WACFL EVENTS

ABOUT WACFL TOURNAMENTS:WACFL offers five regular season tournaments, one in each month from October to February. These regular season tournaments will qualify students to the Metropolitan Championship Tournaments (MetroFinals) held in March. The MetroFinals tournaments will determine qualifiers to the Grand National Tournament hosted by the National Catholic Forensic League (NCFL).

EVENTS OFFERED AT WACFL:

DECLAMATION

Open to students in the 9th & 10th grades ONLY. A category in which participants memorize and interpret a speech, such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a Dream" speech. The speech must be memorized with a maximum delivery length of 10 minutes.

DRAMATIC PERFORMANCE

A single person event area in which an up to 10 minutes piece is performed. The competitor can perform a monologue or a dialogue with multiple characters. Movement is limited and facial and tonal expressions are judges. Scripts are usually excerpted from plays or novels and could be in serious or humorous nature.

DUO INTERPRETATION

The only partner event in Speech. The two partners may each play a single character (or multiple characters) in their 10 minutes memorized performance. Each character should be sufficiently developed and should interact meaningfully with the other character(s). The partners should also interact meaningfully. Movement should be limited and suggested rather than exaggerated.

EXTEMPORANEOUS SPEAKING

An event in which the competitor chooses three current event topics from an envelope. The student selects one topic and is given 30 minutes to prepare a speech using evidence from published sources (like periodicals) that the team brings with them to the tournament. Students may not refer to any written notes during the speech. The maximum length of the speech is 7 minutes.

IMPROMPTU SPEAKING

A limited preparation event. Participants pick three topics out of an envelope and select one to talk about. The topic can be a phrase, quote, proverb, slogan, word, parable, famous person, or anything else. The participant is give a maximum of 7 minutes to develop and deliver a speech.

ORAL INTERPRETATION

An event with two different reading, one poetry and one prose.

Each selection is up to 10 minutes, and each is performed during different rounds. Selections may be taken from any published text, so long as they qualify as poetry and/or prose. Students are required to perform the piece with the scripts in their hands.

ORIGINAL ORATORY

Participants create their own persuasive or informative speech and deliver it from memory. The speech may be up to a maximum of 10 minutes. Students prepare original orations, usually persuasive or informative on a current topic. Any topic is permissible and any form of oration is permitted. The presentation must be memorized.

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