Tips for Current Issues & Events Contest
By Tom Ray, CI&E State Director | Tuesday, October 26, 2010 11:59 AM
As you begin to plan for the Current Issues & Events invitational season and district meet, I would like to share some thoughts with you.
First, let me congratulate you for participating in this event. I know how valuable academic competition has been in my life. My UIL experience began in 1984 competing in team debate and extemporaneous speaking. I was a typical debater— totally consumed by debate.
One day, my coach told me that I was going to compete in extemporaneous speaking, or “extemp” in speech jargon. She told me that I was going to give a speech over a random current event and that I would have 30 minutes to learn about the topic and write and memorize the speech. I thought the woman was a complete nut job!
Not only did I survive, I actually did pretty well and developed a passion for current events.
In retrospect, learning about current issues and events has proved to be the most useful knowledge and skill set that I took with me from UIL competition. Developing a passion for and knowledge of current issues and events has so many real world implications. It spills over into so many other parts of academic life, that when you are “older and wiser” like me you will be grateful. Being able to take a timed, high pressure test that involves answering multiple choice questions and answering an essay is excellent preparation for Advanced Placement exams and college.
Some tips as you begin to prepare for the competition season.
• Read a newspaper or periodical on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be every day, but it should be a couple of times a week and it should be comprehensive. You should be looking for topics with “impact” that influence our world, nation and state. When you find one of those topics, you should read the whole article and develop a system to archive it and study it later. Make sure to scan more than just the front page if you are not reading daily. Look in the national and international sections and really think about what topics are important and have “impact.”
• Some sources you may consider are the Washington Post (washingtonpost.com), New York Times (nyt.com), Dallas Morning News (dallasnews.com) and Houston Chronicle (chron.com). These sites do a good job of covering the international, national and state stages. Additionally, you may consider subscribing to Time and Newsweek. These magazines are inexpensive and provide a nice combination of news and feature articles on international and national events. They are easy to archive and study later, as well.
• As you study, consider the dates covered in each exam. Invitational questions will begin Sept. 1 and end Jan. 1. District contests pull questions from Sept. 1 to Feb. 1. Regional test questions range from Nov. 1 to March 15 and State from Dec. 1 to April 15. Events that are published outside of these date ranges will not be on the exam. The only exception to this rule would be an event that occurs before the target date range but is covered by the media during the target date range. For example, if a political scandal erupted on Aug. 30 but was published in Time on Sept. 3, that scandal is eligible to appear on the exam.
Best of luck this competition season. If you have any questions for me, or concerns you would like to address, please feel free to email me at rayt@hayscisd.net. I hope to see you in Austin on May 7.