Introduction
If you’ve ever watched National Circuit Extemp, you’ve likely noticed that top Extempers share a distinct vocal style. Their delivery is smooth, polished, and clean, which is often recognizable as a traditional “extemp voice”. Top Extempers share a range of distinct delivery tactics to enhance their speech, including a steady tonal quality, controlled inflection, crisp articulation, and more. These performance elements of Extemp are in no way insignificant, as they can significantly boost your perception among judges and audiences within a round. When you speak with clarity and refinement, you appear more credible to the lay judge and highly experienced to the content judge. Polished speaking makes your arguments easier to digest for everyone, especially an audience, and gives you room to bring out your personality with colorful styles of speaking. A refined speaking style allows an extemper to achieve a balance of presenting thoughtful information while hand-holding the audience through understanding it.
But what exactly does this look like?
At its core, it consists of two main elements: pronunciation and fluency. These aren’t skills that develop overnight, so let’s take some time to break them down.
Pronunciation
First, pronunciation. This includes ensuring you’re stating your words correctly, pronouncing names in your speech accurately, and maintaining a clear style of speaking that’s easy to understand. If you’re not sure where you are with pronunciation as a skill, that’s okay! I would recommend delivering a speech to a parent or sibling in your natural style and ask them whether they could distinctly hear each word you said.
If your audience (family) gets lost in your arguments or can’t distinguish specific words from one another, that is a sign to reflect on your style of pronunciation. Generally, when extempers speak faster, they lose their crisp, articulate pronunciation. To address issues with your pronunciation, make it a point to give consistent practice speeches to lay audiences – parents, siblings, friends, or teachers – at 0.5x your normal pace. This will force you to slow down and add more pauses to the end of your sentences, giving the audience breathing room to digest your argument.
Furthermore, you’ll get more time to cleanly articulate each word, removing any inconsistencies in delivery. Sometimes, certain words or sounds are challenging to say and can appear fuzzy in round,hindering the audience’s understanding of your sentences. Practice saying these words (whatever they may be for you) by focusing on each syllable and emphasizing the correct part of the word. For instance, the word “mischievous” has an emphasis on the first syllable, “mis.” You can also pay attention to expressing the last sound of the word, to ensure your voice does not trail off as you finish the syllable. This is especially relevant for contractions and words that end in t, sh or ch.
To test whether your practice is working, record a speech with a transcription (Google Docs Speech to Text or Phone Voice Message to Text). If the AI can catch each word you’re saying (at least 90 percent of the speech), then you should be good in terms of pronunciation and pacing. In this process, make sure to check the names of any cities, countries or global leaders that have difficult to pronounce names! A brief list is included below:
LOCATIONS
Provence, France
Kiribati
Bologna, Italy
Bruges, Belgium
Ibiza, Spain
Yosemite, USA
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Bogotá, Colombia
Chile
Medellín, Colombia
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Seychelles
Djibouti
Mauritius
Seoul, South Korea
Phuket, Thailand
Kyrgyzstan
Brisbane, Australia
Papua New Guinea
PEOPLE
Xi Jinping (China)
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir (Iceland)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (Turkey)
Hassan Rouhani (Iran)
Angela Merkel (Germany)
Mahmoud Abbas (Palestine)
Vladimir Putin (Russia)
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (Belarus)
Fluency
Next, let’s talk about fluency. Fluency is essentially how you convey yourself during the round – think verbal stumbles and filler words. If you’re a speaker that fills up time with “um,” “like,” “uh,” “and,” or “now,” then this feedback will help you immensely. It’s hard to cut the words out of your speaking habits when you aren’t aware of the words in the first place! Try this. Have a friend or sibling listen to your speech and throw a sock or cloth at you whenever you use a certain repetitive word, like “um”. If you’re up for the challenge, have them spray you with water or play an annoying alarm every time it happens! This will condition you to be hyper aware of the language you use during your speech, and eventually, you will become conscious enough to avoid these words entirely.
You can also try to think about your thought process during the speech (metacognition) to fill space with silence instead of using filler words while you talk. For example, if you know you’re about to stumble or end up stumbling, just pause instead of quickly saying “like” or “um” to cover up the mistake. In a practice speech, this will help you build your mental image of how it feels to give a speech without filler words. As you do this consistently, you can create the habit of not using filler words at all.
Another aspect of fluency is the “just keep going” mindset. When you practice and make a mistake, it can be easy to just quit the speech, come back to it later, and ignore a large fluency break entirely because you get a second chance. However, you have to keep in mind that in round, you aren’t granted the opportunity to establish a clean slate after a mistake. That’s why you should always always always practice moving on after a MAJOR mistake in your speech.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re in a practice speech and say China instead of Canada in your B point, when the question actively asks about Canada. Instead of stopping the speech and starting over, adapt the point. Use the “rather” trick to cover up your mistake, keep leveraging the word “Canada” until you reinforce that you have the right country, and move on until your speech is complete like nothing happened.
This strategy is a “soft skill” in extemp that can make the difference between a 1 and 2 in a final round. Even if you have a major fluency break for 2 seconds, it’s better to ignore it, move on, and continue, than to “apologize” (saying sorry in speech) and start over. Practice being adaptive with your fluency so that in the off chance something unexpected happens in a round, you are still ready to persevere through your speech. Here is a list of quick drills you can incorporate into your practice that will help you with your fluency and adaptability!
DRILLS
- Put on a random word generator and talk about the word for 5 minutes without stumbles or filler words
- Give a speech and mentally count the number of times you say ‘like’ until the end
- Have a friend throw a cloth or sock at you if you use a filler word
- Put on annoyingly loud music in the background as you give your speech (so you get accustomed to distractions & practice maintaining fluency during disruptions)
Happy practicing!
Stay tuned for the second part of the Delivery Series where we talk about Engagement & Hand Gestures!