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With a proper rubric, testing your speaking skills doesn't have to be so obtuse. (Source)
For just a moment, let's imagine you're back in high school (the horror, the horror) and you have to face that horrible geometry test from the tenth grade. You know, the one that haunts your nightmares? There's something about pi, a radius, an isosceles…it's horrible.
Except, this time, you've got the rubric for the test right in front of you. It's all spelled out. You work out every problem easily since you have all the formulas right there. You nail the area of that circle, you finally remember pi is 3.14, and you spot the isosceles triangle in an instant. The rubric is a step-by-step guide, telling you exactly what you need to succeed.
Your numerical nightmare transforms into a decimal dream.
Wouldn't life have been easier if all your math tests had gone this way? You might not have gotten the rubrics for your high school geometry test, but you will get one for your public speaking performance.
In the last lesson, you learned how tricky getting effective evaluations can be. From contradictory feedback to unmotivated listeners to infuriatingly unproductive politeness, there are many hurdles to speech evaluation. Fortunately, in this lesson, we'll help you jump them with the aid of a rubric.
If you know what you need to do to wow your audiences, the task becomes that much easier to tackle. Plus, by providing our process for developing such a rubric, we'll provide even useful insight into what makes a speech stellar. You can use this handy dandy list of questions and ratings to become a better listener, evaluate others' orations, and analyze your own to tell if you're excelling.
With our rubric, you'll be able to add up your performance points and gauge your speech so you can earn a perfect score in public speaking.
RUBRIC RUDIMENTS
Some of the best feedback you can receive might come in the form of a comment.
A listener might give you a very specific suggestion—"stand up a little straighter," "you've been mispronouncing the word economy for the last half hour," "I needed you to spend more time on the third Powerpoint slide," "you should discuss American history in the form of a musical, like in Hamilton."
Like our friend Scott Berkun, we recommend that you have real conversations with your listeners after you've lectured to get this kind of personal, anecdotal feedback.
However, when you want to get a general sense of how you've performed, you need to have a rubric the audience can quickly but accurately score you by. Creating this rating system requires distilling the complexity of your presentation into ten key points. Our rubric's key characteristics include:
The organization of the oration. Rambling off of napkin notes would earn a poor score, while you might receive high marks for a neat, easy to follow PowerPoint.
How strongly a speaker supports a claim. Arguing that Ravenclaw is the best Hogwarts House "because, like, everybody thinks so"? Not so good. Presenting a detailed textual analysis of Luna Lovegood and Cho Chang's many accomplishments throughout J.K. Rowling's series? A plus.
The propriety of the presentation. Was the speech suitable for its audience and event? For example, a detailed lecture on how to make perfect fried chicken would be a disaster at a vegan conference, but it would work well at a culinary institute.
How well written the speech was. After all, words do carry a great deal in public speaking. A presentation's masterful turns of phrase might garner excellent scores, while clumsily worded language would not.
Introduced the subject well. If a speaker launched into a diatribe on Euclidian geometry without ever explaining what this actually is, he or she would earn a low score. An orator who provided crucial context needed to understand his or her points and eased into his or her argument would do better.
How captivating the speech was. Professor Monotone could drone on about a subject for hours and produce little effect (except, perhaps, putting listeners to sleep), whereas an entertaining, witty, interesting speaker (like the famous Dr. Fox) would capture the audience's attention.
How well the speaker used multimedia aids. Put up a PowerPoint, show a relevant video clip, analyze an image, make a diorama, fold origami, sing, dance…this criterion critiques whatever it is that assists your argument beyond just speaking.
The suitability of the presenter's demeanor for the occasion. This includes physical appearance as well as general attitude. College lecturers typically wear suits, and children's birthday party entertainers don Disney Princess costumes. If you mix up these two, you end up with low scores (although, potentially, an excellent Economics seminar delivered by Pocahontas).
The presenter's enunciation. Clarity of speech is a basic, yet important, aspect. A chronic mumbler might have fantastic visual aids, awesome references, and a great, appropriate look, but none of this will really matter if his audience spends the whole speech saying "huh?"
The conclusion of the speech. Delivering a great presentation and blowing the end is as dissatisfying as someone singing do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti… and then never giving you that last "do" Just imagine how annoyed you'd be if the movie theater shut off the film ten minutes before the end. It's the speaker's duty to bring the speech together for a satisfying conclusion, rather than fizzling out and slumping off stage.
Combined, these categories help calibrate any given speaker's effectiveness. But how can audience members cover all of them in just a short survey?
That's where ordinal feedback comes in.
We know what you're thinking. "Ordi-what?" Ordinal feedback is a technical term for something you’ve probably done many times before. Basically, it means rating something on a scale from 1 to 100, 1 to 10, etc., with each number representing an increasing or decreasing quality.
You might have argued with friends about the definitive rankings for the Awesomeness of Each Power Ranger, the Popularity of Each Hogwarts House, the Defense Skills of Each NFL Football Team, or whatever else on an ordinal basis.
In our rubric, the audience rates the speaker from 1 to 5, with 1 being the worst and five being the best. You’d aim for perfect 5’s across the board and hope to avoid the dreaded “1.” This system allows listeners to efficiently comment on your performance in each of the above facets while also combining them for an overall score. With this rubric, you’ll know which specific features you need to work on while understanding how you performed generally.
Plus, with combined total scores like 3.7 or 4.8, you’ll get to feel like an Olympic gymnast (and become the Simone Biles of public speaking).
THE RUBRIC
For our rating system, each audience member scores the performance on a scale of 1 to 5:
1 = Strongly disagree
2 = Disagree
3 = Agree somewhat
4 = Agree
5 = Strongly agree
Below, we present a scored rubric for a Totally Hypothetical This-Is-Not-Real Speech, just so you can see how those pesky numbers work.
From this rubric, we can see that Ms. Hypothetical Totally-Not-Real Speaker performed moderately well, but that she needs to work on setting up the subject matter, engaging the audience, and delivering a great conclusion as her main priorities.
On the bright side, she could feel confident in the appropriateness of her topic and her top-notch demeanor. This rubric gives her a lot of useful information to work with so that she can become the star speaker at her next Hypothetical Totally-Not-Real Speaking Conference.
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