Verdugo Hills Senior High – Speech A, Speech B

Mar 2026 · 2nd Semester

The major purpose of this course is to offer instruction in the fundamentals of effective oral delivery, including body control, use of voice and diction, and analysis of audience. Instruction stresses organization, selection, and arrangement of material, and use of transitions and rhetorical effects in making brief speeches to inform, persuade, or entertain. Supporting material, methods of research, critical thinking, logical argumentation, parliamentary procedures, and effective language are applied in learning discussion and debate techniques. Students learn to structure ideas and arguments in their speeches in a sustained, persuasive, and sophisticated way and support them with precise and relevant examples. Students will also read, discuss, and write about speeches in order to interpret and evaluate the impact of ambiguities, subtleties, contradictions, ironies, and incongruities in a text. They will analyze the way in which clarity of meaning is affected by the patterns of organization, hierarchical structures, repetition of the main ideas, syntax, and word choice in the text. Speech AB fulfills a G requirement of the UC/CSU Subject Area Requirements.