guidance and advice to teachers from the judges
From previous contests, we have noticed that pupils are particularly weak on the following skills, and may wish to pay particular attention to these when preparing their speeches.
At KS3, the greatest fault is that the speech is a collection of random ideas / sentences, which do not seem to connect or flow in any way. Pupils’ work could be improved by having a definite structure in mind before starting to write the speech, and by using some connectives to link the sentences together.
At KS4, a frequent problem is that the speech is too short. Pupils need to be advised to write a speech of a suitable length. The other frequent problem is the same as KS 3 – please see above for details.
At KS5, there are several issues that commonly arise. One of the main ones is that the judges are not clear on what the point of the speech is, ie what the key message is that the pupil is getting across. Pupils are strongly advised to have a key message that they want to get across, and make sure that the entire speech is structured to support this. An ideal speech would include both some aspects of narration (ie telling a story, often about what they themselves have experienced), and opinion (ie reflecting on those experiences to say something original). Pupils also need to pay close attention to the structure of their speech; in particular a speech should reach a proper conclusion.