Choosing a subject, and the two constraints
The grade ladder, once
- AS91476 asks for an oral text that develops, sustains and structures ideas. Two of those three are settled by the subject you choose, not by how you write or deliver it.
- Achieved — fluent and coherent: the ideas are developed, sustained and structured, and the delivery holds together.
- Merit — convincingly, which the standard unpacks as reasoned, clear and sustained. Three demands, tested separately.
- Excellence — effectively, so that the text commands attention. Read that literally: it is a claim about the room, not about the script.
- All three sit on top of the same subject. A subject with nowhere to go cannot be developed by good writing — if your position is obvious and uncontested, the speech will state it and support it, which is sustained and undeveloped. So choose against the standard, not against your interest: the subject you most want to speak about is usually the one you are most settled about.
Four tests for a subject
- The counter-argument test. State, in one sentence, the strongest argument against your position. If you can knock it down easily there is no complication and the speech has nowhere to travel; if you cannot state it at all, you do not know the subject well enough. You want the one you find hard to answer.
- The concreteness check. Give yourself sixty seconds and list every specific you know — dates, numbers, names, things somebody actually said. Fewer than six and you will argue from generalities for five minutes.
- Is it live? An undecided question gives the audience a reason to listen. Does it touch this room? Stakes do work no technique can manufacture.
- One move raises the ceiling: reach a primary source. One conversation with somebody involved produces more usable specifics than an afternoon of searching.
- Four popular subjects defeat this standard: the settled moral question, the large distant issue known only from headlines, the instructional talk whose items can be reordered, and the personal narrative with no argument.
Constraint one: primarily your own work
- The Explanatory Notes require the text to be primarily the student's own work. This is a condition of the standard, not a formality.
- Quoting and citing sources is expected. What must be yours is the argument, the structure and the wording.
- Attribute aloud — a Stats NZ figure from last year, the council's own consultation document. Two seconds, and it converts research into evidence.
- AI-generated or copied material is not your own work. Feedback is allowed; substitution is not — somebody may tell you the middle sags, but if they tell you what to put there, that part is not yours. Keep your drafts — the working is the evidence.
Constraint two: primarily in English
- The EN requires the text to be primarily in English, and states that other languages may be included, giving a greeting as its example.
- So a mihi or a te reo Māori greeting is explicitly permitted, and can be effective — it establishes who is speaking and where they are from before the argument begins.
- What the constraint rules out is delivering the substance of the text in a language other than English.
- If you use te reo Māori, use it accurately — check pronunciation and macrons with someone who knows, and do not add a greeting as decoration.
Worked Example
Worked Example
A student shortlists four subjects for a five-minute speech. Test each against the standard.
Answer:
Step 1 — apply the counter-argument test and the sixty-second list.
| Subject | Strongest argument against me | Specifics in sixty seconds |
|---|---|---|
| A Social media is damaging our generation | Every generation says this about a new technology | 2 |
| B My grandfather's migration to Aotearoa | None; there is no position to argue against | 14 |
| C The council wants to close the overnight ambulance station | Callouts average under one a night, and the staff cost is real money — hard to answer | 9 |
| D Five ways to manage exam stress | None; nobody opposes managing stress | 0 |
C is the only subject producing a counter-argument the student cannot dismiss, and it has detail to argue from.
Step 2 — check the eliminated favourite honestly. B would be the most affecting three minutes in the room and is the weakest of the four here, because a life story sustains without developing — nothing in it turns. It is rescuable only as evidence for an argument: what my grandfather's first two years say about how we talk about migration now. That is a different speech.
Step 3 — check C against the two constraints. The argument is the student's, with the council's paper attributed aloud, and the speech opens with a two-line mihi the student has learned properly — permitted, and effective, because it establishes that the speaker is from this town.