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International Speech Contest

Roles needed

  • Contest Master
  • Timers (at least 2)
  • Ballot Counters (at least 1)
  • Judges
  • Speakers

Eligibility requirements

  • Speakers must be members in good standing in a club in good standing
  • Speakers must have given their first six speeches from their competent communicator manual.  The contest speech can be used as the sixth speech if necessary.

Contest master guidelines

  • Prior to the contest speakers must draw for speaking order.  For this you may write numbers on scraps of paper, wad them up, and have the contestants pick them from a bag or off a table top.
  • Make sure you have the speech titles of all the contestant speeches before beginning.
  • Open by welcoming everyone to the contest.
    • Announce the speaking order.
    • Explain how the timing will happen (green card at five minutes, yellow card at six minutes, red card at seven minutes).  Tell the audience that speeches less than 4:30 or longer than 7:30 will be disqualified.
    • Select a speaking area in front of the room and show it to the audience.  Speaking areas are usually the full area in front of the audience.  If a speaker walks beyond the boundaries of the speaking area, they will NOT be disqualified, but the judges may, at their option, give them a lower score as a result.
    • Ask the speakers if any of them need the lectern.  If not, move it out of the way before calling up the speakers.
    • Ask all audience members to silence their phones, pagers, and any other noise makers.
    • Ask if there are any questions before beginning.
  • For each speaker in the contest:
    • Announce the contestant by saying their name, their speech title, their speech title, their name.  No other introduction should be given.
    • After the speech, return to the lectern and ask the timer for one minute of silence to allow the judges to mark their ballots.
  • After the last speaker, ask all judges to mark their first and second place winners on the bottom section of the ballots, tear off that bottom section, fold it, and hold it up for the ballot counter to collect.
  • Once the ballot counter has collected all the ballots, call the speakers up one by one for the interview section.  Each contestant should be asked a question relating to their speech, to their interests, or to anything else about the person.  There is no timing on the interview questions.
  • After the interviews, recognize the individuals who filled the various roles - timers, ballot counters, and judges.
  • Ask the timers if there were any disqualifications due to time.
  • Ask the ballot counter to announce the winners, second place, then first place.  Hand out ribbons to the winners.
  • Conclude by announcing when and where the area level contest will be.

Timer guidelines

  • There will be two timers.  The timers should sit next to each other during the contest.
  • All speeches for the international speech contest are five to seven minutes in length.
  • When timing the contestants:
    • at 5 minutes hold up the green card and continue holding it up for 1 minute
    • at 6 minutes hold up the yellow card and continue holding it up for 1 minute
    • at 7 minutes hold up the red card and continue holding it up until the speaker finishes.  Give no indication if the speaker goes over on time.
    • After the speaker finishes, give 1 minute for the judges to mark their ballots.  After the minute is up, hold up the green card until the contest master acknowledges you.  Also take this time to compare times with the other timer.
  • After all the speakers have finished, see if there were any disqualifications.  Any speech less than 4:30 or greater than 7:30 will be disqualified.  Mark these on your timing sheets.
  • Announce any disqualifications to the contest master when asked to do so at the end of the contest, or if there were none, simply say there were no disqualifications.

Judge guidelines

  • Take a look at the judge's form prior to the contest.  The form gives you guidelines for what to watch during the speech.  Keep in mind these are only guidelines and you can, if you choose, use your own judgment when determining the placement of the speakers.
  • Before the contest begins, write the name of each contestant at the top of the form.  One judging strategy suggests writing the name of the first speaker in the rightmost column, the second speaker to the left of the first, and so on.  Then after you fill in scores for each speaker, fold the page over to hide those scores so that each speaker can be judged independently.
  • Once all speakers have presented, write in the names of the first, second, and third place winners (based on your scores or other judging criteria) in the space provided at the bottom of the form.  Tear off this section, fold it in half, and hold it up for the ballot counter to collect.

Forms

The following forms will be used during the contest