Fast-talking is tough to sell to people who believe thatdebate should be primarily about communication skills. A lot of us are willingto concede much of what speed critics fear; we say something like “Well, fastdebate won’t make you eloquent, but boy will it improve your critical thinkingskills.” I think that answer is right, but I also think it concedes too much.
Whether speed in fact diminishes one’s ability to speakeloquently when the occasion calls for it is an empirical question which adiligent researcher could no doubt answer. I don’t have information todefinitively answer the question, but I do suspect that in fact speed can, atleast sometimes, improve studentspublic speaking abilities. There are a few reasons why.
1. Speed trains youto think faster.
Many people seem to be poor extemporaneous speakers becausethey simply can’t think of content quickly enough to fill their speaking timesmoothly. The debater’s problem is usually the opposite of course. With onlythe slightest effort to avoid actually voicing thoughts too rapidly, I actuallythink that fast debate helps you to formulate content more rapidly andtherefore speak at slower speeds with more polish.
2. Speed promotesword economy.
Sometimes speed can be a crutch for people who lack wordeconomy, but I think more often it forces the debaters to learn concision toanswer the spread when on the wrong end of the Aff/Neg time skew. Concise,pithy sentence constructions tend to be more easily understood and expressideas more precisely. That training translates into better public speaking.
3. Speed promotesposture and breath support.
You wouldn’t know it to look at debaters who plant theirfaces into the table every time they speak, but training to speak fastergenerally involves improving posture, breathing technique, and muscularendurance. To be comprehensible at speed you need to have decent volume, whichrequires projection. To avoid fatigue you need muscular endurance, an objectiveof most speed drills. To enunciate clearly you need to train the muscles inyour face and neck to form words clearly. In the same way that singers canimprove their public speaking technique, so can debaters who speak quickly.
So, I’m not convinced that speed undermines student’s persuasivecommunication skills; that certainly hasn’t been my observation. But maybe I’mdead wrong. What do you think?