From: Arnie Madsen <Arnie.Madsen@UNI.EDU>
To: EDEBATE@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Speaking Drills
In June 1994, on the old CEDA-L, there was a discussion of debater
clarity. At that time I posted the following regarding some useful
drills for increasing debater clarity.
Recently, Dallas Perkins asked if I still had a copy of these drills.
After rediscovering the original message on an old CEDA-L archive, I
decided to also re-post the material now, as many in the current
EDebate audience have likely not seen this before (I have combined
the original two messages into one for this reposting).
> After my posting on SPEAKING drills vs. SPEED drills, a number of
> people have written to me off the list asking for suggestions on
> various drills. The material in this posting comes from a
> lecture on delivery by Cate Palczewski and Aaron Hawbaker at the
> 1991 National High School Institute at Northwestern University,
> supplemented by a couple additional drills that I have found
> useful. Sorry in advance for the length of the posting.
>
> A general comment about the drills -- all speaking drills are
> over-corrections. If a student has a particular speaking
> problem, they work to solve it by over-correcting. This list
> provides some examples of various drills.
>
> 1) Breathing problems -- this includes not taking enough breathes
> (running out of air at the end of a sentence or the end of a
> card) and breathing wrong (huge gasps of air, actually a symptom
> of not taking enough breathes): A) Breath at natural pause points
> in the evidence -- have the debater take a small breath at each
> punctuation mark -- commas, periods, semi-colons, colons, etc, B)
> Breath at natural pause points in the speech -- say the tag, take
> a breath, read the cite, take a breath, read the card (breathing
> at punctuation marks), then take a breath after the card before
> going to the next tag, then repeat the process, C) Breathing from
> the diaphram -- most debaters when talking fast breath from the
> throat rather than from the diaphram -- they thus don't get
> enough breath to last more than a partial sentence or two. How
> do you correct this? Have the debater hold a chair chest high in
> front of them, with their arms as straight as possible (no
> resting the chair on anything, or against one's chest, etc.).
> Have them read a brief that is laying on the seat of the chair -
> - they should be breathing from the diaphram during this process.
> Now have them put down the chair and have them re-read the brief
> in their normal way -- they will likely be breathing improperly.
> Have them do the chair drill until they start to notice the
> physical difference in their breathing process, D) Posture --
> slumping over and reading a brief off of a desktop, or sitting
> down while they are talking, or other posture errors cause a lot
> of breathing from the throat problems. Have them stand up
> straight and put the briefs on a podium.
>
> 2) Enunciation problems -- 1) Enunciation drills -- have the
> debater slowly read a card, hitting all of the hard consonants
> (g, t, k, p, b, d, etc) and enunciating each and every syllable.
> Then, slowly have them build up to speed while they continue to
> over-enunciate and continue to clearly hit all of the hard
> consonants, 2) Pencil drill -- have the debater read a card while
> they have a pencil in their mouth, 3) Tongue Twisters -- have the
> debater read tongue twisters at high speed.
>
> 3) Pitch problems -- often the pitch of a debater's voice will go
> much higher than their normal pitch when they talk fast. Pitch
> problems are another symptom of improper breathing, so use the
> same chair drill that you use for breathing problems to work to
> correct this.
>
> 4) Mush words -- 1) abade drill -- have a debater say abade (ah
> baa dee) over and over and over, steadily increasing speed, and
> continuing to have clean and clear breaks between the syllables
> and between the words, 2) Open the mouth -- have the debater open
> their mouth to an exaggerated degree when they read something at
> a conversational rate (they will think this is silly looking and
> that it feels silly). Now have them do the same at a faster rate
> of delivery -- when people are flowing and judging, they won't
> notice the exaggerated articulation effort.
>
> 5) Not fluid -- lots of unnatural or unnecessary pauses and
> stumbles -- 1) Get a rhythm -- try to get the debater to learn a
> natural rhythm that will keep them at a constant speed -- one
> technique is to read to music that has a clear and constant beat
> (the Talking Heads work well for this drill), or clap your hands
> or tap a pencil on the desk while they are talking, slowly
> increasing the beat as they progress through the speech, 2)
> Internal metronome -- obviously they can't read to music in a
> debate round, so try to create an internal rhythm mechanism
> unique to that debater -- some debaters lightly tap their foot,
> some use a finger to follow the words they are reading, some
> gently rock back and forth or forward and backward, 3) Read ahead
> -- have the debater practice reading a couple words ahead of
> where their mouth is -- often stumbles and pauses are caused by
> suddently encountering new or unexpected words, thus, if they see
> the words a partial second before they speak them, fewer pauses
> will result, 4) Ignore stuttering and stumbles -- a lot of
> debaters will *back up* and try to correctly pronounce a word, or
> will try to stop a stutter and correctly say a word. That gets
> them out of their rhythm, forces them to almost stop speaking for
> a second, and then re-start again. Instead, try to have them
> just keep going when they make an error (at a fast rate of
> speaking, few judges will notice if someone mis-pronounces a word
> or two) -- it's like a record that is stuck in the same groove --
> hit the arm and get it to a new groove, don't stop the record and
> merely start over at the same place.
>
> 6) Monotone or Singsong delivery -- 1) Get a brief and mark the
> *good* debate words, the ones that require emphasis. Have the
> debaters read the brief, altering their pitch or emphasis when
> they get to those words. Try NOT to have them alter their
> volume, as by the end of the speech they will be shouting, and
> they will also be wasting valuable breathing. Also, try NOT to
> have them slow down for emphasis -- like braking a car and then
> re-accelerating, slowing down then forces re-acceleration in a
> speech, wasting time and breath, 2) Personality -- most debaters
> seem to divorce their own unique personality from fast speaking.
> Have them read the card or brief slowly, and in their normal mode
> of speaking (like it was a conversation rather than reading
> evidence) -- hints of their personality should come through. Now
> have them build up the speed, maintaining that personality
> influence along the way.
>
> 7) Too quiet -- more common with high school students and
> novices, but some people are hard to hear because their volume is
> too low. The drill is simply to have them practice reading at
> the top of their voice.
>
> 8) Too loud -- generally caused by improper breathing, thus, use
> the drills above. The other remedy is to simply have them
> practice reading at a whisper, and then to find the happy medium.
>
>
> Other hints:
>
> 1) A lot of delivery problems are caused by lack of familiarity
> with what they are reading. This implies a couple of things. A)
> Get your debaters in the habit of reading through their briefs
> before they file them -- the more familiar they are with their
> evidence, the more fluid their speaking should be, B) Do drills
> with material that the debaters have no interest in. For
> example, have them read Plato or Aristotle at warp drive, or have
> them read the classified page of the newspaper. If they could
> care less about baseball, have them read the baseball page of the
> newspaper as a drill. This causes them to focus on their
> technique in speaking, rather than on the specific content of
> their material.
>
> 2) Have them start every speech relatively slow and then work up
> to speed. This does a couple of things. 1) They will tend not
> to overshoot their own capabilities. A lot of times debaters
> will start at a faster rate than they can maintain over the
> course of a speech. Building up to their maximum rate means they
> are more likely to maintain that rate, 2) This allows the judge
> and the opponents a few seconds to get used to the debater's
> particular speaking style before a critical card or argument
> comes flying by.
>
> 3) Have your debaters *warm up* before a round -- have them read
> briefs in the van between the motel and the tournament so that
> they are warmed up and ready to speak, or have them take a brief
> to the restroom or outside immediately before the start of every
> debate.
>
> 4) Avoid milk and dairy products -- Cori Dauber has claimed for
> years that milk and other dairy products coat the vocal cords,
> prevent talking at maximum speed, and cause more stumbles and
> vocal slips. Thus, drink water and ice tea and so on before,
> during, and between debates. I have noticed that some people
> have similar problems if they drink stuff with too much sugar --
> have them switch to plain water or diet soft drinks instead
> during the day.
>
> 5) Stop and go speeches -- have them give a practice speech, and
> immediately stop them whenever a problem occurs, making them
> start over from the beginning. Then, at the next problem make
> them stop and start over again. This will get real old, real
> quick, and cause them to start incorporating the suggestions.
>
> 6) Tape your debaters -- a lot of people use audio tape, but I
> have found that video tape is even better -- that way the
> debaters not only HEAR their annoying habits, they also SEE their
> annoying habits.
>
> 7) Practice, practice, practice -- not only warm up every day at
> a tournament, but get them in the habit of practicing at least 5-
> 10 minutes every day. Have them practice giving speeches without
> cards as well as reading cards (a lot fewer cards are read in
> rebuttals, for example, than in constructives).
>
> Drills are for EVERYONE. Novices need them to get used to speaking
> in the debate situation. People with high school experience need
> them to get rid of their bad high school habits. Experienced
> debaters that often get speaker awards need them to keep in shape
> and move up on the speaker award list. As Cecilia Graves says,
> speaking drills are like preparing for a marathon -- you don't just
> practice once or twice and then run a marathon. You have to train
> every day, even after you won a marathon, because there is always
> another race to run, another opponent to defeat.
>
> I hope these help. If anyone on the list has other drills that
> are useful, let me know.
> --
> I somehow managed to leave out one category of drills in my
> posting yesterday.
>
> 9) Lazy Reading -- often debaters will get lazy when reading
> evidence, skipping over a lot of words. 1) Have them read a
> brief where they INTENTIONALLY skip every other word, or every
> third word. This forces them to pay attention to what they are
> reading. However, this may reinforce in their mind the idea that
> they can legitimately skip over words, 2) Have they insert the
> word *a* between every word in the brief. The tag line, the
> impact is nuclear war, thus becomes translated into the a impact
> a is a nuclear a war a, 3) Have them read the brief in Pig Latin
> (if you can stand listening to Pig Latin for that long).
> --
> Arnie Madsen
--
Arnie Madsen arnie.madsen@uni.edu
UNI Director of Forensics http://www.uni.edu/forensic
NDT Committee Chair http://www.uni.edu/ndt
Kenneth Burke Society Treasurer
http://www.siu.edu/departments/english/acadareas/rhetcomp/burke/index.html
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