Diagnosing a 'Summary of the News' Speech
The most common critique on Extemp ballots is that a speech merely summarizes recent headlines instead of analyzing them, and learning to spot this pattern in your own drafts is the first step to fixing it. You will be able to identify summary-heavy sentences in a draft and rewrite them as analysis.
Symptoms of Summary-Heavy Speeches
A summary-heavy point strings together facts with connective words like 'and' and 'also' rather than causal words like 'because' and 'which means,' and it often reads as a chronological retelling of events rather than an argument. If a listener could remove the claim and impact sentences and still understand roughly what point was being made, the middle of that point is likely just summary.
The 'So What' Test
A reliable self-check is to ask 'so what?' after every factual sentence in a draft point; if the next sentence does not answer that 'so what,' the point needs an analytical sentence inserted. Running this test on all three points during rehearsal, even quickly, catches summary-heavy passages before they reach the judge.
Auditing for Analysis Density
Advanced competitors sometimes mark up a written outline with a highlighter, marking every sentence as either 'fact' or 'analysis,' and aim for a roughly even split or a slight lean toward analysis within each point; a point that is eighty percent highlighted as 'fact' is a strong signal that a rewrite is needed before the speech is delivered.
A draft point reads: "Unemployment rose to 4.2 percent last month. Manufacturing also cut 22,000 jobs. The Fed also met last week and discussed the labor market."
Running the 'so what?' test reveals three bare facts strung together with 'also' and no causal connection. Revised: "Unemployment rose to 4.2 percent last month, driven largely by 22,000 manufacturing job cuts tied to tariff uncertainty — so what? This matters because the Fed has explicitly said it watches manufacturing employment as an early warning sign, which means last week's Fed meeting almost certainly treated this data as the trigger point for discussing a cut, not just background noise."
1. What is a telltale symptom of a summary-heavy point?
2. True or False?
"The 'so what?' test involves asking, after every factual sentence, whether the next sentence explains its significance."
Answer all 2 to check.
Summary-heavy speeches string facts together without causal analysis; the 'so what?' test during rehearsal is a fast way to catch and fix this.