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Readers,

Note that we will not be posting questions or a news quiz this week because of the Thanksgiving holiday.  Questions and quizzes will resume the following week and, due to the two week break, there will be 15 questions released for International Extemp and 15 for U.S. Extemp.  The news quiz will also feature 15 questions.

If there is time, next week may see a quick update with the Glenbrooks results, a tournament that is ongoing.  We have posted quarter-finalist names on our X and Blue Sky accounts, so check those out.

Remember that if you have X you can follow us @extemp.  Similarly, we are now on Blue Sky.  Give us a follow @extemp.bsky.social!

With the 2023-2024 season in the books, Extemp Central will be doing some summer maintenance before it kicks off the next season with new question on Monday, August 5.  New news quizzes will begin appearing on Monday, September 1.

As part of our summer updates we will be curating our state champion lists for the past season.  If you know of state championship results in your state, please send them to [email protected] so those champions can be recorded.  We will also be doing some calendar updates for the 2024-2025 season so if you have dates for the tournament we have on our existing calendar, send them our way!

Due to the migration of the website here from speechgeek.com/extemp we will also be going through our archives and redirecting posts to the categories they belong in for better navigation.

In August, we will reveal some information about next year’s National Points Race (which will include new tournaments) and provide pre-season rankings.

Enjoy the off-season!

Since we are less than seven days away from the 2021-2022 national circuit season kicking off at the National Season Opener at the University of Kentucky, Extemp Central has finalized the tournament calendar for the 2021-2022 competitive year.  You can look at the calendar by clicking here or in the menu above.

Due to the unpredictable nature of where the COVID-19 pandemic will take us, some tournaments have not released their dates or exact information yet.  If you see a tournament on the calendar that we do not have a date for (or last year’s results), please send them to us at [email protected] so we can correct the calendar.

Information about this season’s National Points Race will be revealed on Thursday, but extempers can expect us to keep the structure of previous years without substantial adjustment.  Look out for new weekly questions tomorrow!

The last two speech seasons have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced the cancellation of the 2020 NCFL Grand National Tournament and made last year an online-only year for teams across the country.  Hopefully this season begins the transition back to in-person competitions, but regardless of the format of this competition year Extemp Central hopes to provide resources for those doing extemporaneous speaking across the country.

In keeping with that mission, we do plan to revive the Extemp Central National Points Race as well as provide more recaps of national circuit and local competitions.  As always, we appreciate our readers providing results so we can post them.  Aside from following results, other past bits of Extemp Central’s content will be making a comeback as well, namely news quizzes and R&Ds.  Here is the content schedule that can be expected for this season.

Mondays:  HotTopics International and United States Extemp questions
Tuesdays:  Recaps of local results and/or results from national circuit competitions.  This may also be a time for the posting of specialty columns on upcoming tournaments and/or interview pieces.
Wednesdays:  News quiz posting in short answer format (spoiler tags will hide the answers)
Thursdays:  Recap of any local results and/or national news not posted on Tuesdays.  This may also be a time for the posting of specialty columns on upcoming tournaments and/or interview pieces.  The revived National Points Race will also feature columns on this day.
Fridays:  Weekly R&D about a pertinent, newsworthy topic

Extemp Central will soon be doing interviews with NSDA national winners Pranav Pattatathunaduvil and Laurel Holley, which we will hope to have posted in the coming weeks.  We will also be assembling the tournament calendar for 2021-2022 in time for the beginning of the national circuit season in September.

While last season started off with the best of intentions, work, health issues, and getting married prevented me from doing much aside from posting questions for extempers on this website during the 2018-2019 competition year.  What made Extemp Central a great place was write ups of tournament results and a place to get resources, as well as community news.

For 2019-2020, I can continue to do the weekly practice questions that competitors and coaches have told me are helpful in their efforts to prepare for tournaments on the local, regional, and national levels.  I also plan to contact a few competitors for interviews to recap last season.  However, I need some help with the following:

*Results Correspondents:  Ideally, it would be nice to have a few correspondents that attend (or follow) national circuit competitions to send me results for these competitions, typing up where competitors place (and where they are from) and a few paragraphs that summarize the events at that tournament.  I can provide a template for this, but I need others to shoulder some of this responsibility as my time to research, type, and post results has become limited over the years.  It would be great to have one correspondent for each region of the country (e.g. South, West, Northeast, Midwest, Southwest) to send these results so we can post what is going on with the national circuit.  This would also help update the 2019-2020 National Points Race.

*Article Contributors:  One of the big strengths of this site has been compiling articles from past competitors about “how to” do extemp at a high level.  We have not been able to add much in this department in recent years, but I welcome any contributions from past or active competitors.  If you have something to say, I would love to hear from you.

I cannot promise a great deal of pay for doing any of these things, but it would help to make this non-profit website better and allow us to do more than write questions each week.  If you are interested, please contact me at [email protected].

Good luck in 2019-2020!

Welcome to the 2018-2019 season at Extemp Central.  We have an updated look for the upcoming year, which will kickoff in a month’s time with the Grapevine Classic in Texas and the National Speech and Debate Season Opener at the University of Kentucky.

The site came back “online” in the second half of last season.  This year, Extemp Central will be providing the following content:

• New International and United States Extemp questions will be posted every Monday.
• A “news quiz” for extempers will come back but will only be posted once or twice a month depending upon when I am able to assemble one.  This will become a monthly feature and when it is posted it will go up on Wednesdays.
• The weekly R&D feature will return, with tweets of 10-15 important articles provided for extempers’ files on Fridays.
• Coverage of the national circuit will occur.  If you go to the “calendar” tab at the top of the page it will show you a season calendar that includes tournaments for the National Points Race, the University of Kentucky TOC, and the Extemp TOC.  This is still a work in progress as the dates for some tournaments are unknown.  Write ups of tournaments will be posted on Tuesdays or Thursdays.  We also welcome the delivery of local tournament results and wish to post those this season.  As always, if you have results of national circuit or local tournaments, please e-mail them to us because that is how we can have a timely delivery of them on the site.
• The National Points Race will resume for 2018-2019.  The structure will remain the same and can be found at the National Points Race tab.
• When tournament results come in, expect for there to be qualification boards for the UK TOC and Extemp TOC.  When we get into the national qualifiers portion of the schedule, there will be a qualification board for that as well.
• Previews of “big tournaments” such as the MBA Round Robin and NSDA Nationals will return.

Providing all of this content will be free, but I do encourage readers to donate to us via PayPal by clicking on the PayPal donation button to the side of the page or embeded into various posts.  Give what you can, whether it is $1 or $100, but all donations are appreciated to keep the site going and content flowing.

I look forward to what the 2018-2019 season will bring and wish all extempers and coaches the best of luck.

-Logan Scisco

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On Monday, Extemp Central will kick off a daily roll out of content for the 2013-2014 competitive year.  This will include questions, national circuit news, national circuit and local extemp results, news quizzes, R&D, the return of the National Points Race, updates to the Extemporaneous Speaking Tournament of Champions (TOC) qualification board, and updating our Twitter feed of top articles throughout the day.

In addition to the free content above, the 2013-2014 season will also see the introduction of premium content on Extemp Central.  Each Tuesday, a topic brief will be posted that will be available to those that subscribe to our premium content.  Every other Wednesday a strategy piece will also be placed on the site that will be available only to premium subscribers.  Subscribers will not only have regular access to these materials, but will also have access to the entire archive of HotTopics topic briefs from 2008-2009, which are in addition to those that are already available for free on the website.  Select strategy pieces from this same period will also be available to subscribers.

A subscription can be purchased via SpeechGeek Market for the low price of $25 for the season prior to September 1st.  After September 1st, the price will increase to $30.  Subscribers will be given a username and password to access premium materials.  Subscription access lasts through July 31, 2014, and topic briefs and strategy pieces will be updated through that period.  This equates to roughly 48 cents per brief for the year.  Click on the link in this paragraph to be routed to SpeechGeek Market to obtain a subscription.  The first premium topic brief will be posted on August 6th and the first premium strategy piece will be posted on August 14th.

Here is the content schedule that you can expect to see during the 2013-2014 year:

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