Extemporaneous Speaking
For the following assignment, you will be picking the best topic to write about and preparing an outline for an extemporaneous speech. We have thoroughly discussed extemporaneous speaking in class and you have seen a demonstration of one on video. Now we will be going over the process of creating the speech and writing it. Your time limit for the speech is to be 4-6 minutes in length. You will be able to determine how long your speech is by practicing it only a few times after it is completed, but that will come with our next Extemporaneous activity in class—giving the speech!
Your first step is to Brainstorm! This means letting your mind go free, and recording every idea that occurs to you about your topic. You can use traditional and nontraditional resources for this step. Next, you’ve got a page full of ideas. Only you may not think that some of them are so great. You’re going to carefully consider each idea, saving the ones that have the potential to make good speech topics and tossing out the not-so-great ideas. Last, you must be able to organize the saved information for your speech. The process we will be using in writing your speech is using a circle web.
You will be graded on how well you can organize your speech and manage your time doing it. Extemporaneous speeches must be written fast; therefore, you must know how to organize all of your information fast and put it together very well. Your piece will be presented to your classmates after we are done with the next Extemporaneous class activity on how to give the speech.
Marilyn Mathine
Fall 2007