How to Evaluator the RDG Way

4. Evaluator Q&As

The speaker I've been assigned to is really advanced. What do I do?

Follow the suggestions in this lesson. If the advanced speaker seems to make no mistakes no matter how hard you scrutinize them, it's not necessarily that you're a bad evaluator; it's just that you may need more experience. Sometimes the issues to be found are less with mechanics and more with effectiveness. You may want to step back and consider how the speech impacted you.

The speaker said things I don't agree with. What do I do?

Step back and take a breath. Remind yourself that evaluating the speech isn't endorsing or agreeing with the content. Remember that your task isn't to debate with the speaker. Content can be evaluated according to its logic and the evidence for it, but stay away from providing counter-points (e.g. "Jack argued that homelessness is caused by Democrats, but if you look at the HUD reports of 2018 you'll see it was really the Republicans"). If you want to present the counter-arguments, consider doing a speech that addresses them.

I'm trying to find something "wrong" in the speech but they killed it. What do I do?

Sometimes this just happens, and you can't find anything wrong. In that case, you may want to comment in your improvement section that "the only thing I found wrong is that you weren't able to have more speaking time" or something according to those lines.

I can't find anything good about the speech I just heard. What now?

Take a breath or two and try to look at the basics to find some positives. For newer speakers, this may just be mustering up the courage to be in front of the club.