Let’s start with the basics: what is speech?

Speech is a fine arts activity in which you have the option to perform in different events and get the chance to compete against other schools. These different events give you the opportunity to act, sing, and formally speak.

Large Group Speech

Some categories that appear in this event are Improv, Reader’s Theater, Choral Reading, Short Film, One Act, and Musical Theater.

Large Group Speech focuses more on some dramatic events like performing a one-act play to singing a song from a broadway musical.

Individual Speech

Some categories that appear in this event are Spontaneous Speaking, Acting, After Dinner Speech, Lit Program, Storytelling, and Improv.

Individual Speech has a blend of dramatic and traditional events, like performing a monologue from a play to debating about a current topic in today’s world.

How This Could Help You

You may not know it but, all these speech events could help you improve your social skills. Performing with a group or not, you get the experience of speaking in front of an audience and memorizing key points to your piece. Let’s say you’re in a Large Group speech team, you learn the material with others and then perform as one in front of a judge. This will better your skill of working with others and collectively getting the message to your peers. Improv is also a really good category because you will learn to think quickly and to always be on your toes. Once the scene changes you have to be there with it, so you will improve on fast thinking and to stay calm when something completely changes the scenario.

Now it’s more challenging to do this by yourself. In Individual Speech, you pick what you want to do and it’s all on you to learn and perform the piece that you picked. Also, you get to more traditional speech events and debate or speaking about anything in the world, or the topics that they give you. It’s very difficult to do especially since it’s only you doing it, but the experience you get out of it is great. From the many events, you get to learn how to speak about a topic on the spot or make up a story and try to convey a message. This experience could be used in many different places like work and school. You also get to demolish the fear of speaking in front of your peers, it won’t be easy but once you do it won’t be that bad anymore.

Senior Speech member Emma McAdon said, “It was my freshman year and my friends told me to join. I didn’t like speaking in front of people but once I did it, it became really fun. It brought me out of my comfort zone. Speech helps you learn to present and express things better.”

Another senior Speech member, Addison Hazel said, “I had nothing to do during the winter and my friends told me about Speech so I just showed up. Speech is fun and I get to mess around a lot – be loud and obnoxious.”