III. Project work

Prepare to give a presentation of the samples to your choice. Use one of the samples offered.

• Try to revise the model samples for study and analysis (A, B) as a preliminary exercise.

• Observe the use of phonostylistically relevant pitch patterns, rate, volume.

• Try not to forget that making a political speech is totally different from delivering a lecture. Be careful about the invariant features of this sort of performance and focus on the invariant patterns of pitch, volume, rate and rhythm.

• Use the assessment form to evaluate each other’s presentation techniques. If possible record your performance and use the recording for feedback.

			excellent
		good
	fair
poor

• articulation

• pitch patterns

• rhythm

• rate

• volume

Sample A

A country always has to know its place in the world. For Britain this is of special importance. At the end of the 19^th century we were an imperial power. A century later the Empire was gone. Naturally, and despite the pride of our victory in World War II, our definition seemed less certain. Our change in circumstances affected our confidence and self-belief. Yet today I have no doubt what our place is and how we should use it.

What are our strengths? Part of the EU; and G8; permanent members of the UN Security Council; the closest ally of the US; our brilliant armed forces; membership of NATO; the reach given by our past; the Commonwealth; the links with Japan, China, Russia and ties of history with virtually every nation in Asia and Latin America; our diplomacy - I do believe our Foreign Service is the best there is; our language.

What is the nature of the world in which these strengths can be deployed? The world has never been more interdependent. Economic and security shocks spread like contagion. I learnt this graphically in the 1998 financial crisis; everyone knows it after September 11^th. Nations recognise more than ever before that the challenges have to be met in part, at least, collectively. Also culture and communication driven by technological revolution are deepening the sense of a global community. Look at the FCO strategic goals you set out in your paper. Each of them has a direct domestic impact. Yet each of them - whether free trade through the WTO, combating climate change or the threats to our security - can only be overcome by collaboration across national frontiers.

Fundamentalist political ideology now seems an aberration of the 20^th century. But religious extremism through the misinterpretation of Islam is a danger all over the world, not because it is supported by large numbers of ordinary people but because it can be manipulated by small numbers of fanatics to distort the lives of ordinary people. As the FCO point out in another paper, wars between nations seem less likely – at least outside of the Continent of Africa - but flashpoints remain and in any event, the crucial thing is that no conflict we can contemplate can possibly remain localized.

What does all this mean? It means that the world today has one overriding common interest: to make progress with order; to ensure that change is accompanied by stability. The common threat is chaos. That threat can come from terrorism, producing a train of events that pits nations against each other. It can come through irresponsible and repressive states gaining access to WMD. It can come through the world splitting into rival poles of power; the US in one corner; anti-US forces in another. It can come front pent-up feelings of injustice and alienation, from the divisions between the world’s richer and its poorer nations. The threat is not changed. The world and many countries in it need to change. It is change through disorder, because then the consequences of change cannot be managed.

This has been understood, at least inchoately, ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Then the call was for a new world order. But a new order presumes a new consensus. It presumes a shared agenda and a global partnership to do it.

Here’s where Britain’s place lies. We can only play a part in helping this - to suggest more would be grandiose and absurd - but it is an important part. Our very strengths, our history equip us to play a role as a unifier around a consensus for achieving both our goals and those of the wider world.

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Sample B

The time has almost come, ladies and gentlemen, when the Government must ask. you — the electors of Great Britain — to renew its mandate. It is as a member of the Government that I stand before you this evening, and the task I have set my­self is to review the many things which the Government has achieved since the last General Election, and to outline the path which we hope to follow in the future, when, as I am con­fident will be the case, you return us to office with an even greater parliamentary majority.

No one will deny that what we have been able to do in the past five years is especially striking in view of the crisis which we inherited from the previous Government. With wages and prices spiralling upwards; with a record trade deficit of hundreds of millions of pounds; and with the pound sterling afflicted by the evaporation of international confidence. The country was then on the brink of financial disaster and econo­mic collapse.

But within a very short time of coming back into power the present Government had taken steps to stabilise the position. No doubt you will remember some of those steps. Many of them were painful at the time. But they were necessary if international confidence was to be restored, and we did not flinch from taking them.

First of all, we applied ourselves to identifying the root causes of our national ailments, examining contemporary evidence and refusing to be slaves to outmoded doctrinaire beliefs. Secondly, we embarked on a reasoned policy to ensure steady economic growth, the modernization of industry, and a proper balance between public and private expenditure. Thirdly, by refusing to take refuge — as the previous Government had continually done in the preceding years — in panic-stricken stop-gap measures, we stimulated the return of international confidence.

As a result of those immediate measures, and aided by the tremendous effort which they evoked from the British people who responded as so often before to a firm hand at the helm, as a result of those measures we weathered the storm and moved on into calmer waters and a period of economic expansion and social reorganization.

We took as our first objective the problem of productivity. For far too long the average level of productivity in this country had been lower than was to be expected when the quality of .the labour force was considered. We attacked restrictive practices wherever they existed; we instituted measures for the more rational deployment of labour, and we greatly improved the relationship between management and workers. The result, as you all know, is that productivity is higher now than ever before.

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