ORAL COMPOSITION.
Definite practice in oral composition extends throughout the entire course. At least once every five weeks each student talks to the class on some subject previously prepared. Increase these exercises whenever time will permit.
General Directions.
1. Have students stand before the class, free from desks or other external support.
2. Subject matter should be prepared, but not memorized. Students may use a small card with headings, but no other notes.
3. The length of the talk may vary from two to three minutes in the Ninth Year, to five of six in succeeding terms, as ideas and ease increase.
4. Material should be drawn from subjects outside the literature lessons. Let the student’s interest determine the subject. Talks may be reproductions of newspaper or magazine articles, of parts of books, or accounts of personal experience, but the wording must be the student’s own.
5. Teachers should emphasize constantly the same principles or order and arrangement of ideas as in written work. The aim is not mere talk, but effective speech.
6. Emphasize interest of the audience as a test of success. Try to arouse an ambition to win this. Teach the gain to a speaker from erect, free posture of the body, ease of manner, command of the audience with the eye, clear enunciation, pleasant voice.
7. Criticism must be sympathetic and kindly, even when corrective. Above all try to arouse ambition to succeed and the will to persevere.