As you watch the other speech videos, did you start to feel the creeping angst of some existential dread as you contemplated the horror of being attached to one and only one topic for an entire semester? Does the prospect of needing to craft and fine-tune and memorize every single sentence sound exhausting? Well, fear not. There's a speech event for you.
One where you'll never actually have to type up and memorize a speech word for word. One where you get to change topics every single time you give a speech. One that develops incredible skills of thinking on your feet and gaining a breadth of knowledge about many issues pertaining to current events. Here's extemporaneous speaking.
Extemp isn't about fixing world problems. It's about speaking intelligently on current events. Extemp is unlike any of the other speech events.
Instead of writing and memorizing a speech, you're presented with a choice of three questions related to current events. And you choose one of those questions to answer on the spot. So unlike the other events, your topics are actually given to you in extemp.
Here are some sample questions that you might pick in an extemporaneous speaking round. What impact will the trade war with China have on the United States economy? Should the Democrats start the impeachment process of President Trump?
What will the impact of the new U.S. sanctions be on Iran's economy? What should the international community do to help bring peace to Syria? Should Europe's left-wing parties embrace restrictions? immigration policies?
Has Russia established permanent control over Crimea? Etc. So a question that you're probably thinking right now is, how the heck do you know what the questions will be in an extemp round? At every tournament, there are specific topic areas given for each round. So for instance, it might be politics in one round, then economics in the next, then Asia in the next round, etc.
And extemp questions are always asking about hot button issues in the news, so you'll rarely get something totally out of left field. And if you do, you have two other questions to choose from. Remember, you pull three questions and you ultimately pick one of them to speak on.
Now here's the big twist in extemporaneous speaking. Once you have chosen your question, you have 30 minutes, yes, only 30 minutes to prepare a seven minute speech using articles and evidence that you've gathered beforehand. And then you give the speech without any notes. So let me just rehash that.
Start to finish the process of an extemp speech is you pull questions, you choose one of them, then you have 30 minutes to prepare a speech, and then you give that speech without any notes. Totally off the top. Now here's the first thought every student has when I explain to them what extemp is. That's impossible.
No way could... any sane human give a speech on current events fluently with only 30 minutes of preparation. However, I promise you that every student who has chosen Extemp has been able to master the art of giving extemporaneous speeches with only 30 minutes of prep.
Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it won't sound pretty at first. But if you persevere, you'll be able to master really impressive skills. Skills that will be useful throughout your life. Thinking quickly on your feet and developing a breadth of knowledge about world affairs.
Let's get more specific. There are actually two types of extemporaneous speaking. And if you choose extemp as your main speech, you'll have to pick one of these subsets.
The first is national extemporaneous speaking. And in national extemp, the questions pertain exclusively to current events that involve the U.S., either in terms of domestic politics, its economy, cultural or scientific developments, its foreign affairs, etc. So those questions are always about the U.S. The second type of extemporaneous speaking is international extemp.
And the questions in IEX broaden to include current events from countries around the world rather than focus on the U.S. And typically these questions are grouped into specific regions. Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, etc. depending on the round. Now most students at first probably think, why would I ever want to do international extemp? That seems so difficult.
I have no idea what's going on in other parts of the world. And I would say there are probably two reasons to do it. First of all, I think you learn a lot about places in the world that you wouldn't normally learn about just in your day-to-day.
Normally, you probably hear a fair amount about U.S. politics, what's going on in the Democratic primaries, what's going on with President Trump, etc. But rarely do you take the time to really research what's going on in Asia, what's going on in Europe, what's going on in South America. And so I think that knowledge, just because you're not exposed to it, can be quite useful. The second good reason to do international extemporaneous speaking is your audience oftentimes knows a lot less about the topic. So they come in with a lot less preconceived notions of what the correct answer to specific questions are.
If you get a question, for instance, about the 2020 election in national extemp, your judge and your audience will probably know a lot about that particular issue, or at least a lot more than they would if you were to speak on international extemp a question about. what's going on in South America with Venezuela, for instance. Your audience might have heard something about what's going on in that country, but they probably have much less topic knowledge.
So that can work to your advantage. It makes it so that the burden of what you need to explain is a little bit lower than a national. So those are some things to consider. Now, the ultimate goal of extemporaneous speaking is to provide your audience with an engaging, nuanced, and informative analysis of a current event.
It's unlike OO and OA, where you are providing actual problems and then solutions, right? More often than not, you're just providing engaging analysis of a current event. So what are the benefits of Extemp? Why should you consider doing it?
First is it has the most real-world skills, in my opinion. I think being able to think quickly on your feet and develop coherent thoughts quickly and sound smart on any topic with very limited preparation time is something that would be useful no matter what field you go into. Any sort of meeting that you sit in for the rest of your life will be dramatically easier if you do extemp. Second, you develop a breadth of knowledge about current events.
Right? Other speech events, you choose one topic and you become a master in that topic, and that can be really awesome. But in Extemp, you learn a little bit about everything. Next, you're not stuck to one topic or speech.
It can be really frustrating sometimes if you pursue OO or OA or XBAS on a competitive level, and you've put so much time into a particular speech, and you find out that the topic just isn't really resonating well with audiences. That can be frustrating, and it's hard to create a brand new speech midway through the process. In Extemp, if you choose a bad question, you speak on it, and it ended up not being great, well, oh well, you move on to the next speech topic.
You're not stuck to it. And finally, Extemp is really useful for debate, which we'll be doing in the second part of this course. So if you're interested in debate and you want to become a master of debating, then it can be useful to do Extemp. because you'll gain a lot of skills of speaking on your feet and thinking critically very rapidly.
Now, here are the things you should think about before you choose Extemp. As you're all probably thinking, and you all probably intuitively know, it's intimidating at first. Researching, writing, memorizing a speech in 30 minutes at first seems like an impossible task. So it requires weekly speeches to improve.
There is a steep learning curve at the beginning. However, once you get over that steep learning curve, Extemporaneous speaking gets increasingly more natural. And I think that's one of the awesome parts of the event.
It's a steep learning curve at first, but once you get over that curve, it becomes easier and easier as you move on. The other thing to think about before accepting Extemp, and this makes Extemp unlike all the other speech events within this particular course, is you have to attend the Wednesday extemporaneous speaking meetings after school from 3 to 4 p.m. The coach is Dr. Sullivan, and she runs the Extemp meetings, and they're in Locay 204, and you have to attend those meetings. Extemp is a team activity because it requires a team to work together to find articles and evidence on every topic pertaining to world affairs.
And it's really important in terms of getting over that steep learning curve to watch the older members of the team, get to know them, be able to give them speeches in meetings, etc. And there is a weekly speech requirement. Um, that said, there are no speech writing steps like there are for the other speech events. So you won't have a topic proposal. You won't have an outline.
You won't have rough draft, draft number two, draft number three, final draft like the other speech events will have. You would just be giving weekly speeches and attending those Wednesday meetings. Hopefully this was informative.
If you have more questions about Xtemp, don't hesitate to reach out.