Aps, checklists and positive scores when evaluating speeches

Chad on the LinkedIn forum is proposing to develop an ap for evaluation.

My comments are:

The checklist is very useful when planning your speech. Include volume (can you hear at back of the room) and understandable eg (if half the audience are English ,will a speech in Mandarin or French need some translations).

You also need to take into account the difference between an average score and a variable score. For example an average score would by 3 out of 5. But an good evaluation might say, "He/she started quietly but gained confidence and spoke at full volume by the end of the speech.

I'm in favour of developing an ap now. It's going to come, sooner or later.

The CRC method allows twice the number of praises to recommends.

The ap must shift the scores to start and end with the high points, or add a positive comment. What can you say to encourage somebody who did badly and knows it. (For example, they walked off stage, got lost and started again.)

Comments I have hears: "A baby fall many times but ends up walking."

You have ten speeches. You could get a low score each time on the first 9 speeches, but if you learned each lesson your 10th speech could still be amazingly good compared to speech 1 - as so often happens.

Angela Lansbury, CL, ACG.