Experimental Extemp Guide

Because online tournaments could use some additional excitement, this tournament has an Experimental Extemp category.  Experimental Extemp is very similar to normal Extemp, but the topics in this category are a little different then what you are used to.  You’ll still have choices and your speech will still be about current events, but the way that you convey your knowledge will be a bit different.  Each round will have one of the following types of questions:

Narrative Extemp: 

In narrative extemp, you will be given topics that ask you to answer a question as someone who is involved in the situation.  For example, if you were given, “You are Brizilain President Jair Bolsonaro.  How do you think your country should handle the novel coronavirus?” you could advocate for ending lock downs because COVID 19 is just a little flu.  You can also incorporate elements of the person’s speaking style and pretend to be them.  Taking advantage of one of the few times when “I” is acceptable in Extemp can be fun.  You can use sources to support your arguments or you can bring them up and then refute them.  Here is a much more thorough guide to narrative Extemp from Extemp Central: http://speechgeek.com/extemp/strategy-answering-narrative-questions/. 

Political Cartoons:

One of your rounds will be political cartoons.  Usually the best way to deal with this is to write a question based of off the political cartoon and then answer it like it was a normal question.  Here is an Extemp Central Article on political cartoon rounds: http://speechgeek.com/extemp/strategy-handling-political-cartoon-rounds/ .

Synthesis Extemp:

In synthesis extemp, you will be given 9 extemp-related nouns as a topic.  You will be asked to pick 3 and explain the common theme.  The nouns you pick will become your 3 body points and instead of providing an answer to a question, you will state your theme.  For example, if you got “Polish Law and Justice Party, Scott Morision, Viktor Orban, Syria, Jakarta, Joe Biden, the Federal Reserve, the Belt and Road Initiative, and Jair Bolsonaro” you could say that populist leaders and parties are increasingly finding themselves in positions of power, as is shown by the Presidency of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the rise of the Law and Justice party in Poland and Viktor Orban Prime Ministership in Hungary.  Make sure you explain a bit about each topic and then clearly tie it to the theme.  In theory, it will end up looking a bit like a final triad round at ETOC, but you get more choices of nouns.  

Crazy Hypothetical:

In crazy hypothetical extemp, you will be given some articles prior to the tournament that describe a completely made up possible future.  All of the questions in the round will relate to something in one of the articles.  While giving speeches, competitors should pretend like everything in the given articles actually happened and any of the articles can be used as sources during speeches.