Linking Thought and Spoken Word

As a PhD student, I spend a lot of time buried in books.? Although reading involves a communicative exchange, I still experience it as a primarily solitary activity.? And this semester, I find myself locked away in a corner of the library even more frequently than usual, trying to digest 80+ books for my second exam.? But the exam itself won?t happen in solitary confinement; rather, after several sets of written examination, I?ll have to talk.? And while this talking may seem to take the form of a low-stakes conversation, in actuality it is a high-stakes evaluation of my ability to call on knowledge in the moment, to synthesize ideas from multiple sources, and to convey them verbally.? In theatrical terms, the oral exam is an improvisational performance.

I?m familiar with the trickiness of this kind of performance, not only through my experiences as a graduate student, but also through my experiences teaching speech communication.? The only real content that I relay to my students on the first day of class is the concept of extemporaneous speaking.? The word is a mouthful, and it sometimes becomes a running joke throughout the semester that students don?t like to say it out loud, which is, of course, part of the point.? I understand extemporaneous speaking as the ability to speak from preparation, organization, and knowledge, but without narrowing down one?s actual word choice to pre-crafted words on a page.? In speaking extemporaneously, we find the right words in the moment to express the sequence of ideas that we?ve prepared in advance.

And my students struggle.? The challenges of research, organization, and writing outlines often pale in comparison to facing an audience and speaking to them, without reading whole paragraphs directly from a page of notes or from copious bullet points on a PowerPoint slide.

Examining the challenges of navigating between written words and spoken words has led me to consider the common pitfall of plagiarism in a different light.? More so than the ethical problems of patchwork plagiarism, what concerns me most when students pass someone else?s written words off as their own is that they skip the step of internalizing ideas into their own vocabulary.? Looking at plagiarism in this way ultimately boils the problem down to being more about the losses that accompany relying too much on direct quotation rather than on summary, paraphrase, and synthesis.? When students haven?t rephrased an idea into their own vocabulary in writing, they struggle even more to speak the idea extemporaneously.

This brings me back to my own studying process.? It?s tempting in my second-exam note taking to lift perfect nuggets of text out of each book and into my notes.? After all, that quote conveys exactly what the author is trying express, right?? But I find that this kind of note taking is an ineffective short cut.? The greater challenge in digesting written discourse lies in internalizing the ideas.? For me, this means translating them into my own written, and then spoken, words.? If I can write an idea in my own words, I can think it through in my own vocabulary.? If I can think it through without the crutch of the author?s original phrasing, I?m more likely to be able to explain it extemporaneously.

Although I don?t exactly relish the idea of taking this exam, I can?t honestly disagree with the significance of demonstrating expertise through fluid and improvisational speech.? It makes sense that being able to speak extemporaneously on a topic demonstrates a thorough level of understanding.? Perhaps knowledge is more alive if it can be verbally invoked in an improvisational manner.

But in academia, it seems that written text is often privileged over spoken text.? Academic conference presentations are a good example.? Introduction to Speech Communication textbooks stress the difference in requirements between spoken language and written language.? Speech giving, according to these sources, demands simpler, more straightforward language, more repetition, and clearer preview statements, internal summaries, etc.? Meanwhile, at conferences in the field of Theatre and Performance Studies, we read to each other from tailored manuscripts.? I find myself struggling to take notes in attempt to follow the ins and outs of these carefully crafted arguments.? It often seems that we conference participants are so intent on relaying the particular nuances of our work that extemporaneous speaking can?t be risked.? But even more than this, I think that we don?t deliver extemporaneous conference presentations simply because it?s more difficult.

In my speech classroom, I?ve become convinced that watching someone find the right wording in the moment of expression is infinitely more captivating and convincing than watching someone read perfect words off a page.? Why?? In my opinion, it?s because extemporaneous speech is necessarily imbued with meaning.? It is animated by in-the-moment understanding, whereas spoken words lifted directly from a script may rely on an ephemeral linked moment of understanding and writing that is long gone. ?This linking of written words and their meaning can evaporate for the reader in the moment of delivery.

It?s a common joke that nerves lead public speakers to forget basic knowledge upon addressing an audience.? I think this problem runs deeper than forgetting vocabulary.? Students frequently tell me they have trouble genuinely understanding what they?re saying while speaking in front of a larger audience, particularly while being evaluated doing so.? The meaning escapes from their mind, which is why it becomes so tempting to fall back on a script that can be relied upon whether or not one?s understanding is present in the moment.? This is the challenging of extemporaneous speaking: pairing internal understanding with externally oriented spoken communication.? I don?t know any way to build this skill aside from practice.

Practice.? I?ll take this as a reminder that my second exam preparations should not be an entirely solitary and silent activity.? Thinking about my oral exam in conjunction with my students? struggles toward extemporaneous speech may help me approach the task as a meaningful exercise rather than an intellectual hoop to jump through.

Source: http://cac.ophony.org/2012/09/19/linking-thought-and-spoken-word/

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