Individual Events:
PUBLIC ADDRESS
Informative Speaking: Speakers provide an approximately 8-10 minute speech designed to impart new and useful information to the audience. The speech is usually memorized and visual aids are often employed.
Persuasive Speaking: Speakers provide an approximately 8-10 minute speech designed to convince the audience to adopt a new belief or take a specified action. The speech is usually memorized and visual aids are sometimes employed.
After Dinner Speaking: Speakers provide an approximately 8-10 minute speech delivering an informative or persuasive message through the use of humor. While the speech sometimes employs elements of stand-up comedy, the object of event is to use humor for the advancement of a rhetorical goal. The speech is usually memorized and visual aids are often employed.
Rhetorical Criticism: Speakers provide an approximately 8-10 minute speech providing an analysis and critique of a rhetorical artifact (such as a speech, an advertisement, a monument, or a common communication practice). A scholarly methodology or analytical perspective is employed as a lens for the analysis of the selected artifact, requiring the speaker to both educate the audience about an approach to criticism and make an application.
LIMITED PREPARATION
Extemporaneous Speaking: Extemporaneous speakers receive topics of current national, international or economic importance on which to present a seven minute speech. Students spend thirty minutes preparing, researching and learning their speech, which is designed to persuade an audience about the validity of the speaker’s analysis when answering the question.
Impromptu Speaking: Impromptu speakers receive a quotation, object or other similar prompt on which they are to prepare and deliver a speech in a total of seven minutes (preparation is usually about 1-2 minutes of the total of seven). Speakers draw on a body of examples to make an argument in support or rejection of a thesis abstracted from the prompt.
INTERPRETATION
Prose Interpretation: Speakers provide a roughly 8-10 minute presentation interpreting a piece of published prose. Usually, but not always, this is a single piece of prose literature. The script is generally memorized, but a manuscript is employed.
Poetry Interpretation: Speakers provide a roughly 8-10 minute presentation interpreting a piece, or multiple pieces, of published poetry. What constitutes poetry is fairly widely interpreted. The script is generally memorized, but a manuscript is employed. The poetry program is usually organized around a unifying theme.
Duo Interpretation: Two students provide a roughly 8-10 minute interpretation of a piece of drama. The script is generally memorized, but a manuscript is employed. Community conventions govern acceptable forms of movement, contact of the performers and so forth.
Program Oral Interpretation: A single student provides a roughly 8-10 minute program combining elements of two or more genres of interpretation-worthy literature (prose, poetry, drama). The program is organized around a common theme or argument. The script is generally memorized, but a manuscript is employed.
Dramatic Interpretation: A single student interprets a piece of dramatic literature cut to roughly 8-10 minutes in length. The literature may be a monologue or contain multiple voices, so long as it was authored with the purpose of dramatic performance. The script is generally memorized, but a manuscript is employed.
Debate:
Lincoln-Douglas debate is a one-on-one format of policy debate. The time limits are somewhat similar to high school Lincoln-Douglas, but unlike that format, debaters use the same topic all year. The type of arguments and use of evidence are very similar to policy debate on the high school level.