Impromptu Speaking

Ah. It's always interesting to snap a picture of a class personality by responding to the impromptu topic they give me. I enjoy demonstrating impromptu speaking because I used to compete in it in high school.

How it works -- Here are the directions for the assignment

Impromptu Speaking
Time: 1-2 minutes
This is a speech given with little preparation: 30 seconds
No rubrics for this one!
To receive a “pass,” your impromptu must
• be at least one minute long
• have an introduction, body and conclusion
• no pauses over 4 seconds • NO BABBLING.

I have students make up topics that go into an envelope. Then I have those who want to do so make up a "Huck Challenge Topic" for me. I appoint an assistant who collects these topics then I leave the room. The assistant is supposed to read the topics aloud to the class and the class chooses. I have never been defeated -- although at times I've done what I permit students to do for this assignment: "Lie like a rug."

This quarter, my Monday/Wednesday class chose "The History of Hair Dye." A nice, friendly topic. On the other hand, my Tuesday/Thursday class, those characters, picked "Explain the Impact of Anal Sex on the Youth of Today." Wow. That caused me a moment's pause. I always worry that if my impromptu speaking assignment has a sexual quality a student will complain to the authorities even if they are the ones who invited my speaking about the topic. But I decided to go for it and gave a serious presentation. I am, after all, a sex educator as well as a communication professional! I used the speech as an opportunity to plug my spring class, "Communicating Love."

Readers and Preparation

So, two students have actually admitted to reading some of my blog! One, a member of my weekend class, told me on Sunday that I hadn't written about them yet so I wrote something that a member of my MW class also read. My MW student said, "You love your weekend class" and then told me that he'd been bored so he found and read my blog.

I talked about my weekend class this morning. For Speaking Assignment #2, the "main point, research, visual aid" assignment, I noticed an interesting difference between the MW class and the weekend bootcamp. A majority of the MW class used the whiteboard and didn't prepare a visual aid on paper or the computer while only one of my weekend students had relied on the whiteboard. So I asked the students this morning why it was when they had so much more time they didn't take that time to make visual aids.

One young man said that it was because he was counting on the spontaneity of the moment to be able to write a class response to the question on the board. I believed him because he actually used the live audience well. A young woman said that if she was actually giving a full speech she would have gone to the trouble but wanted the experience of the spontaneous use of the whiteboard. Another student admitted that she had a paper due in another class that she'd given her time to and one admitted that having so much time actually cut down on preparation because it became easy to procrastinate. One student also noted that the weekend class had nothing else to do that weekend but take my class so they could focus. Now, that may or may not have been true.

I like this assignment because it's interesting to me to hear their stories about cheating.