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Middle School Forensics Tournament

A common misconception with the word  "forensics" is that it only refers to scientific tests, but forensics has multiple meanings. Our middle school team participated in a competition of public speaking and formal debate, another meaning of the word forensics. This competition took place on December 14th at St. Elizabeth Catholic School. It consisted of about two hours of public speaking in two different rounds. It works like this: The speaker picks a piece to speak about in front of a room of students their age. They receive the script or piece a few weeks before and practice tones and voice levels to get the best sounding speech they can. The script they choose has to fall under the  categories of Prose (meaning a plain writing), Drama (a dramatic script), Declamation (a declarative speech), and Multiple Reading (a group of multiple people reading a play-type piece). Along with these there is the category of Extemporaneous. In this category you are given a speech on the spot with no time to prepare. It is right there and then and is naturally the hardest category to prepare for.

Anyone who places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in any of these categories is able to also compete at the next competition that will take place at St. Barnard Catholic School. All students from Carlynton who participated got 1st or 2nd place and will participate in the second round before finals. Luckily, Carlynton has some very dedicated students. 8th grader Sean Heart placed first in this competition and will move on to the next competition in January!

Written by Uzochi Orji, 7th grade

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