Comment Cards

• You will be writing comments about each of your classmates' graded speeches, plus making a record of my comments about each of your own speeches. I will grade your comments, and the grades you earn will count towards your own course grade, but will not affect your classmates' speech or course grades in any way. Your comments about your classmates' speeches will eventually be distributed to them — anonymously, so they won't know who wrote what.

• Your comments are to be written in ink on 4" by 6" index cards, one card for each speech. The cards are to be set up as follows: holding the card so that it's 4" tall and 6" wide and using ink and a ruler, draw a vertical line down the center of the unlined side of the card, then add a horizontal line across the left-hand half of the card, 1" from the top. If you follow these instructions, you'll wind up with a 1" by 3" rectangle at the upper left of the card and a 3" by 3" square below it, with a 3" by 4" rectangle to the right of the vertical line. These lines should be drawn before you come to class on speech days — if you are drawing the lines inside the classroom, you will not receive any credit for them! Make sure you bring enough cards for the day's speeches, plus a couple of extras.

• When I call a speaker to the front of the room, write the speaker's name in the 1" by 3" rectangle at the upper left of the card. Then, during the speech, write praise in the 3" by 3" square under the name and suggestions for improvement in the 3" by 4" rectangle on the right-hand half of the card. All of this writing is to be done in ink — pencil will not be acceptable.

• You don't need to write complete sentences, but your comments should represent complete thoughts. The words "eye contact" on the right half of the card, for example, make it clear that you have some suggestion to make regarding the speaker's eye contact — but what exactly is it that you're suggesting? If your point is that the speaker needs more eye contact, for example, write "more eye contact needed," or "more eye contact," or simply "more EC."

• Don't use vague praise words, such as "good" or "great" -- instead, tell what was good or great about the speech, the eye contact, the gestures, whatever element it is that you're praising.

• You may use the following abbreviations: EC for "eye contact," G for "gestures," V for "voice." Each of these abbreviations must be modified in some way. Additional abbreviations may be presented in class.