Going Extemporaneous

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a departmental meeting for adjunct and full-time speech faculty for Brookhaven.  The issue of extemporaneous versus manuscript speeches came up.  The crux of the discussion:  manuscript speeches are bad--very, very bad.  Most of the other faculty give very low grades to students who read excessively during their speech. There was a clear desire for the rest of us to grade "read" speeches in a similar way.

The rationale is sound.  Taking the time to write a manuscript is inefficient.  It decreases eye-contact.  It sounds written rather than sounding like speech, etc.  We are the only department that teaches oral communication and therefore we need to insure that students are developing oral skills not merely vocalizing their writing skills.  I was the one objector in the room.

My objection emerges from my experience.  The extemporaneous (i.e., speaking from an outline rather than a manuscript) dogma is what I lived with as an undergraduate.  At no point in either my undergraduate or graduate education was I ever taught how to write for oral communication.  But, there is a need to learn to write for orality.  The one I remember thinking about as an undergraduate was that of professional speech writing.  But there are others situations where it is needed.  Despite the potential for us to need to know how to write for oral communication, we were never taught it.

In Seminary at Brite Divinity School, the overwhelming bias--at least while I was there--was in favor of manuscript sermons.  The reasons we gave for using a manuscript also make sense.  When dealing with theological concepts we do not want to be sloppy with word choice.  Also, a manuscript provides for better time management.  I know to the minute how long a 3 page sermon will last but a half-page outline could be done in five minutes or take as long as an hour.

I adopted the manuscript practice.  On many Sundays I read my sermon word-for-word from the pulpit.  Starting around 2000, I started to memorize (more or less) my sermon manuscript and deliver the sermon with minimal notes.  If I can run through the sermon three times before the first worship service, I can pretty accurately recreate the manuscript from memory.  This stopped as my constant approach in about 2005 when my third child was born.  The lack of sleep made it a lot more difficult.  I've recently returned to my  commitment to preach without a manuscript in front of me each Sunday.  But whether preaching from a manuscript with me in the pulpit or preaching from memory and minimal notes, there has usually been a manuscript somewhere that I had prepared before preaching.

So, I had a dilemma.  My speech com undergraduate education and teaching needs pushed for extemporaneous approach.  My homiletics training preferred a manuscript.  My speech teaching responsibilities asked me to give a lower grade to a practice that I myself habitually and intentionally engaged.

In part to relearn how to do extemporaneous speaking and in part to test out the competing claims about mode of delivery, I have made a personal decision to give--as best I can--every speech (sermon, report, homily) in an extemporaneous mode between now and the start of school.  I will chronicle my experiences and draw conclusions based on what I learn.