Stellar speechifiers speak specifically - Editorial Notebook

Would you rather run naked through your small-town co-op store or give a speech to a large group of friends, relatives and strangers? Have a root canal, pluck a flock of chickens and pick rocks for seven straight days, or address a crowd?

There are those who would have to give serious thought to these questions. They are the silent – the people who are terrified of speaking in public.

But the above questions would give no pause to large numbers of 4-H club members, for whom speaking in public is an expected part of club activities that many of them come to enjoy.

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On April 4 in Blaine Lake, Sask., 30 of those members competed in the provincial 4-H public speaking competition, having already won at their club and regional levels. The speakers were divided into four groups, according to age, including Cloverbuds (6-8), Junior (9-12), Intermediate (13-15), and Senior (16-21).

The task of evaluation fell to eight judges, including an author, a high school teacher, a livestock nutrition consultant, a radio news broadcaster, a grain farmer, a former 4-H leader, a professional engineer, and me.

Oh, the pain of it! The agony! What a tortuous job!

Why, you ask? Because the participants were so skilled and entertaining that it was difficult to select the winners.

I won’t even try to describe the arm wrestling, the nail biting and the excruciating arithmetic that took place in judges’ chambers, not to mention the digestion of knowledge absorbed from 30 speeches.

Competitors told about ponies and gophers, bullies and body image, hunting and snowmobiling, cats and skunks, siblings, career choices, red hair, gun control, French immersion and recycling.

And they did it with no outward sign that they were following the advice so often given to overcome pre-speech jitters: picturing the audience wearing nothing but their underwear.

Speakers were judged on topic selection, content, word choice, sentence structure, pronunciation, audibility, poise, gestures, eye contact and a host of other elements that go into effective speech making.

“There is no such animal, in or out of captivity, as a born public speaker,” wrote famed orator and teacher Dale Carnegie.

“What we like to hear at our dinner meetings, in our church services, on our TV sets and radios, is straightforward speech, conceived in common sense and dedicated to the proposition that we like speakers to talk with, and not at, us.”

Mission accomplished for these 4-H speakers. A photo of the first and second place winners is at www.producer.com.