What to Expect Coaching Declamation
Declamation is a 10-minute public address event where a student chooses and performs a speech that was previously given in real life (no fictional characters) and delivers it from memory. The student should not imitate the original speaker but should maintain the spirit, mood, and attitudes of the original in delivery. An introduction is used to set the time, place, and theme of the speech and to offer why it’s useful to hear again today. Steve Meadows describes what it is like to coach the event.
What makes coaching Declamation unique?
Declamation is unique because it’s a public address event and an interpretation event at the same time. It’s a great way to build a foundation of delivery skills that students need in Oratory, Extemporaneous Speaking, or Informative Speaking. Students learn to manage rate, oral clarity, eye contact, physical gestures, and movement. But, as they must do in all the interpretation events, they also have to analyze the speech so they can match delivery with the text. Students must first identify what the author is trying to say, then choose delivery techniques that will reinforce the message.
Declamation is also unique because some leagues restrict Declamation to middle school or grades 9 and 10. Coaches should check local league rules.
How does competing in Declamation benefit your students?
Declamation is great for beginning speakers because success requires a command of a range of public speaking skills. To understand the context of the speech, students must research the person, the times, and the situation of the speech when first delivered. They then use that knowledge with their understanding of what makes good rhetoric and what keeps an audience engaged to cut the speech as needed (for time). Writing an introduction synthesizes this work into a thoughtful and interesting quick background for the audience. Then students work on delivery skills—eye contact, pacing, gestures and movement, volume, articulation, emphasis—to best convey the spirit of the speech. Declamation represents the culmination of a variety of speaking skills. That’s why, in my introductory public speaking classes, I used Declamation as the final project.
There is also a big difference between a good Declamation and a great one. As students work on memorization and delivery, it can be very helpful for them to treat the speech like an acting monologue: What are the beats or sections of the speech? What are the objectives for the speaker in each beat? How does the speaker try to meet that objective? What obstacles make that objective’s fulfillment interesting to an audience?
Steve Meadows is a five-diamond coach, a member of the NSDA Hall of Fame, and one of the authors of the current Praxis exam for Speech Communication teachers. In Declamation, he coached three finalists and one champion at the National Catholic Forensic League Nationals. After teaching and coaching for 28 years in Kentucky schools, he now serves as the Executive Director of the Kentucky High School Speech League, where he assists new coaches as well as managing the day-to-day operations of the League and running the state tournaments. He serves in the speech tab room each year at NSDA Nationals.
[S]incerity shines through in the delivery. The great Declamations make you feel like you’re in the room with the original speaker, and you believe what they say.
In answering these questions, students must engage with the thought process in the speech’s writing and become owners of the speech, even though they didn’t write it. Their version of the author’s intent is their own, and that sincerity shines through in the delivery. The great Declamations make you feel like you’re in the room with the original speaker, and you believe what they say. Script analysis and literary work prepares students for sincere and clear delivery—they’re the secret sauce.
What do you most appreciate about coaching Declamation?
Declamation is a great microcosm to build the skills speakers will need as competitors. Memorization is the first challenge. Coaches can assist students by having them determine which of the three basic methods of learning suits them best and encouraging them to use TWO of them to help them memorize—reading it over and over for visual learners, listening to it over and over for audio learners, or writing it over and over for kinesthetic learners. Once they’ve added blocking and some planned gestures, the movement patterns assist the memorization and the memorization helps with movement patterns. For classroom work, I generally forego the memorization requirement and allow the students to use notecards; however, competition requires memorization.
Another challenge for Declamation is after students have the speech fully memorized and have been delivering it successfully for a while, it’s easy to become rote, robotic, or speak too quickly. Easy ways to fight this devolution of a speech’s impact are to remind students that the audience is fresh each time it’s delivered. Students find it helpful to choose a few individuals around the room and really try to sell the speech to that unique audience. It keeps them focused on building a connection with the audience and not just repeating practiced lines.
Both of these needs emerge in all areas of public speaking competitions, but competing in Declamation at the beginning of a student’s competitive career is an ideal time to practice these skills.
What should a new coach know about coaching Declamation?
A big question most coaches and students have in this event is where to find speeches! Any speech publicly available that was delivered to a real audience is fair game. TED Talks offer popular choices for Declamation. Searching through TED’s various online offerings is a great way for students to learn how public speaking thrives today. Additionally, many students have found great success with important historical speeches, like political convention speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s many famous addresses, speeches accepting important honors and prizes, commencement addresses, and funeral speeches.
Declamation is the final unit in the Start Here: Teaching Public Speaking semester-long course Steve Meadows wrote for the NSDA. This sequence of 15 lessons takes students through the process of choosing a speech, writing an introduction, practicing with a partner and in groups, and working on delivery. Rubrics for grading and guides for each part of the process are included, and the unit can easily be adapted for work by a coach and a student outside of the classroom.