How to Evaluate a Speech

Listening Actively

Give the speaker your undivided attention. You can't give someone feedback on a speech unless you hear it. Whether you're evaluating a speech for class, or you're helping someone else prepare for a public speaking engagement, sit quietly and listen to the speech as its given. Listen closely and engage with the speaker. Turn off all electronic devices and put away any distractions. Look at the speaker while the speech is being given. You shouldn't have anything in your hands but maybe a notepad for taking notes. Don't ever evaluate a speech based on the text alone. In other words, don't read the speech and offer feedback. Have the speaker perform the speech. If something is designed to be spoken, it needs to be heard if it is to be appropriately evaluated.

Identify the main idea of the speech. The first thing you want to pick up on in any speech is the main idea that's trying to be communicated. If you're listening to a persuasive speech, especially, learning the thesis or the main idea that the speaker is trying to prove with the speech is the best place to start. It's the speaker's job to make the main idea obvious, so you should be able to recognize the main point relatively quickly. If you can't find the main idea of the speech, try to guess what you think the speaker is trying to prove. Write it down. When you're evaluating the speech later, this will be helpful feedback. For some speeches, like a toast, a tribute, or a thank you, the main idea might be obvious, but play dumb. Is the speaker getting across the idea clearly? Or is the occasion doing too much of the work? Could the speaker do more to make the point of the speech obvious?

Try to follow the supporting argument of the speaker. The main point of the speech is like a tabletop: it's useless unless it's held up by the table legs of the examples, supporting points, argument, logic, and any research that holds up the main idea. How does the speaker prove to the audience that their main point is true? If you’re listening to a persuasive speech, try to come up with responses, questions, and retorts that you might use for feedback later. What was confusing? Were there any supporting points that could be made more clear? Did you find any holes in the argument? If you’re listening to an informal speech, like a toast or a congratulatory speech, focus on the organization of the information that we’re getting. Does it make sense? Does it follow? Does it seem to jump around?

Be willing to be convinced. Going into a speech with a closed mind is a bad way to evaluate it. Even if you’re going to listen to someone give a speech at the Flat Earth Society, try your best to go into it with an objective mind, willing to listen to the content and the presentation of anyone’s speech. If and when you disagree with it, you’ll be disagreeing with the product, not letting your preconceptions offer your criticism.

Take notes. Identify the key points and argument that the speaker is trying to make and keep track of them in a list. You don't need to come out of the speech with a formal outline, but keeping a short list of notes is an important way of generating material for feedback later. Take close notes and your evaluation will be much easier. Write down particularly memorable quotes or moments from the speech to praise. Write down any time the speaker gets a good crowd reaction, or a negative response.

Evaluating Specific Details

Evaluate the content of the speech. The most important part of the speech isn't the speaking style or the charisma of the speaker, it's the content of what is said. Giving a speech is hard because it has all the challenges of writing an essay, with the added difficulty of having to make it easy to listen to out loud. The most important thing to focus on in your evaluation is the content of the speech. If it's a persuasive speech, or an argument speech, the content will likely include a lot of research, real-world examples, and main points. In an informal speech, the content will likely involve anecdotes, stories, and jokes. When you're evaluating, keep in mind the following questions and answer them as a way of giving feedback: What was the main argument of the speech? Was the content clear and well-articulated? Was the argument supported with research? Good examples? Was the content made clear to the audience? Did the speaker prove their point?

Evaluate the organization of the speech. In order to make the content of a speech clear and easy to digest, it needs to be organized well. Formal or informal, public speaking needs to be easy to listen to. If the speech jumps around or moves from point to point like a tennis match, it might need to be reorganized. To help you evaluate the organization of the speech, keep in mind the following questions to generate feedback for the speaker: Was the supporting argument logically structured? Was the speech easy to follow? Difficult? Why? Do the speaker’s points flow logically from one to the next? What could be included to clear up the speech for you?

Evaluate the style of the speech. If the content of the speech refers to what is spoken, the style refers to how it is spoken. A good speech should match the style to the content: it's unlikely a serious paper about dolphin populations would involve "getting to know the audience" games or audience participation. Whether or not a speaker chooses to use jokes, how much the speaker engages with the audience, and other personal elements to the speech will all play into the style. How a speech is written will affect the style, but also how it is performed. Are the jokes told like they are jokes? Is research presented accurately and clearly? Keep in mind the following questions: How would you describe the style of the speech and the speaker? Did the style of the speech work for the content, or against it? Why? How convincing was the speaker? How was the timing of the speech? Was it easy to follow?

Evaluate the tone of the speech. The tone of the speech refers to the overall impact of the content and the style. A tone might be light, or serious, or playful, and there's no right or wrong tone for any content. It might be appropriate to tell light stories and jokes at a eulogy, or it might be disastrous. It might be appropriate to tell a heartwarming story about your boss at his retirement, but maybe not if it's a drunken roast. The tone needs to match the speech itself and the occasion. Who is the audience for the speech? What are their expectations of the speech and the speaker? How would you describe the tone of the speech? Did it match the content? How? If not, how might the tone be improved? How well will the tone match the audience for the speech?

Giving Constructive Feedback

Write your feedback down. Whatever the occasion and the reason you're giving feedback, for school or informally, it's better to write down your criticisms, praise, and comments, so the speaker will have some document of your feedback. If you have some suggestions, it'll be too easy for the speaker to forget, especially immediately following the speech. It's best to write a short note, no more than 250 or 300 words, to accompany your evaluation of the speech. For some speech classes, you may have to fill out a rubric or assign a grade to a speech. Follow the specific class instructions regarding this and assign a grade appropriate.

Summarize the speech as you understood it. Starting feedback with a summary of what you took from the speech is the most helpful way of letting the speaker know whether or not what they were trying to say was communicated accurately. Don't worry about whether or not your summary is perfectly accurate or not. If you were listening closely and trying your best to follow it, any failure on your part should be instructive for the speaker. That's something they need to make more clear in the speech. Try to start your response with things like, “What I heard you saying is…” or “What I got from this speech was…” A good summary should be several sentences in the evaluation, perhaps slightly less than half of your feedback. Identify the main idea and the main supporting points of the speech. The summary should focus on content only.

Focus your feedback primarily on the content of the speech. Not everyone can or should be Martin Luther King Jr. Focusing your feedback primarily on the oratorical skills of the speaker isn’t usually going to be that helpful, especially if we’re talking about a class speech, a wedding speech, or some kind of business presentation. If the speaker is mostly a wet blanket, focus on how the content could better match the speaking style and how the tone might be changed to match. These are changeable things. Telling a speaker to be "more dynamic" or "funny" isn't good feedback.

Always find something to praise. Even if you just watched your best friend struggle through the lamest best-man speech of all time, it’s important to find something good to say. Start your feedback with some praise and start off the evaluation with good will. Make all feedback constructive criticism, not destructive. Starting off by telling someone how nervous they look while delivering the speech, or how flat the speech was will only make those elements worse. If you thought the speech was boring, instead learn to say something like, "It was subdued, which I think works well for the occasion." If the speaker seemed nervous, try to reassure them with some compliments, "You seemed confident up there. The material really speaks for itself."

Focus your feedback on revision of the speech. Aim all feedback at making specific changes that will improve the speech, not identifying what is wrong with the speech, or what seems to be not working for you about it. This will give the speaker something constructive and will work to make the speech better, rather than simply tearing it down. Don’t say, “I didn’t like the jokes you used,” say, “Next time, I think you could leave the jokes out and the speech would move a little quicker.”

Try to focus on no more than three key areas of improvement. Overburdening someone with fifty different things to fix and work on can make the job seem hopeless. As an evaluator, it’s important to focus on three major areas of improvement and worry less about more secondary things. Focus first on content corrections, the organization of the speech, and the tone before you focus on anything else in the speech. These are the most important categories for improvement, and the best ways to quickly improve the speech. Think of these as the highest order of concern. Worry about the specifics of the delivery later. Whether or not the timing of the joke at the end of the speech works should be one of the last things a speaker worries about. If the speech is already very good, feel free to move onto these secondary concerns.