Evaluation and Humorous Speech contests are in full flow now and as I have been a judge and have trained in the art & science of being one, and it always fascinates me to hear the opinons of others on how they do it. Should all judges be trained or is it just common sense?

Sue Howsen, Norway.

Very good question Sue.

I think it is common sense if you have the experience, however I do often hear from contestants quibble about the votes cast which makes me wonder!?

Hi Sue

Training wouldn't hurt for judges. But some training for the competitiors and the audience would also help. How often have you been to a competition where afterwards the audience is grumbling over the winner selection?

I've never been to a competition where the audience have been given a detailed overview of the judging criteria. It's always a quick cursory rehashing of the main points. For the sake of 5 minutes it would increase peoples' understanding of what the judges are looking for.

Anyway, personally, I've always believed thaat my failure to advance in competition is down to the calibre of the judges rather than any of my shortcomings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Barry

(Future District Evaluation, Table topics, Humourous & International Speech Champion)

Hey Barry, I couldn't agree with you more, especially as we didn't win the Area 16 table topics contest!!

Hi Sue, very good comments. Judges should be trained because contestant's standards are very high and difficult to defferetiate.

All the best J

I received judges training this past January. Just recently I have had the opportunity to judge 2 different area contests. I firmly believe that training is necessary to fairly judge a group of speakers. The first reason I give is that thorough training teaches you how to judge without being influenced by any of the speakers that came before the current speaker. Secondly, being trained in the different criteria teaches us to evaluate the entire speech on a weighted system. The winner may not be the speaker the average listener might vote for. One speaker may sound and appear much better than another, while not actually using as many of the qualities we look for as judges.

Unfortunately, this cuts both ways. Is the better speaker (according to the judges) the more EFFECTIVE speaker? This is the stuff of which horse races are made.