with crafting a style that was true to my own personality; earlier in my career, I frequently received critiques about my “boring” or “stilted” speaking style. Most of my style changes throughout my career I owe to several of my teammates, who encouraged me to adopt a style that was more genuine to my personality. I started incorporating elements of my own personality into my own speeches, and I became less formal and more conversational in my speaking.
You won three of the four major tournaments in your career (MBA, TOC, and NSDA). What do you think distinguished each tournament and did you have to make any stylistic or preparation adjustments for each?
MBA and ETOC are both very content heavy (if I could estimate, it’d be 80% content, 20% delivery). A lot of preparation for those tournaments was just perfecting substructure, practicing creating strategic framing in the background, really making sure the analysis was compelling and answered the question. When I was preparing speeches during the tournament, I didn’t really focus on thinking of transitions, AGDs, etc. – I was just really focused on consistently delivering high-quality analysis.
NSDA, in contrast, is probably around 60% delivery, 40% content. Proportionally, I spent more time on smoothing out delivery, refining delivery of some punch lines, preparing some original AGDs beforehand, etc. I also spent a lot more time during the speech thinking of transitions, practicing delivery of jokes, etc.
NSDA Nationals is a grueling tournament. What steps did you take to prepare for the tournament, especially the two years that you won the national championship?
NSDA is a tournament that rewards mental toughness. It is a very long tournament and it requires (even more so than any other tournaments) the ability to consistently deliver under pressure, and I’d estimate that around half of the people that are eliminated in outrounds are eliminated because they cracked under pressure and not because they weren’t skilled enough to make it to the next round.
Because of this, a lot of the preparation is mental; just focusing on not being intimidated by the competition and really concentrating on giving the next good speech. As a freshman and sophomore, I was terrified by the prospect of elimination rounds, and I wasn’t very good at dealing with pressure, so in junior and senior year I tried to emphasize just keeping a clear mind, making sure I take the tournament speech by speech, really hitting consistent delivery early on in the tournament.
In terms of actual skill preparation, I gave one speech a day for the two weeks beforehand. I also prepared a list of (original! Make sure your jokes are original!) AGDs. These are very useful in a crunch.
Were you surprised by your margin of victory at last year’s nationals?
I was definitely very surprised by the margin, especially because finals included so many skilled competitors. I certainly didn’t go into nationals expecting I would win, and I was very honored to share the final stage with many other talented speakers.
Speaking of tournaments, was there a tournament locally or nationally that you loved competing at? Why?
I loved competing at MBA, mostly because of its emphasis on organized, specific, and nuanced content. The questions are structured to be extremely challenging to answer (in 2019, I would estimate that I only really answered about 7/10 questions), the judging quality is consistently very high, and it offers one of the few opportunities to interact with your judge and get in-person feedback. Also, it doesn’t hurt that they give you eagle trophies. (As an aside, I also loved competing at the Texas version of MBA, which was the Capital City Round Robin, mostly for the same reasons.)
Did you feel a lot of pressure going into NSDA last year as defending champion? How did you deal with this?
Definitely. A lot was going through my head—I was facing a lot of expectations, I was under a significant amount of pressure, and on top of that I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to demonstrate that a woman could win back-to-back NSDA championships in extemp. I also knew that fear is a very powerful force, and I tried very hard to maintain that sort of mental concentration that NSDA requires. I was only partially successful; I do not think I delivered as good of a final speech as I would have liked. But much of the preparation for the pressure was just ignoring my surroundings and consistently giving as many good speeches as I possibly could.
Texas has had a renaissance of sorts in recent years on the national level, especially your school at Plano West. Why do you think this has happened?
I can’t really speak to broader trends in Texas, but I know for certain that the successful speech and debate program—especially the extemp program—is due in large part to a system of teachers, administration, parents, and students that very much believe in a team environment. I’m very grateful to the support system that I had at Plano West—our team really tries to foster a culture that emphasizes helping underclassmen, so while I was a junior I was surrounded by some of the best speakers in the country who served as my mentors and were integral to my success. For example, my beliefs about delivery and style (particularly delivery of humor by a woman) were influenced tremendously by my former teammate, Elizabeth Khalilian. This is something I’m trying to carry forward, and I think it’s this family culture that helps Plano West create a very strong and long-lasting extemp program.
I also had some very supportive, very knowledgeable, very kind coaches who believed in me way before I believed in myself. I’m very grateful to them and the help they’ve given me, and I never would’ve made it this far without them.
What are you most proud of about your extemporaneous speaking/forensics career? Why?
As someone who also participated in a very male-dominated and toxic debate space, the environment in extemporaneous speaking is much less imbalanced; most (if not all) of the champions of major national tournaments my senior year were women. On the surface, extemp doesn’t seem like an activity that is the most welcoming to women, but the number of successful female speakers in this activity is incredible. At the end of the day, I value the impact my career has had on the perception of women in this event far more than any championships or titles, and I hope I’ve done at least a little bit to make this event more equitable for women.
Are there any major rule changes or modifications you would like to see made in extemporaneous speaking?
I can’t think of a rule change off the top of my head, but it’d be pretty interesting to have an all-hypotheticals tournament.
What advice do you have for younger extempers that want to achieve your level of success? Are there any specific resources (or even camps) that you recommend or that you found helpful to you?
In terms of tangible resources: I would recommend reading the news every day from at least two news sources (I personally read from the BBC and the Wall Street Journal, but your sources can be anything you’d like, as long as they are relatively unbiased and cover both international and domestic news). Some good resources I’d recommend include the plethora of questions on this very website, as well as past videos of NSDA extemporaneous speaking finals. For improvements in delivery of humor, I would watch stand-up comedy acts (not talk shows, but actual stand-up comedy); for AGD inspiration I would recommend the Reddit thread r/nottheonion. I would also recommend reading some books to understand basic economic and political concepts; my personal favorites include How Democracies Die and Economix. A good understanding of politics, economics, and current events will get you much farther than some made-up statistics.
In terms of intangibles, the most important advice I can give is to never overestimate your competition. Intimidation can drastically change your performance in a tournament. Don’t be arrogant, but don’t let pressure or fear affect your speech. I can remember multiple tournaments where I stumbled because I let other competitors intimidate me, only to realize that I could have improved my performance significantly if I’d just given a better speech. Don’t set realistic goals; set your goals high, even if you don’t think you will reach them, because that is how you will push yourself to improve.
What are your future academic and/or career plans?
I’m currently intending to major in applied math and economics with a minor in computer science, and I hope to go into venture capital, entrepreneurship, or academia.
Thanks again for doing this interview Jacqueline. I know that many Extemp Central readers will appreciate it!
Of course! Thank you so much for inviting me to do this interview.