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The National Forensic League is one of two major U.S. national organizations which direct high school competitive speech events. (The other is the National Catholic Forensic League or NCFL.)

History

Founded May 25 1925, the NFL hosted the first national high school speech tournament in 1930 with 49 schools from 17 states. By and large the rules that governed that tournament are still in effect today providing one of the longest running national competitions for high school students. Approximately 1 million high school students have been members of the NFL since 1925. Well over 30,000 high school students participate in NFL certified events every year. The National Tournament for 2006 was held in Grapevine, Texas.

Events

The NFL hosts the U.S. national high school forensics tournament annually in the US, attracting over 3000 high school students to compete for national honors in a wide variety of events including:

All the above events are NFL-sponsored events which one can compete in at the NFL National Tournament. However, those events marked as supplemental or consolation one cannot qualify in; they are events which, if pre-registered, a contestant can compete in if that contestant does not advance beyond the preliminary rounds.

Students qualify for competition in the national tournament through competition in NFL-sanctioned district tournaments. Each district sends one, two (or, rarely, more) students in each event based on the number of entrants in that event. The rules for running a district tournament are published in the National Forensic League Manual, which include strict dress code requirements for all participants.

Districts tend to follow state boundaries, although some states have several districts. Arizona, for instance, has one district, whereas Ohio has four. The NFL website contains a list of districts.

National Tournament

During June of each year, the National Forensic League holds a National Tournament. In order to participate in this tournament, student must qualify through their home district's qualifying tournament. The competitors in this tournament are believed to be the best forensic students in the nation. Each year, the tournament is held in a different location in the United States. The location in which the tournament is held is determined through a bidding process similar to that of the Olympic Games.

The Rostrum

The Rostrum is the official monthly magazine of the National Forensic League. The magazine was originally titled the Bulletin, which was first published in 1926. Since its creation, the Rostrum has evolved into a forum for debate education and news, soliciting articles from ocahes and debaters. The Rostrum is a popular place for debate camps and brief compnaies to place their advertisments, supporting the magazine which is free to all NFL members.

Points

Those who participate in competitive forensics earn points for their efforts. In the debate events, a win in a round is worth six points while a loss is worth three. In the speech events, there are three point brackets; original speeches, worth six points, interpretation events, worth five points, and speaking events, worth four points. Six point events include Extemporaneous Speaking, Original Oratory, and Expository; first place in one of these rounds earns a competitor six points, second earns the competitor five, third earns four, etc. Five point events include Prose, Poetry, Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, and Dual Interpretation. The four point event category is reserved for events like Impromptu Speaking.

National Forensic League Points (NFL points) are employed in the scoring system used by the National Forensic League to rank competitors' lifetime progress, and to determine how many competitors a school may register in an NFL District Tournament.

In debate events, the winner (or both members of the winning team) each earn six points, and the loser earns three. In speaking events, points vary with the speaker's place in the round. Competitors in events that involve creating original material such as: Foreign Extemporaneous Speaking (FX), Domestic Extemporaneous Speaking (DX), Original Oratory (OO), Lincoln-Douglas Debate (LD), Public Forum Debate (PF) and Policy Debate (CX) each earn more points than competitors in events that involve interpreting previously published material such as Prose (PR), Poetry (PO), Humorous Interpretation (HI), Duet Acting (DA), and Dramatic Interpretation (DI). The least expected points are categorized in "Speaking" events. These include Impromptu (Imp), and any other optional speaking events. In Student Congress (StuCo) each speech given receives a score of up to six points. Commonly more than one judge scores each speech in Student Congress, so in this case the scores of the judges are averaged and rounded up to calculate the speech score.

Rank:
1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th 7th 8th
Points Earned:
Original Speech
6
5
4
3
2
1
1
1
Points Earned:
Interpretation
5
4
3
2
1
1
1
1
Points Earned:
Speaking
4
3
2
1
1
1
1
1

Members can only earn up to 750 points in each of the three areas of competition: debate, speaking events (original oratory, extemporaneous speaking and the interpretative events), and Student Congress. Points earned at NFL District Tournaments and the NFL National Tournament are not subject to the 750-point cap. The point limit was raised in 2004 from 500 points.

Members can also earn "service points", which accrue for certain activities outside of speech competition. Delivering speeches before audiences of twenty-five or more adults, for instance, earns a fixed number of service points.

As a member accumulates points, they earn NFL degrees. Each degree corresponds to the jeweling pattern of an NFL pin which the degree-holder is authorized to wear, and to a seal which will be placed on the degree-holder's diploma. The following are the Membership Degrees:

Degree
Points
Jewels
Seal
Merit
25
None
White
Honor
75
Emerald
Bronze
Excellence
150
Sapphire
Silver
Distinction
250
Ruby
Gold
Special
Distinction
500
Double
Ruby
Rose
Superior
Distinction
750
Triple
Ruby
Blue
Outstanding
Distinction
1000
Quadruple
Ruby
Purple
Premier
Distinction
1500+
Quint
Ruby
Black

It should be noted that NFL pins are by no means ubiquitous; some competitors in some areas are more likely to wear them; other competitors in other areas may abstain from them, and even consider them to be mildly pretentious. In some forms of speech competition, advertising one's standing with a pin may also place one at a minor tactical disadvantage.

Point Archive: Coach/Instructor

School Instructors also receive points, which are dependent upon their students' performances. The instructor receives 1/10 of a point for each point received by one of the instructor's students. The better the team, the better recognition of the instructor. Instructors follow the exact same degree as students; however, an instructor receives a diamond after accumulating point totals of 1,500, 3,000 and every 3,000 points thereafter. All instructor points are dependent upon the performance of the instructor's team, although the coach or coaches decide how to award accumulated coaching points among themselves.

Membership

According to the National Forensic League, any participating high school student who has attained 25 points becomes a member of the organization. However, this new member is required to pay a $10 lifetime fee. Even though membership is lifelong, one can only compete as a high school student. The lifetime ranking of an NFL member is determined by his or her Point Score, explained in the National Forensic League

University Interscholastic League

The National Forensic League also works with the University Interscholastic League. The UIL offers just a few of the NFL Events, such as: Prose, Poetry, Informative and Persuasive Speaking (Extemporaneous Speaking), Policy Debate, and Lincoln-Douglas Debate. Other events such as: Original Oratory, Dramatic Interpretation, Humorous Interpretation, and Impromptu are not offered by the UIL. Those events can only be competed at District Level, National Tournaments, State Tournaments, and Regular Tournaments.

Like many of the Organizations associated with the National Forensic League, UIL is a qualified Tournament. Competitors Qualify to the UIL Tournament through their Performances at Regular Tournaments. UIL Events provide a different performance than regular NFL Events within each competitor.

UIL, as mentioned above, is an organization based in the state of Texas.

State leagues

While the National Speech and Debate Tournament and the qualifying District Competitions are hosted by the NFL, most forensics tournaments during the school year operate under the auspices of other organizations. Chief among them are the state speech leagues, such as:

In other states, speech is classed with other high school interscholastic competition and is overseen by the same organization as football, basketball and gymnastics such as:

State leagues operate independently. Some leagues sponsor events not offered by the NFL. These events may still qualify for NFL points, however.

See also

References

External links

1925 establishments | Policy debate | Student debating societies | Forensics speech and debate

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "National Forensic League".

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