Extemp(oraneous) Speaking

Extemp, short for Extemporaneous speaking, builds on Impromptu speaking. A student learns to think on their feet by being ready to speak with minimal preparation on a wide variety of topics. Beyond the ability to speak, though, Extemp asks students to have a broad prior knowledge of current events. The event builds toward debate by asking students to cite a wide range of sources to support their answer to a question. These questions are typically geared toward politics, especially international politics.

Some examples include the following:
Should Democrats cease using Iowa as the first leg of their presidential primary process?
Could Russia win a new Cold War with the West?
Is the international community doing enough to stop the famine in the Horn of Africa?
What did the Afghanistan War cost the United States?
What can the U.S. government do to address the worker shortage throughout the nation?

The student draws from a choice of topics, has 30 minutes to prepare, then speaks for up to seven minutes. The speech is meant to be an intellectual conversation about world events. See the above PDFs for official rules and a sample of a ballot a judge would use to evaluate a round. View a written practice example from an RHS student and video examples below.