<p>hi everyone, i'm looking to join an activity which would allow me to develop my public speaking / presentation skills and also my confidence in general. debate (APA style), mock trial and model UN are my obvious options. could anyone describe the differences among these 3 different activities?</p>
<p>which one would best allow me to accomplish the following things?</p>
<p>1) to develop public speaking confidence - speaking in front of large crowds without getting nervous</p>
<p>2) to be able to speak spontaneously and off the cuff, whether in a debate environment or simply in a public speaking capacity</p>
<p>3) to learn public speaking skills and techniques</p>
<p>4) through those speech skills, become a stronger, more decisive leader who can also bring people to work together well as a team.</p>
<p>i have done public speaking on several occasions before, but i don't get to do it on a regular basis now and i would also like to get better at it. i'm not planning to go to law school, but i do want to succeed in a work/corporate environment. what do you guys think?</p>
<p>I suggest that you take speech and debate. That’s probably something that I should have taken as well.</p>
<p>ohhhhh speech and debate!!! i’ve been in it for 5 years, met INCREDIBLE open-minded people, discovered my future passion in it, became very confident, & had something to write about in college essays. It really was my life in high school. Do LD (lincoln-douglas) debate, it’s great. feel free to pm me if you have any questions or if you just want more insight!</p>
<p>i agree with everyone saying speech. i took it last year and it helped me with that a lot.</p>
<p>JSA. Debate isn’t really the best place to create skills, more of a platform to develop skilss. JSA is so much more open and easygoing.</p>
<p>
Is that parli?</p>
<p>I do LD debate, which is epic. The activity is very different at different levels - are you talking about a little local district or national circuit?</p>
<p>Model UN! I did it this year for the first time and it is a lot of fun, as well as a great experience for public speaking. It really helps you gaint the ability to speak eloquently on the spot, as well as defend your point with the impression of confidence. In Model UN, you work with others A LOT, being that you eventually need to formulate a resolution to your topic. If you want to gain the skills it takes to bring people together as a team and possibly lead that team as well, this is a GREAT opportunity. A lot of the respect you gain in these groups working on resolution comes down to how well you speak (i.e., if you know what you are talking about, speak in a way that commands attention, make an impression), so it really pushes you to do well when speaking!</p>
<p>The great thing about Model UN is you can somewhat “control” your experience. If you want to speak in front of a large crowd of delegates, opt to participate in GA (General Assembly) commitees. These can range from 100-300 people, depending on what conference you go to. If you want a more intimate environment to showcase your public speaking skills in hopes of winning awards, specialized or crisis committees are great for that! You can speak as much or as little as you would like in any committee. </p>
<p>The kids you meet at the conferences are fantastic people. I’ve met kids from Nepal, the UK, even South America (I’m from the US) and I still keep in contact with them because you get really close to them after three or four days of debate and fun. 
</p>
<p>Oh wow, I kind of rambled there. Hope I helped a bit!</p>
<p>Awww…guys, my school has none of those things. :(</p>
<p>Like, I thought about founding a debate club for next year, but I doubt my principal would stand for ALL those new clubs at his school next year. In fact, our school is so isolated from the national standard that I’d never really ever even heard of Model UN, Lincoln-Douglas, etc. <em>shame shame</em></p>
<p>^Debate’s largely run by a few heavy-hitting schools, so it’s hard to get a team off the ground.</p>
<p>To the OP, debate’s been great for my extemping skills, but you’re usually in a room with just you, the judge, and your opponents, so it doesn’t exactly prepare you for speaking in front of crowds.</p>
<p>@ glassesarechic:
Until you get to your first final round. Which is always hooooorrendous. -__-. At my school, we have a tradition of keeping first final round ballots to look back at. Mine were 6666, haha.</p>
<p>@OP:
As someone who has done all three (though not nearly as much mock trial), I’d definitely advocate going with speech and debate. Depending on the amount of time you want to put in, you should do: PFD < LD < Extemp < Policy (In terms of work load, not like…quality. don’t hate, lol.) Parli’s workload depends on the circuit, so you’d have to tell us what specific region you live in. Model UN/YIG are a ton of fun, probably more so than debate, but I feel like debate requires much more critical thought as well as the ability to speak on the fly to rip your opponents apart. Model UN/YIG at most of the big conferences I’ve attended are more social than anything else.</p>
<p>If your area doesn’t have a strong debate circuit though, it’d be better to just go with the strongest of the three programs, if your goal is to improve your own skills.</p>
<p>Just PM if you want details.</p>
<p>Agreed. I’ve done all three, though none as intensely as I have with debate. Speech and Debate covers so many topic areas and styles. You’ll definitely find something that suits your interests. You should try Extemporaneous Speaking. It’s essentially coming up with something to say in 30 minutes about a random political topic and giving a 7 minute speech about it. It’ll help you develop word economy, current events knowledge, and the confidence to spew your opinion as fact. Model UN is basically an excuse to get drunk at our school. And it’s not as intellectually stimulating either. Mock Trial is too rehearsed. Not enough randomness to prepare you for real life situations where you have to express yourself on the spot.</p>
<p>
This is going to depend on your area and your skills. PF is usually less time consuming than LD which is usually less time consuming than CX, but Extemp varies wildly and can be all over the place.</p>
<p>Extemp is definitely a great event for improving your speaking skills.</p>
<p>Extemp has no work…</p>
<p>Do debate/speech. It’ll hone your oratory skills but will also teach you about the rules of argumentation and improve your logical faculties.</p>
<p>For Mock Trial,
1)you do develop public speaking confidence but only to a small group, like the size of the jury.</p>
<p>2)if you’re winging it on your opening or closing statement, but you do come up with a spontaneous argument when doing a rebuttal.</p>
<p>3)well, strong voice and eye contact and other public speaking skills are judged.</p>
<p>4)idk. If you’re a lawyer, you just cooperate with the other lawyers.</p>
<p>model UN is definitely more social than the other two. if i wanted to increase my public speaking skills and confidence in it, I would definitely do MUN. I’ve met the coolest people ever in my conferences and I never regret having gone to any of them (even though the makeup work is piling on me as we speak) It depends what committee you’re in, but if you’re from a school that doesn’t have the club yet (so I’m assuming your neighboring schools wouldn’t either), if you ran a district-wide conference you’d be able to make friends, socialize, increase public speaking skills, and most definitely increase confidence throughout the conference.
I’ve never done mock trial, but from what I can tell it’s not really as social, so not that great for me. I mean, maybe you feel more at ease when practicing speaking skills in front of people you don’t really know but then you’ll never gather the skills for speaking skills in front of people you do know (and i mean people who might hate you, sorry to say, or people you’re nervous about messing up in front of)
Speech and debate is different for my school, I think. We have a pretty small tournament league so I basically know everyone in the forum that I try out for within two conferences. I know for a fact that speech definitely helps you in school things where you’re forced to write a speech and present it, because you really don’t feel nervous at all after practicing enough. debate is also really awesome too i’d imagine it’d be difficult to make friends with people you’re actually forced to go against though</p>
<p>Debate does all of the things that the OP listed. “Feminine” debate is very good for developing your writing skill and to get over your fear of public speaking and you will pick up speaking techniques and such. Whereas “masculine” debating will seriously supercharge your ability to speak (more importantly to be both hilarious and intellegent) off the cuff, although the masculine debate style really does require balls of steel.</p>
<p>Debate, debate, debate. </p>
<p>I was in the same boat as you entering high school. I was so afraid of stumbling over my words that I would even have trouble talking to adults one-on-one, let alone giving a presentation to my class.</p>
<p>In terms of speaking off the cuff and learning public speaking techniques, I would recommend Extemp. I’m personally a CX/LD/PFer, but I feel like in Extemp, you are mandated to stay updated in current events and learn to speak fluently very quickly. PF/LD focus on philosophy and hone in on current issues, and CX is very specialized (it’s only for a certain group of people, and really doesn’t help your public speaking because of the spreading).</p>
<p>As for the social aspect, try Student Congress. It’s like Model UN except with a US focus and no partner.</p>
<p>don’t you have to be at least confident enough to start all of these things? I joined speech at the beginning of freshman year, but I chickened out and dropped it like a week later because I couldn’t imagine getting up in front of people and presenting myself and being judged
I mean, I’m fine with school projects and music performances, but not really with these things…</p>
<p>then again, I thought it was going to be up on a stage in front of a group of your competitors. but I still probably would have quit anyway.</p>