SOME BACKGROUND INFORMATION ABOUT SPEECH IN MINNESOTA:
How does Speech work? For those of you who are unfamiliar with how Speech Competition works, this might help. If you're familiar with all of this, just skip this.
Speech Categories: Speech Competition varies between states so I will be explaining how it works in Minnesota. In Speech there are 14 different categories in which students can compete at tournaments. Categories range from what you typically think of as high school speeches like informative or persuasive to more dramatic categories like drama, poetry, storytelling. The fourteen categories are:
Creative Expression,
Discussion,
Dramatic Duo,
Dramatic Interpretation,
Extemporaneous Reading,
Extemporaneous Speaking,
Great Speeches,
Humorous Interpretation,
Informative Speaking,
Original Oratory,
Poetry,
Program of Oral Interpretation (POI),
Prose, and
Storytelling.
In some of these categories students find published works they use to "act out" and in others they write their own speeches.
Jeremiah's Speech Categories: Last year Jeremiah competed in the category of Original Oratory, (OO) which is essentially a persuasive speech. It is a 10 minute serious speech intended to convince the audience of a compelling issue. This year Jeremiah is again competing in this category but has also added a second category as well. He has added Program of Oral Interpretation, (POI) which is a 10 minute dramatic persuasive speech made up of prose, poetry, and drama pieces he has to piece together to portray a single message. The two categories are very different, even though both are essentially persuasive speeches. In POI he acts everything out, becoming the characters he portrays. In OO he is sharing more like a professional trying to convince an audience of something.
Tournaments: Students attend tournaments all day Saturdays most weeks from January through March. At a typical tournament students present their speech three times in preliminary rounds in which a judge scores 5-8 competitors at a time. Based on those preliminary scores the highest 7 or 8 students are invited to a final round where they compete with each other head to head. Often the next 7 or 8 students are invited to compete in an Honors Final Round. In many of these tournaments several hundred to over a thousand students are competing at one time with anywhere from 20 to 100 competing in each category.
About national tournaments: Minnesota is one of the more competitive states in the country in speech. When Minnesotans attend national tournaments they tend to do very well. It is rather competitive to be able to qualify to attend those national tournaments from Minnesota however because to get to them you have to qualify while competing in a very difficult tournament environment. On the other hand, it's a great place to learn to do speech because you learn from stiff competition.
