Oral Exercise: Narrative Speech (Story)
ESTIMATED COMPLETION TIME: 1.5 hours
Objectives
- To use the ideas of context, imagery, story arc and closure to tell a story
- To learn how to deliver the story using basic "vanilla" techniques from class
Tell a short story that you're familiar with - something you've told before and are likely to tell again. It should be something from your own personal experience - e.g. something funny or memorable that happened to you, what your first time doing something was like, etc.
The story should be 3-4 minutes long -- i.e. at least three minutes, at most four. You will be cut off if you if you exceed this limit by 15 seconds.
Try to make the storying engaging and interesting - include enough detail (content) and emotion (delivery) so that we can "relive" the moment, but not too much irrelevant or extraneous material that detracts from the story.
To be checked off for tutorial you should: (1) show your tutor an outline or visual storyboard of your story, (2) tell your story in tutorial. Practice your story before coming to tutorial! You may want to memorize the outline (i.e. ordering of events), but do not memorize the text of your story. You are to tell the story, not recite it.
No notes, slides nor visual aids are allowed.
GRADING RUBRICS
Your grade (max of 4.0) will be determined as follows:
- Content
- context was supplied (what's going on?)
- imagery was used (something that appealed to the senses)
- there was a story arc (a sense of journey, change, conflict-resolution)
- story was focused (no unnecessary digressions, no loose ends nor gaps )
- story had a sense of closure (there was a point, moral, lesson learned, closure)
- Delivery
- filler words - no more than 2
- eye contact was made
- speaker stood still (no distracting unintentional movement)
- arms were at side (no distracting gesturing)
- words were clearly spoken so that they were understandable (enunciation - open that mouth wide and don't drop word endings!)
- words were spoken with confidence/commitment/conviction (not half-hearted nor unsure)
- words were comfortably audible
- speaker allowed himself/herself to be vulnerable - e.g. feel the emotion (excitement, fear, etc) of the moment
- Mechanics
- start - took a beat to settle self
- ending - took a beat before getting off stage
- adherence to time (3-4 minutes) - pacing was good
- Overall Effectiveness (2 points)
- story kept my attention (was interesting, engaging, i didn't notice passage of time!)
Scoring: 1 point for each of the above (unless otherwise specified), take sum (total possible = 18), then divide by 4 and round up to nearest tenth.
Last Modified: Aug 23, 2012