Create and deliver a fluent and coherent oral text which develops, sustains and structures ideas (AS 91476)
Domain: Create and deliver a fluent and coherent oral text which develops, sustains and structures ideas - AS 91476, internal, 3 credits. The text can be a speech, seminar, performance, podcast, spoken-word piece or debate. Marks depend on both what the ideas are and how they are delivered; a strong script read flatly will not reach Excellence.
Delivery is part of the text
- Voice: pace, volume, pitch, stress, articulation, and the pause - the most under-used device in student speeches.
- Body: stance, gesture, eye contact distributed across the audience, purposeful movement.
- Space and props: use them only if they carry meaning.
Rhetoric that works when it is earned
Direct address, rhetorical questions, anaphora, tricolon, anecdote, concrete statistics, antithesis. Each should serve the argument; three devices in a row with nothing to say is noise.
Structure
Hook the audience in the first fifteen seconds, state the proposition, signpost the route, develop one idea per section, then close by returning to the opening image so the text feels whole.
Worked example
Opening draft: 'Today I'm going to talk about climate change and why it's bad.' Revision: 'Eleven days. That's how long my town went without safe drinking water. I want to explain how a country with one of the world's longest coastlines ended up trucking water into its own streets.' Reasoning: a fragment creates a pause and a number creates stakes; the second sentence states the proposition without announcing it; the contrast carries the argument. The revision also gives the speaker somewhere to breathe and make eye contact.
Traps
Reading verbatim with eyes down; running over time; cramming in devices; visual aids that compete with you; no rehearsal in front of listeners; content too thin for the length.