If you were invited to give a speech to a class of graduating high school students during their Vocation Day, then, you would be giving an extempore speech. You will be doing an extemporaneous type of speaking because you will not only have ample time to prepare your speech but you will also have adequate time to rehearse your speech prior to facing your audience.

In an extemporaneous speaking, you can show your ability as an effective speaker. In the first place, you have time to organize your materials and develop them in a logical manner. In this type of speaking, you are afforded the chance to pay careful attention to your language, i.e., selection of words that will arouse the interest of your listeners, together with your manner of delivery.

In extempore speaking, you can show greater spontaneity and naturalness of creative thinking before your audience. Here is one situation where there will exist a mutual give-and-take between the speaker and the audience. Because extemporaneous speaking requires you to think in the presence of your audience, you will have the opportunity to vary your material depending on the interest and attention of your audience, to adjust these materials to the changes of the speaking occasion, and to use effective gestures that will make your talk not only interesting, but also lively and vivid. Also, with enough preparation, you can maintain poise and confidence in your ability to communicate your ideas well.

However, there are also some disadvantages to this type of speaking. At the moment of speaking, because you are adequately prepared, you become inspired to talk and you rely on these inspirational flashes that come to you as you expound your ideas. However, when the inspirational elements wane and fade away, you will be placed in a nervous and tense state as you try to direct your speech to a logical end. In your attempts to keep close to the trend of your originally prepared speech, after the inspirations have deserted you, you tend to become repetitious in some parts of your speech in order to maintain a unified and coherent development of your ideas. For this reason, you find difficulty in coordinating your gestures with your train of thoughts, thereby ending in poor gestural patterns. Also the strain of composing before the audience makes you too nervous and uneasy. For this reason, you lose your sense of composure and you become fidgety as you attempt to finish your speech immediately.

How can you be an effective extempore speaker? Well, just remember that you had ample time to prepare and practice your speech. Therefore, rely mainly on your prepared speech. Keep to the minimum the flashes of inspiration so as to maintain the impression of thinking intensely and creatively before your audience. Don't prolong your talk. In this way, you do not only keep within the time limit of your speech but you also maintain a calm, serene composure that will help you produce effective and meaningful gestures to make your speech vivid, dramatic, and interesting.