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by Logan Scisco
Regular readers of Extemp Central may wonder why I am devoting this week’s strategy piece to using notecards, since you rarely find extempers on the national circuit with them. Although it is true that you will not find many extempers in elimination rounds at national circuit tournaments that use a notecard, at local tournaments they still proliferate. Many beginners start their extemporaneous speaking careers by using a notecard, but many of them do not use it correctly. This creates bad habits that can harm them when they eventually get rid of the notecard and begin to speak without notes. This strategy piece will explain why notecards are used and how speakers should go about using them in a round.
Rules & General Advice on Notecards
Before diving into this strategy piece, I want to briefly give a discussion about the rules concerning notecards. Rules for your local circuit may differ from those of another state, but you want to make sure that you are following the rules at all times. If the rules call for a 3×5 notecard, then make sure that you are using a 3×5 notecard and not one of those gigantic ones that takes up most of the width of your upper body. If there is a word limit on how many words you can put on the notecard, then it is important that you follow that instruction as well, since you never know when a prep room fascist will count your words and prevent you from taking your notecard with you to your round (this actually happened a few times at CFL Nationals when notecards were allowed with a 250 word limit).
Today, neither of the recognized national tournaments, the National Catholic Forensic League Grand Nationals or the National Forensic League National Tournament, allow the use of notecards in a round. These rules also apply to their respective district tournaments. If you have been using a notecard for much of the season and plan to compete for a spot in either of these tournaments, be aware that you will not be allowed to use a notecard so you should adjust your practice routine accordingly. If you are heading outside of your local circuit to another state to compete or going on the national circuit, it is also good to check the rules of those tournaments to see if they allow notecard usage. Some do and some do not.
Finally, it is always my general advice to speakers that as quickly as they can get off of a notecard the better off they are going to be. Some coaches never allow their students, especially if they are already coming from the junior high circuit, to use a notecard during their entire high school career. The notecard is a way for novice extempers to overcome the intimidation factor of the event by speaking on their feet after a very short amount of preparation time. It is also a way for speakers to gradually learn the structure of an extemporaneous speech. However, once these two factors are overcome, the speaker needs to distance themselves from the notecard immediately and a future strategy piece will discuss making this transition. Many judges will not rank a speaker that uses a notecard higher than someone who does not, even if the speaker who uses the notecard technically gave a better speech. This is due to the difficulty of speaking without notes versus the perceived lack of difficulty of speaking while using them.
Why Use a Notecard?
Notecards are usually utilized by novices because they are completely unaware of how an extemporaneous speech should be formatted. I remember when I began the event that I watched a teammate give a speech on Yugoslavia’s political difficulties and then it was time for me to prepare a speech of my own. Needless to say, I had virtually no idea what I was doing. Having a notecard was a great way for me to internally process the steps for the speech and within a few weeks I realized the importance of having a structured introduction, three points with evidence, and then a conclusion. It is sometimes difficult for seasoned competitors to remember what it was like to begin extemporaneous speaking as a freshman, but it is a very intimidating experience for someone that has no idea what they are getting into.
Notecards can also help speakers remember their sources. This is another reason that novice extempers use notecards because they are paranoid about forgetting sources and have not created their own way of remembering them. The same paranoia about forgetting their points or the wording of their question also leads to speakers using a notecard since they can immediately reference these parts of their speech. A notecard allows this stress to dissipate and the speaker to focus on delivering a speech that fits within the structure of the event. As a result, it is a good tool for novices to gain confidence.
The problem with notecards, though, is that they can make the speaker too comfortable. When it is time to ditch the notecard, many speakers think that they cannot make this transition and that their speeches will be worse than before. They have to go from using the notecard to keeping everything in their memory and for many, this is a step too far. I had some of these same anxieties about getting away from the notecard during my freshman year, but the best way to overcome this anxiety is to push forward and do it anyway. Before you decide to go “off card” make sure that you have practiced it with your coaches for several speeches. The first few speeches that you give without using a notecard might be rough, but after a while you will find a routine that works for you and you will laugh that you ever once relied on a notecard to begin with.
Tips for Using a Notecard
For the sake of argument, let’s say that you are a novice extemper that is using a notecard. How should you go about using it? First, you should always hold the notecard vertically. The biggest problem with extempers that use a notecard is that they hold it incorrectly. You should hold the notecard vertically in the palm of your hand because that allows you a wider range of gestures than if you hold the notecard horizontally. Also, by holding the notecard vertically the notecard will not be as visible to your audience. When you hold the notecard horizontally, it comes out of your hand at an awkward angle and is always present in front of your body. This can be a distracting visual for the audience. Therefore, it is best to hold the notecard vertically.
If you hold the notecard vertically, this also means that you will have to write on it so that you can read it from that angle. This is good because by keeping the notecard vertical you will not be tempted to throw too much information on your notecard. You should only write on one side of the notecard. It is very distracting to watch a speaker take their notecard and “flip it” several times over the course of a speech. Make sure that you write on one side. This will also keep you from writing too much on your notecard. Even speakers that do not use notecards during their speeches sometimes prep on a notecard instead of a legal pad because it forces them to condense the information that they need to remember for the speech. If you write too much information on a legal pad it can become overwhelming, so some speakers tend to use a notecard to remember the highlights of their speech and prep that way.
So what should you write on your notecard? I would recommend writing the question, your three point tags, and briefly list your sources with the name of publication, date, and then 3-5 words (if not fewer) about what the source says. You do not need to write down your opening lines or your conclusion because that you can easily memorize. You should also know your answer to the question, so you do not need to write that down. You do not want to write entire sentences on the notecard. You do not have room for that and if you smash everything together it will be very difficult for you to reference it during the round (so you should write big on your notecard because under pressure it will be hard for read!). You want to have words “trigger” your mind to remember certain things and abbreviations are nice. For example, if I am giving a speech on the U.S. economy and I want to reference the unemployment figure, I might have this written: “ECO July 7 – 6.7% unemp.” This “code” translates as “The Economist reports on July 7th that the unemployment rate stands at 6.7%.”
Here are some useful “source” codes:
AJ – Al –Jazeera
BI – The Brookings Institution
ECO – The Economist
FT – The Financial Times of London
NYT – New York Times
SFC – The San Francisco Chronicle
WP – The Washington Post
You can create your own code or whatever works for you, but the biggest point to remember is that you need to use as few words as possible on the notecard to provide enough room so that you can quickly reference it in a round and reduce your prep time. Remember, the goal is to eventually get away from using the notecard and not becoming overly dependent on it.
Finally, when you are presenting your speech with a notecard, make sure that you do not look at it very often. The only times you should reference your notecard is to consult a source, a point tag, or to remember the wording of the question. You should not look at it for any other reason. One of the biggest problems that speakers make is that they want to look more at their notecard than they do their audience. However, eye contact is a very important element in speaking and you need to look at the audience to draw them into your speech. Do not use the notecard as a crutch to avoid doing this!
In closing, notecards can be a great tool for novice speakers to learn about the structure of extemporaneous speaking and get their feet wet, but they should not become a crutch. After going through two or three tournaments and many practice speeches with the notecard, I would encourage speakers at all levels to get away from it and begin the process the learning to speak without notes. By doing so you will really start to experience what extemporaneous speaking is supposed to be and your ranks will dramatically improve.