In Extemporaneous Speaking, sources are often treated as one of the clearest indicators of a well-researched speech. Competitors must cite credible publications and include dates, using evidence throughout their speeches. It’s not uncommon to hear judges compliment a competitor on having lots of sources, but ballots that criticize a lack of sourcing are not unheard of. What it misses, however, is that just because a competitor has more evidence doesn’t mean they have a better argument.

This creates a bizarre incentive in extemp: competitors are rewarded for trying to cram as many citations as possible into seven minutes, even at the cost of the act of actually explaining them. A speech with eight or nine sources can look better researched than one with five or six, even if the latter has spent a lot longer explaining why its evidence is important. The end result is that competitors learn to value finding another article over developing the argument they already have.

The difference is important. Sources and analysis are two very different things. Information is produced by a source. Analysis is the interpretation of information. If a rival says inflation fell to 2.8 percent, according to Reuters, that source has established a fact. It hasn’t explained why inflation fell, whether it will continue to fall, how it might change interest rates, or why any of those effects change the answer to the question. The speaker has to make those connections.

But the extemp speech can often fall into a predictable pattern: make a claim, cite, briefly explain the statistic, and move on. A few of these types of sequences can make a speech sound incredibly well researched without the competitor having to spend a lot of time establishing causation or weighing consequences. For example, a source might report that unemployment went up, but the argument is built on explaining how increased unemployment impacts household income, how that impacts consumer spending, how weaker demand impacts businesses, and why those impacts matter to the wider economy. The citation is the starting point. The speaker is responsible for everything that comes next.

That doesn’t mean sourcing doesn’t matter. Extemp without credible evidence would create its own problems, and competitors should not be rewarded for making unsupported claims just because they present those claims confidently. Sources are the factual basis on which analysis can be credible in the first place. The problem is that the existence of that foundation is treated as if the rest of the argument has been built already.

One problem is that it’s much easier to see the amount of source material than the depth of the analysis. A judge might hear that a competitor cited Reuters, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s much harder to quickly judge whether or not each piece of evidence was fully associated with the competitor’s answer. “Good sources” or “more sources” is also easy feedback to put on a ballot. A much greater need exists to assess whether a rival gave a good account of a causal mechanism, whether competing effects were considered or not, and how seriously an argument was taken.

That distinction is especially important because extemp has a seven-minute time limit. Time spent on one part of a speech takes time away from another. A competitor adding a third citation to a point may be wasting 20 or 30 seconds that could have been used explaining the first two. A second or third source that essentially makes the same point does not automatically make that argument more sophisticated, though more evidence can certainly make an argument stronger if it adds something new.

Extemp needs to be more thoughtful about what it means to reward "good sourcing. Of course, judges should assess whether claims are backed up and if sources are credible, current, and pertinent. They also need to think about what a competitor does after citing them. The speaker explains why the evidence occurred. Do they determine what the consequences will be? Do they tie those consequences back to the question? That reasoning should be supplemented by a source, not replaced by one.

You should see the same distinction in how competitors are taught to prepare. In thirty minutes, there is not much time to investigate an unfamiliar topic, devise an answer, marshal arguments and make a speech. It’s not surprising that a lot of that time is spent searching for evidence by competitors. But once there is sufficient evidence to make a claim, another search is not always the best use of prep. Sometimes the more important questions are why is this happening, what happens next, who is affected, and why do those consequences change the answer. Opening another tab doesn't always solve those questions.

This is particularly important, because analysis is one of the skills extemp is supposed to develop. The event isn’t merely a test of students’ skills at quickly locating credible journalism. It challenges competitors to take complex political, economic and international issues and come up with an answer to a question they were given only 30 minutes earlier. Research is necessary to do that well, but research is valuable because of what a speaker can build from it.

None of this requires judges to start counting seconds of analysis or tournaments to come up with some new formula for the appropriate number of citations. There is no "right" number of sources for a seven-minute speech. Some questions need more evidence than others, and some arguments can be well founded on relatively little. The point is precisely that source count should cease to be a proxy for argument quality.

A speech using twelve sources can be great. A speech with six can be great too. The issue is not the source, but whether the source actually helps the competitor answer the question.

Extemp should definitely reward students who know how to research quickly, distinguish credible information from weak information, and support what they say. But it shouldn't create a culture where it's safer to add another publication name than to spend that same time thinking.

The sources tell the audience what is going on. Analysis tells us why it’s happening, what it means, and why it matters. A good extemp speaker does both those things. The circuit should make it rewarding for both too.