Your performance will be evaluated based on four areas. Each area carries equal importance, even when scores may differ for each and excelling in them will boost your overall score
- Content.
Depth of research: Refers to how well a speaker has explored, understood, and supported their topic with credible information. A well-researched speech goes beyond surface knowledge, using facts, statistics, expert opinions, and real-world examples to add weight and authority. It shows the audience that the speaker is informed, prepared, and serious about their message.
Relevance: This is about making sure your speech directly connects to the topic, the audience, and the occasion. A relevant speech avoids unnecessary details and focuses on ideas, stories, and examples that matter to the listeners in that moment. It keeps the audience engaged because they can see how the message applies to their lives, experiences, or current issues.
Effectiveness and speech value: This measure how well a speech achieves its purpose and leaves something meaningful with the audience. It gauges your ability to explore through the problem, solution and impact analyses. An effective speech is clear, persuasive, and impactful, it changes how people think, feel, or act. Speech value comes from offering fresh insights, inspiration, or practical takeaways that the audience can carry beyond the presentation. Together, they ensure the speech is not just heard but remembered.
- Delivery
Verbal Delivery: This primarily focuses on how as a speaker you carry your message to the audience verbally. You have to ensure clear audibility and projection of your voice. Draw your audience further into your speech by exercising pitch variations. Have a steady pace variation while mindfully using pauses for effect.
Non-verbal delivery: This is concerned with the mannerism in which a speaker delivers their speech. It is your ability to establish a bond with your audience, independent of how you speak. Your eye contact should keep your audience glued to you. Use facial expressions that are able to fulfill the desired cathartic effect. How you utilize your stage presence, posture and non-verbal gestures is also important under this form of delivery.
Audience engagement: This is the art of connecting with your audience with your audience so that they feel involved in your speech rather than just watching it. This can be achieved through eye contact, asking rhetorical or direct questions, poll exercises, imaginative exercises and reflective exercises and responding to the audience’s reactions. When speakers engage their audience, they hold attention, build trust and make their message more memorable.
- Structure and coherence: These work hand in hand to give a speech clarity and flow. Structure provides the framework: an introduction, body, and conclusion, while coherence ensures the ideas within that framework connect smoothly and logically. A well-structured speech without coherence feels mechanical, and a coherent flow without structure can feel scattered. When both are strong, structure supports coherence, and coherence strengthens structure, creating a seamless speech that is easy to follow and impactful.
- Creativity and critical thinking: Complement each other to make a speech both intelligent and original. Critical thinking allows a speaker to analyse a topic, question assumptions, and present logical, well-reasoned ideas. Creativity, on the other hand, brings freshness through storytelling, imagery, and unique perspectives. When combined, they turn an ordinary speech into one that is thought-provoking, imaginative, and memorable; engaging both the mind and emotions of the audience.
