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by Logan Scisco
A few weeks ago, I revealed some tips for working through the summer to prepare for the upcoming season. Today, this strategy piece is going to break down how you can immediately start to improve your ranks in rounds. Extemporaneous speaking is a very challenging event and there are no shortcuts, but there are a few lessons that you can learn early that will make you a more formidable competitor and give you a leg up on most of your competition.
Tip #1: Get the Correct Mindset for the Event
One of the first tips that I give to coaches that ask me for advice in extemporaneous speaking is to let their students know that they have to adopt a different mindset for extemp. Unlike oratory or the interpretation events, extempers have to constantly change their speeches from round-to-round and unlike those events, they do not know what their next topic is going to be. Getting good in extemp requires a great deal of work ethic and sometimes the road ahead is not fun. The correct mindset for the event is that extemp is not an event it is a job. The seasoned extempers knows that it just takes one event to alter an entire season. For example, heading into my sophomore season during the 2001-2002 academic year, it looked like it would be a relatively tame year of discussing No Child Left Behind, George W. Bush’s recent decision on stem cells, U.S.-China tensions over espionage, and rumors that Bush was going to pull the U.S. out of the ABM treaty with Russia. However, September 11th changed all of that and suddenly files had to be constructed on Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the war in Afghanistan. Extempers have to be able to brief themselves on changing global events, but you can only do that if you are on top of these issues. You have to make it a point to realize that doing extemporaneous speaking at a high level requires dedication and effort beyond that of most other forensic events. This is not a slight at those events, since they require other skills, but people avoid extemporaneous speaking because of the challenge of keeping up with global events and having to speak on your feet (more about that later).
In my opinion, and it is one that is shared by other coaches of extemporaneous speaking, extemp is the one event in forensics that you can improve on with work ethic. Just because you work hard does not necessarily mean that you will win a national championship. However, it might be enough to win you a state championship and will probably be enough to get you to a state final round. In oratory, if you are a poor writer and if you can’t find a good topic you are doomed. In interp, if you cannot do voices you might be doomed. In extemp, though, working hard can instantly make you competitive because you can showcase your hard work to a judge through your knowledge of global events. Having the right mindset that extemp is an event that requires study and a great deal of work will prepare you for the competitive challenges ahead.
Tip #2: Read, but Read Intelligently
In the future, I’m going to have a strategy piece devoted to effective reading strategies and another one devoted to using books. Today, though I am going to emphasize that there is no substitute for knowledge in extemporaneous speaking for reading about global events. I did not start reading regularly until April of my sophomore year. I was content to watch CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News and channel those opinions into my speeches. This was fine for some domestic issues, but it was not at all useful for handling complication international topics like Russian human rights abuses, Mexico’s elections, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or the dispute on the Korean peninsula. With as little reading as I did, I am amazed that I did as well as I did in state level competitions. However, by not reading I shortchanged earlier successes that I could have had, such as breaks at the national level or a state championship my sophomore year.
In the digital age, you probably find yourself cutting way too many articles and you cannot read them all before a tournament. That is okay. There are other things to do during a day and you have schoolwork that you need to catch up on. Nevertheless, you want to focus your reading on subjects that you know you are weak on. I had a tendency to read a lot about Zimbabwe and domestic politics because I loved those two topic areas. I should have spent time reading about Medicare policy or welfare reform as well and my lack of interest in those areas delayed reading about those subjects until it cost me ranks in rounds. When reading, you need to identify your weak areas and learn as much about them as possible. You can still read about areas of the world or subjects that interest you too, but recognize that the best extempers are those that can speak well on most of the topics that they are going to face. Do not be a one dimensional extempers that only knows about a few choice subjects. That is a recipe for disaster because you are not likely to draw those topics each time and it will lower your confidence. Knowing that you have an expansive knowledge base will make you a confident, powerful speaker and you will have a better swagger with you at tournaments.
I always suggest that you try to read policy journals and think tank studies as much as possible. They have more depth than regular newspaper articles and can give you sufficient background on topics of which you are unfamiliar. Places like the Cato Institute, Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, and the International Crisis Group are excellent places to seek out this information. Foreign Affairs is also an excellent bi-monthly publication to subscribe to, digitally or physically, and if your team gets a subscription to the Economist you will often receive discounted offers to subscribe to Foreign Affairs. The articles are lengthy, but are an excellent source for this event and the tragedy is that most extempers remain glued to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek and neglect these publications.
I almost thought of putting reading as the number one tip in this article because as a coach I find that the students who succeed most are those that are motivated but also well read. They know scenarios, people (judges love name drops – see Dan Hemel’s national winning speech in the NFL IX final in 2003 for evidence of this), and historical events that help them avoid repetition in their speeches. I can always tell when I am judging a competitor that reads a lot because they avoid vague phrases like “people say” or “foreign analysts note that…” Your coaches can help you with your speaking and provide a supportive audience, but they cannot read for you or impart large chunks of information. That is your responsibility. I have coached extempers that could have achieved more, but their unwillingness to read contributed to their lack of success on a state and/or national level.
Also, keep in mind that you don’t have to remember everything that you read. You just have to aware of what is going on. You have thirty minutes of prep time to find the information you need, but reading will help you locate articles and will already help you link events together.
Tip #3: Study Styles and Your Fellow Competitors
One of the best ways to improve that is very underutilized by novice extempers is watching other speeches. When you watch speeches, do not be intimidated by the speaker’s command of the subject they are talking about. The process of acquiring information will take place over time. What you want to pay attention to is how they conduct themselves, how they pace themselves, how they preview their speech, their time allocation, their gesture control, their vocal tones, the sources they use, and how they structure their speech. Each extemper is unique. Some rely more on wit and charm than analytical knowledge, some are analytical but lack a common touch, and others adopt more of a teaching style and work their audience through a subject (which is the style that I teach).
The best way to learn a variety of styles is through observation, which you can do in two ways. On the local level, you should always watch the extemp final if you are not in it for two reasons. The first is that it lets you see what winning competitors in your area are doing and second, it lets judges see that you care about the event. These judges might evaluate you later and let’s face it, not very many people show up to extemp finals. You should also watch your preliminary rounds in case you are not doing another event. Extempers have a bad habit of leaving when they are done, but you should stay behind and watch. This will allow you to better evaluate judge comments on your ballots because you will have a good mental picture on how the round went. The other way to learn is to use the NFL TV website and watch old national finals. Keep in mind that if you watch older finals from the 1980s and mid-1990s that the Internet was either not in existence or in its infancy, so citing sources that were two to three years old was not unusual. Times have changed, but you can still pick up some interesting techniques from those older videos, with some forgotten gems in there like David Kensinger’s 1988 NFL final speech in U.S. Extemp (which at the time was billed as “Constitutional extemp.”).
Whatever style you adopt, you want to make it your own. If you aren’t funny, then I would suggest not using very many jokes. If you are funny, then I would suggest incorporating more of that into your speech. Wit, charm, and humor are great to have in extemp, but sometimes competitors think they have to be really funny to win, which is not true. Take your unique personality and graft it onto extemp. This will make you more comfortable, but also allow you to appear genuine to the audience.
Tip #4: Videotape Your Speeches & Practicing With a Purpose
No one likes watching themselves give speeches. For example, I have only seen my 2003 U.S. Extemp final round speech once. However, videotaping your speeches will give you something to examine from a new perspective. You might think that you appear a certain way giving a speech, but that is usually not the case. It is often hard to internalize your own voice, control speed, or see how your gestures help or hinder your performance. Videotaping your speeches can help you realize how these traits appear to an audience and will give you a mental picture to work with in your practice sessions. Recording your speeches at various points of the season will also help you track your progress. You can identify what areas you are becoming stronger and what areas still require improvement.
Also, when you practice you want to practice with a purpose. Simply giving a speech or two a week for a parent, coach, or fellow competitor/student is not going to be enough unless you get a careful critique of your progress. Sometimes giving a speech is not required at practice. Instead, you may want to do a series of fluency or gesture drills or work on delivering effective introductions. You may also want to take a speech you delivered at a tournament the week before and go over it with your coach or give a speech on a complicated topic to someone that has no idea what forensics is so that they can give you a “lay perspective,” which is useful since a good amount of judges you will have during the season are parents or community members that do not travel local or national circuits. Giving lots of speeches can be helpful, especially if you are preparing for the grind of CFL or NFL Nationals, which will require you to give eight to thirteen speeches within the span of two to five days, but simply giving speeches is not enough. Otherwise, you are just going through the motions, which can solidify some structure issues, but will not help you polish other aspects of your delivery or content analysis.
To summarize, extemporaneous speaking is a very complicated and technical event that requires years of effort to become a top notch competitor. Some achieve success faster than others, but that does not mean that those that achieve success faster will always remain at the top of the field. A slow and steady approach is sometimes best, so whether you are just starting this event or have been a competitor for the last several seasons, applying the advice above is a way for you to move up the ladder and achieve greater competitive success.