How to Judge a Junior High School Speech Competition

Being a judge for a speech competition among junior high students can be fun but you must have experience in competing in these competitions along with the knowledge of what to look for in order to correctly critique. It can be very rewarding for students that want to improve their skills of drama or acting for future references. The speech competition is judged in various categories and scored from 1 to 5 (5 being the best).

Difficulty:

Moderate

Instructions

How to judge a jr high speech competition

1. Determine which category the student or students are competing in. If it is a solo they may be competing in humorous or dramatic interpretation categories. If there are two they would be competing in duet and if there's more than two it is a group.

2. Look for Eye Contact. If the student is not looking at their audience (you the judge) then they would be scored low. If they have minimum eye contact then they could score a 3 and if they are always aware of their audience then they could score a 5.

3. Consider their body language. Are they acting out their presentation with confidence or is the student slouched over in obvious intimidation. If they are acting out a tv commercial then they should be displaying positive body language to promote their product. If they are reading a story and are not bringing the story to life with actions then they would score a low number. If they seem confident and able to tell a story almost without words then they can score a high number. Also the student cannot turn their back to the audience for most of the speech. This is completely wrong.

4. Judge how well they work with others. If they are working in a duet category or a group then they will be judged on how well they act and work with others in their group. If the duet seems confused and not going anywhere with their story or if one seems to take over then they are not working well as a duet. If the group seem unorganized, not knowing where to stand, bumping into each other, talking over another person's lines then they also didn't work well together and should receive a low score.

5. Score the student's movement. If they are doing a solo or working with others you must score how much or little a person moves. When they speak and their hands tend to move in a way that is distracting from the story then they will be marked down for that. If the opposite happens same thing. The student shoudn't be too stiff and shouldn't move too much.

6. Judge the projection of the voice. If the student speaks too low and you can barely hear them then they need to be marked off and if they are too loud the same thing will happen. The student cannot be overly dramatic and cannot be too insecure since scores will come down.

Tips & Warnings

• If a group is competing and there is one person that is not doing the speech very well but the others are the group will still need to be counted off for that one person. The entire group has to work well together and compliment each other.