Impromptu Speeches: Giving a Speech EVERY Class

By: David Kluge

How do you terrify your students? Tell them they will be giving a three-minute speech in English EVERY CLASS! I did this and surprisingly all the students survived. Here is how—and why— I introduced impromptu speeches to a class of Japanese university second-year World Englishes majors.

Psychological basis

One psychological basis of the activity is from Nobel prize-winning author Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow (2013). Kahneman describes the differences between two systems of thought: System 1 and System 2. System 1, which he refers to as fast thinking, is described as rapid, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic, and unconscious. I think of it as the type of thinking I use when driving a car in the city, where I have to make quick decisions on when to use the brake or the accelerator, or when timing a turn against oncoming traffic. System 2, which he refers to as slow thinking, is described as slower, more deliberative, and more logical. This is the type of thinking that is prized in academic settings, such as in the writing of research papers. In school students get between twelve and sixteen years of training in slow thinking and almost no training in fast thinking. I introduced impromptu speaking to provide some fast-thinking experience for the students.

Introducing the class

The two classes where I had my students practice impromptu speaking were Oral Presentation classes in a World Englishes university program that was highly regarded in Nagoya (the fourth most populous city in Japan). Students took a department-wide placement test before the beginning of the academic year and these two semester-long classes contained the top students in the program as determined by the test. There were 12 students in each class, sitting in three groups of four students. One activity students did every class and for their semester mid-term and final exams was impromptu speeches.

Impromptu speeches?

Mark Twain wrote, “It usually takes me more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.” I gave my students three minutes. First, I had to prepare students for the activity.

Introduction to impromptu speeches

I gave the students a short description of what an impromptu speech is. I then demonstrated how to prepare for one. I asked them to give me three topics, a personal one, a local one, and an international or global one. I wrote them on the whiteboard as the students called them out. I chose one of the topics. I then set a kitchen timer to three minutes and started it. On the whiteboard I wrote “Beginning,” “Middle,” and “End,” and under each I wrote several words or phrases. Just before the three minutes were up, I came up with a good starting and ending phrase. The kitchen timer went off. I started it again and gave a three-minute impromptu speech, usually to great applause.

Preparation for impromptu speech classroom activity

I distributed to each student a blank, business card-sized card I had purchased at a stationery store. I wrote on the whiteboard:

1. a personal topic
2. a local/regional/national topic
3. an international/global topic

and gave the students time to come up with the three topics in English. I also completed a topic card. I then collected the cards and shuffled them, including my card. In groups of four students, I asked them to determine the speaking order of the four speakers. I distributed four cards face down on their table, a cheap kitchen timer, and four half-sheets of blank paper to each group. I started the background music that prevented groups from hearing other groups’ impromptu speeches. (See the February 2025 issue of Think Tanks for an explanation of this background music.) The first speaker drew a card and a half-sheet of paper, chose one of the three topics, and was given three minutes on the group’s kitchen timer to prepare their speech. When the prep time was over, the first speakers gave their smartphones to the fourth speakers, who acted as camerapersons to record the first speakers’ speech. (The speaker who had just finished their impromptu speech became the next speaker’s cameraperson.) The group’s kitchen timer was set to three minutes, the first speaker stood up and faced the group, the cameraperson gave the okay sign, and recorded the first speaker’s impromptu speech. At the end of the speech, the cameraperson returned the smartphone to the owner. The groups continued in this way until all students were finished, indicated by no one left standing to speak.

The student’s homework was to watch their video of the impromptu speech by the next class and give their personal evaluation. During the next lesson, students shared with their group their observations. I then distributed a Cheat Sheet (see below) to help students do better each time they tried out a new impromptu speech. This procedure—sharing observations and practicing impromptu speeches—was followed at the beginning of each class. (A different procedure was followed for the impromptu speech that students performed for mid-term and final exams. This exam procedure is described in the Steps to impromptu speech exam activity, below.)

The student-generated topic cards for both classes were combined and were used for three or four weeks until the topics seemed to get stale. These old cards were then thrown away and a new set of cards were created by the students.

The Cheat Sheet

At the beginning of the second week of the course, I distributed a Cheat Sheet (see below) about the size of a business card to my students. It gave advice on the structure, delivery, and language to use in their impromptu speech. They were allowed to hold the Cheat Sheet in their hand while performing the impromptu speech in front of their group during the regular class activity (and it could also be used during the impromptu speech they performed in their mid-term and final exams, which followed a different procedure described in the Steps to impromptu speech exam activity).

I explained the cheat sheet to the class, and then demonstrated how to use it.

Steps to impromptu speech exam activity

The following steps are for the procedure that was followed to assess the students’ impromptu speeches in the mid-term and final exams of each semester of the course.

1. In the class meeting a week before the exam, the teacher handed out blank business card-size cards to each student.
2. On the card the students were directed to write topics on the following three areas, the same kinds of topics used in each class (see Appendix for sample student topics):
  1. a personal topic
  2. a local/regional/national topic
  3. an international/global topic
3. The teacher collected the cards and combined the cards from both classes..
4. On the day of the exam, the teacher spread the cards face-down on a desk which is next to the teacher’s chair at the back of the room.
5. The teacher called the name of the first speaker who came to the desk and drew two cards.
6. The student looked at the cards and chose one of the cards that contained a topic the student thought might be a good one, then placed the other card face-down back on the desk.
7. The teacher gave the first student three minutes to prepare speech notes on a half-sheet of blank B5-size paper the student picked up from the teacher’s desk.
8. Just before the first speaker went up to speak, the teacher called the second speaker to come to the desk to pick two cards and replace the card that the speaker did not select to use.
9. The teacher called the first speaker up to speak for three minutes and started the kitchen timer when the student started speaking.
10. The first speaker gave another student their smartphone ready to record the first speaker’s impromptu speech. (The second speaker took the time the first speaker is speaking to prepare notes for their speech.)
11. The teacher filled out an evaluation sheet for each student as they spoke. The teacher evaluation sheet was the same as the student self-evaluation sheet below.

The teacher continued this procedure until all students had presented.

Evaluation

As homework, students needed to watch their video and fill out the evaluation sheet which is based on the Cheat Sheet:

(During the impromptu speech mid-term and final exams I used the same evaluation sheet to evaluate the speakers.) At the start of the next class, I collected the student evaluation sheets.

Conclusion

Throughout the year, I noticed progress in the students’ ability to give impromptu speeches, especially reflected in how fluent the speeches became and how calm the students were when giving the speeches, especially in comparison to their terrified appearance at the beginning of the year. The students, through this weekly activity, practiced fast thinking until they got better and even better at it. Slow thinking was practiced in the rest of the course’s activities, of course.

Reference

Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, fast and slow. ‎ Farrar, Straus, and Giroux

David Kluge was a member of Toastmasters International for a few years when he first started teaching and found the meetings to be a valuable experience. Impromptu speeches, among other types of speeches, were often demonstrated in the regular meetings.