
Why Speech and Debate?
Research Skills
Very few high school courses teach in-depth academic research skills that are required at a collegiate level. The work done over the course of a single season of varsity debate or extemporaneous speaking can exceed the research required of a college-level senior thesis. Students frequently engage with scholarly articles and the most up-to-date news sources about a wide range of issues of the day. Students competing in platform speaking and interpretation events investigate literature deeply and explore complex performance theory well before any of their peers.
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College Admissions
​Prestigious colleges and universities require students to demonstrate commitment to the broader school environment, including extracurricular activities. Admissions officers and college administrators cite speech and debate as one of the best activities to demonstrate success in and separate one’s self from a crowded field of applicants. Success in speech and debate opens thousands of dollars in scholarships to students through the TILF scholarship program in Texas, and others beyond.
Analytic Ability
​Speech and debate, at its core, facilitates the investigation of complex problems and the proposition of an advocacy statement to address that problem. This requires students to think about all sides of a current issue: not just what they might personally agree with. The ability to get out of one’s “echo chamber” and see all sides of a debate is vital in today’s political and professional climate.
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Writing Skills
​All speech & debate events require assessing a wide array of information about a topic and consolidating that scholarly work into concise advocacy statements. Experienced forensics competitors frequently enjoy writing skills leaps and bounds beyond those of their contemporaries as a result of preparing eloquent, concise, and rigorously tested presentations for competition.
Public Speaking
​As popularized by the comedian Jerry Seinfeld: the greatest fear of the average person is public speaking. The second greatest fear is death. This statement is far from hyperbole! A 2012 article published in Communication Research Reports confirmed that public speaking was selected more often as a common fear than any other fear. Speech & debate competition allows competitors to face that common fear head on and develop the invaluable skill sets of self-advocacy and thinking on one’s feet which translates across all academic disciplines and professional environments. After all – it doesn’t matter how smart your ideas are if you can’t effectively communicate them!
It’s FUN!
Speech & debate is incredibly fun and rewarding. It gives students the opportunity to travel across the state and country to represent their school, and meet like-minded, intelligent peers from across the nation in the process to build lifelong relationships. Students experience unmatched growth in confidence, maturity, and community engagement.