Working on Speech Improvement Alone pt 1

"You said you can improve your speaking without needing a coach around, what kind of things would you do to do that?"

Three things can be improved on most easily in terms of delivering a good speech, in order

1. Clarity
2. Efficiency
3. Speed

I put speed last even though when I debated I probably would of put it first. Having judged for a few years now I will say the following is true
-most people go faster then they are capable of doing clearly
-most people go faster than they are capable of doing smoothly (no stuttering, awkward pauses etc)
-many debaters don't utilize 90% of the arguments they made in previous speeches in their rebuttals, making them a large waste of time.


Clarity- How do you improve this. A few things

1. Transition words- making sure you consistently use numbers or emphasis /transition words (and, next, additionally, sub points) to clearly mark when you move from one argument to another. Many people are relatively clear but don't properly differentiate when one card ends and another begins, so judges have no idea a new card has started until they hear a date or something similar. This is a really easy way to add clarity to your speech- not in the sense of less mumbling, but in terms of organizational clarity.

2. Use emphasis- either changes in how loud you are speaking, changing your rate of delivery etc. Use this on key points not just in pieces of evidence, but on arguments that you think are particularly important. Some people take this too far- telling people to quadruple star an argument etc. That can be an effective technique, but if you have to say "I'm emphasizing this" instead of just emphasizing it then there is a problem. One thing to think about is that there is a fine line between emphasizing and flagging- emphasizing is making something that is more important stand out, flagging is needlessly drawing attention to something. You emphasize that the qualifications of your uniqueness evidence are better, you flag sever perms as a voting issue. Generally if something needs to be flagged it is of a quality such that if its dropped you will barely win on it, thus you want to make it very obvious so that when it is dropped a judge will have no choice but to vote on it. This is generally not a great way to try and win debates.

Working on emphasis is somewhat tricky in that before you can emphasize, you need to know what arguments are important enough to warrant emphasis. However, the techniques you would use are somewhat universal. Some techniques

1. Practice reading evidence and working hard to differentiate tags from the card before them, bold text in the evidence etc.
2. Practice reading un numbered theory blocks and trying to add your own mental numbering/ sub pointing during the speech
3. Practice speed transtions- these are the trickiest. You have probably seen someone who reads tags very slowly, then as soon as they get to the card speed sup into an incoherent mess. A speed transition should not be so dramatic, it should be like 5% max. When you end a card and go onto the next one, slow down 5% for the beginning such as "Next, economic decline causes nuclear war" and then speed back up. This requires yout to have a clear baseline speed obviously.


Annunciation- many people when they speak fast tend to blur words together. Instead of saying "Nineteen Ninety Nine" they end up saying something that sounds like "na-nye". This is obviously terrible. However, since people understand the gist of what they are saying, people rarely object/yell clear. You should make sure you are fully pronouncing and annonciating every syllable you are speaking. You should be saying the same things when you talk slowly as when you talk fast, the only thing that should be changing is the rate of delivery. Drills you have probably done at camp like over annunciating or pen in mouth are to try and get you to overemphasize things so that when you go faster the baseline level of annunciation is coming through. If you do these drills, and then go to give a speech and revert right back to your old habits you aren't getting the point.

It's like high knees in football. I used to hate the crap out of running drills, being a lineman I never saw the point. High knees is where you run and lift your knees artificially high, ideally hitting yourself in the chest with each step. The point is that if you are a running back, and you move your legs very high up and down when you run, it is harder to grab your legs and tackle you. So if you do high knees in practice, then run normally in a game- you aren't getting the benefit. The point is to change the way you are doing things when you run by exagerating the effect in practie, and then finding a middle ground between what you do normally and what you are doing in practice. So do these annunciation drills, and then try and use the same technique when giving actual speeches.