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Speakers in limited preparation events experience a great deal of stress. Unlike other forensic events, they must speak on their feet with little time to prepare and the speaker is sometimes not sure what will be the next word coming out of their mouth. Mastering a fluid delivery is one of the most important parts in becoming a successful extemporaneous speaker. A fluid delivery can captivate the audience and lead to higher ranks, while a choppy delivery can distract the audience and lead to low ranks. This week’s strategy piece will discuss the importance of fluency and some tips to improve your fluid delivery.
Fluency’s Important
Most of the judges that you will encounter on your local circuit or at the national level understand that in extemporaneous speaking you only had thirty minutes to prepare your speech. They are aware that you will likely be speaking without notes (if you do use a notecard we will have an article in the future devoted to that subject), so you may be prone to forget what you are saying from time to time. There is something about speaking extemporaneously that lay audiences (those not experienced with forensics) and experienced audiences find impressive. Former U.S. president Richard Nixon often spoke extemporaneously in front of foreign and domestic audiences. Nixon was a former debater and actor in high school and college and while he never did extemporaneous speaking or only prepared his remarks in less than thirty minutes, he found that speaking without notes made him appear more commanding and impressive to audiences. If you can manage to speak fluently throughout a round you can appear like a seasoned speaker and if you have the content to back up your delivery you can greatly enhance your status in a round.
However, the question does arise about how much fluency matters in a round. One of the traps that younger extempers fall into is that they think that they cannot afford to stumble once in an extemporaneous speech. Do not fall into this habit! Stumbles happen. Sometimes your mind wanders while you are speaking. Sometimes you forget what your next area of analysis is. Sometimes you forget a source or mispronounce a foreign name. Stumbles will happen. The key is that when you are in a round you want to avoid having a mental breakdown when you do stumble. I can recall in the 2006 National Forensic Association national final in college that I stumbled after the first minute of my speech. Thinking that it needed to be perfect, I began rushing and I missed some important parts of my analysis. As a result, I dropped a few vital ranks in that round and lost the national championship by one rank. It’s a somber reminder to all aspiring extempers that if you stumble in a round you cannot dwell on it. A rule that I encourage among extempers is to follow a “rule of three.” This means that you want to stumble less than three times in a round. Often if you only stumble three times or less the judge is not going to hold it against you. Yes, there are some judges that tally stumbles and then use those as a criteria from which to evaluate the round. You cannot control that, though. Instead, realize that if you stumble it is not the end of the world and that you can still recover your speech and manage to win the round.
One of the reasons that judges value fluency is that it helps them follow your overall presentation. A speaker that stumbles a great deal, even if they have great analysis, is not going to get that analysis across to the audience. Think of it as if you are interpreting a text from a foreign language. If you garble the transmission of the translation then it is not going to make sense to you or to anyone else. Similarly, if you are giving a speech on the U.S. economy and are stumbling over names, statistics, organizations, and other important facts that audience will have very little idea of where you are going. Also, judges will quickly size you up as an inexperienced speaker or someone that they cannot learn anything from and will tune you out. They might smile at you, nod their head, and act like they are paying attention, but in reality they know you are probably going to end up on the bottom of the round and they just want to encourage you to get through the speech and get some experience. If you stumble quite a bit, the judge is also not likely to listen because they will be writing (hopefully constructive) comments on your ballot about how your delivery makes it difficult to follow your presentation. Therefore, in terms of clarity and to appear as a confident speaker it is important for you to master a fluid delivery in extemporaneous speaking.
Improving Fluency
So, how can you improve your fluency in extemporaneous speaking? First, you should make sure that you are giving lots of speeches. There is nothing that substitutes for experience, whether it is in practice or in competition. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. If you have no experience speaking in front of groups of people extemporaneously, extemporaneous speaking can appear like a daunting event. However, until you get to a point when you feel relatively comfortable speaking in front of others then you are not going to calm your nerves and improve your fluency. Many novice extemporaneous speakers struggle with fluency because they are not used to the format of the event yet. They are unsure of signposting or moving to different points or the structure of an introduction and conclusion. Practicing and giving speeches on a regular basis can help you overcome this. The speeches do not even need to be new speeches. On your own time, take a speech that you just gave in practice or a previous tournament, prep it for a few minutes to review the material, and then redeliver the speech. Not only will this help you solidify the structure of an extemporaneous speech, but it will also help you retain content knowledge.
Psychologically, as I pointed out previously, you do not need to panic if you stumble in a round. You have seven minutes of time to fill and one or two stumbles is not the end of the world or your round. The worst thing you can do in a round is to forget what you are going to say and suddenly stop. You need to keep in mind that the judge has no idea what your speech is going to be about. They only know you messed up if you give them some type of nonverbal or verbal cue that you did so. I am somewhat baffled by speakers that just do not keep going! If you lose your place, keep speaking and it will come back to you. I remember my coach told me when I started of a student who won a state championship in extemporaneous speaking but failed to qualify for NFL Nationals that year because they forgot their third point and paused for thirty seconds until they remembered it. Fast forward to my senior year and in NFL District finals I completely forgot my third point while transitioning into it. Remembering this piece of advice, I just kept going and although my point tag made no sense, I righted the ship about fifteen seconds into the point and recovered nicely. If I had paused until I remembered the point it would have come off as very awkward and could have lost me a spot at the national tournament. Instead, I kept going and won the round. If you forget your place or your source, just keep going. Speakers made too many stumbles they should not because of awkward pauses or stumbles over source citations.
I often find that speakers that stumble too much are going way too fast in rounds as well. This is where videotaping your performance can greatly assist you. As I noted in the last strategy piece on instant tips to improve, videotaping your performance will let you see how you come off to an audience. When watching your performance, try to think of how you would view it if you were a random parent or coach judging you at a local tournament. Videotaping will also let you see how fast or slow you are speaking. Now, you do not want to speak so slowly that you s-l-o-w-l-y e-n-u-n-c-i-a-t-e e-v-e-r-y w-o-r-d, but if you speak too rapidly your thoughts cannot keep up with the pace you are setting. As a result, your mind has a small “short circuit” and you tend to stumble. You want to develop a relaxed pace, with proper emotion, but speaking like a debater “spreading” their way through their case is not the template for extemporaneous speaking success. Speed can happen when speakers get nervous and it can cost you ranks, if not for stumbles, than for just going way too fast. Therefore, if stumbling is a major problem for you, then I highly recommend looking at your speed.
Another way to improve your fluency is to acquire more content knowledge. This is more of a long-term fix, as you will need to do lots of reading in order to build up that content knowledge. However, learning more about the United States and the world will give you more knowledge to “fill in” your speech. As you become more familiar with global organizations and groups, you will just know them off-hand and will not have to commit them to short-term memory and hope that you remember them in a round. This will also ease your anxiety about topics that you could face in a round and help you relax, which is important in maintaining fluency.
A drill that I often used with my extempers and used occasionally at camps that I worked to help students with fluency is to write down on small pieces of paper 15-20 items. These do not have to be current events related. They can be people, places, objects, colors, etc. You throw these pieces of paper into a box or a hat and then pull them out. Once you pull out a piece of paper and know the subject you start speaking about it, impromptu style, for a minute to 90 seconds. This drill, which I learned from former U.S. Extemp national finalist Amanda Knight (2002), greatly helped my delivery. This drill will teach you to speak extemporaneously on a variety of subjects and will greatly enhance your impromptu speaking skills as well. As you acquire more content knowledge, you can go about writing small prompts or more current event subjects like “Syrian civil war” or “Egypt’s military coup” and speak about those subjects for the same time limit. If you are with several teammates you can make a game of this, by assembling 30-40 prompts and drawing them out one-by-one. You can set a threshold of “five or fewer stumbles” (with a stumble counting as a verbal slip, saying something that makes no sense, or repeating yourself) and keep lowering the bar, eliminating competitors who do not meet the threshold. It’s a fun and educational game to play, while also improving your ability to speak on your feet.
Finally, keep in mind that sometimes fluency develops with age. By the time you reach your junior year your brain will be much more developed than when you are a freshman. You will be more mature, but will also have some mental capacities that you did not initially have. I have worked with students that just could not speak fluently their freshman year, but by the end of their sophomore year and junior year they rarely stumbled at all. The parting advice that I can give you is do not become frustrated. Extemporaneous speaking is a great event that will at times try your patience, but stay the course and keep working because it will pay dividends by the end of your high school career, I guarantee it.