Final Exam
Advanced Speech
Oral Interpretation
100 points
1. Choose material for oral interpretation. You can choose an excerpt from a play or short story, poem, song lyrics, or a part from a novel or nonfiction piece. Pick your favorite part of selection and select the lines that most convey the meaning. Also consider a selection that will interest your audience as well.
2. The first 30 seconds of your time should be spent introducing the material (why you chose selection), giving information to understand the selection, identify the characters and their relationships in the selection, outline plot to set the scene and set the mood for the selection.
3. The selection for your interpretation should be 3-4 minutes in length. When you cut material, always cut in, not out. Build your cutting around your favorite lines and those lines that you feel are the most important to understanding the selection. Eliminate dialogue tags. In drama, eliminate stage directions. Eliminate minor characters that may confuse listeners. Cut references to events that you do not have time to fully explain.
4. Place characters by looking in different locations for each one. In prose readings, most place the narrator directly in front with the rest of the voices to the left and the right. In drama, the most important characters are placed closest to the center, with the minor characters farther to the sides. Do not place characters too far apart.
5. Read chapter 16, complete handout, and follow advice in chapter.
6. Oral interpretation is worth 100 points.
7. Your grade will be based on the meaning of the selection being portrayed accurately, creating a mood to reflect the passage chosen, creating imagery through your vocal performance, facial expressions, and gestures. See attached rubric.
8. Identify connotations of words. Express connotations in your vocal performance. Experiment with pitch, varying the pacing, recreate dialects, and respond with your face and the rest of your body to each word spoken.
9. Use pauses of varying lengths before key words, changes in pitch, holding vowels, hitting consonants, manipulating tempo, and unusual or expected emphasis.
10. You should know your lines well enough that you can maintain good eye contact throughout the reading and not stumble or hesitate during your reading. You must look at the script often enough to remind the audience you are sharing a work of literature. You must not be tied to the script.
11. Practicing your material aloud is a must! Record yourself or have others listen while you practice.
12. Do not mimic someone. Make the interpretation original/fresh. REMEMBER THIS IS PERFORMANCE ART!