Spoken English

Pace

HintNerves push it up; a good speaker deliberately slows down.

The whyA talk delivered too fast gives the audience no time to take anything in. Deliberate pauses do more for clarity than extra content ever does.

On the audience

HintLooking up beats reading off cards — it is what makes people feel spoken to.

The whyEye contact is what turns a recital into a talk. Two or three glances down at notes are fine; reading a script word for word is not.

pitch

HintMusicians tune to it, and a question usually lifts at the end of a line.

The whyVarying it stops a reading sounding flat. A voice that never moves signals boredom to a listener, whatever the words themselves are doing.

Pause

HintGive the sentence a moment to land before the next one starts.

The whyPunctuation is a set of breathing instructions. Readers who ignore it run sentences together, and the meaning goes with them.

Paraphrasing

HintYou run their idea through your own mouth to prove it arrived intact.

The whyIt is the fastest way to show you were listening and to expose a misunderstanding early, before a discussion heads off in the wrong direction.

What the last speaker said

HintBuild on the person ahead of you rather than starting a fresh conversation.

The whyMarks are earned for building, challenging and developing, not for how often you speak. A point that ignores the one before it is a monologue.

Stage directions

HintPrinted in italics, often in brackets — the bits an actor does but never says aloud.

The whyThey are choices, not decoration. A pause, an exit or a prop written into the script tells you what the playwright wanted the audience to notice.

The chair

HintEvery formal meeting has one, and they decide who speaks next.

The whyThe role is to manage, not to dominate. A good one speaks least, brings in the quiet members and summarises where the group has got to.

A few key words

HintAn audience cannot read and listen at the same time, so the screen must not compete with you.

The whyThe slide is a prompt for the audience, not a script for you. If the screen says everything, the room reads it and stops listening.

motion

HintIt traditionally begins 'This house believes that...'.

The whyOne team proposes it and one opposes it, and neither picks its own side. Arguing a case you disagree with is part of the training.

Rebuttal

HintNot simply repeating your own case louder — taking theirs apart, live.

The whyIt is what separates a debate from two prepared speeches. Judges look for whether you engaged with what was actually said, not what you expected.

Standard English

HintNot a posh accent, and not the speech of any one region — the shared formal variety used in writing everywhere.

The whyIt is a matter of grammar and vocabulary, not accent — you can speak it in any accent at all. Dialect is a different variety, not a worse one.