What Is Speech?
The Speech Team is an opportunity for students to compete in collegiate competitive public speaking! Students prepare and refine speeches and perform speeches throughout the year. Each member gets to choose from a selection of multiple categories, each speech requiring a different set of skills and strategies.
The categories generally fall into 3 categories:
Public Address (ADS, CA, INFO, PERS): an original speech, prepared in advance, with the goal of persuading, informing, or analyzing.
Limited Preparation (IMP, EXT): an original speech, not prepared in advance, with the goal of persuading, informing, or analyzing.
Interpretation (DI, Duo, Poetry, POI, Prose): performance of literature or other media, prepared in advance.
Students compete in 2-6 events over the course of the year, culminating in district, state, and national tournaments.
What Is The Time Commitment?
Week-by-week will depend on your individual time commitment and progress. However, generally, students should expect to commit 1-2 nights a week (for weekly meetings, coaching sessions, peer workshops, etc), and 3-5 Saturdays (or potentially fully weekends) a quarter.
How Do I Join?
We typically welcome new members at the beginning of fall quarter, though will occasionally add members at the beginning of winter quarter.
I Don't Have Any Experience... Can I Still Join?
While college speech is a natural sequel to high school speech, many of our most notable alumni have joined with no previous speech experience. We intend to make this activity an engaging, accessible, and challenging (in a good way!) experience, whether you’re a walk-on or a former national champion.
Does the Team Participate in Debate?
Due to resource limitations, the speech team is forced to focus on individual events. We are, however, interested in coordinating with other NU student organizations for team sweepstakes at any hybrid speech/debate tournaments.
If you are primarily interested in debate, we encourage you to explore The Debate Society or the Parliamentary Union.
Sounds Cool! I'm not sure though...
There’s no $$$ to audition or join, and we have an open door policy! If you try the team and don’t like it, you can always leave. But hopefully you’ll enjoy it and make lots of friends and have lots of fun and learn lots of things and maybe even win a few trophies!!!
I Have More Questions!
If you have additional questions, please reach out to us at speechteam@u.northwestern.edu