Receiving guidance, inspiration, and mentoring is encouraged as you develop your speech.  In order to be your original work, though, the decisions about the work and the words of the script must be yours. The examples below may help you discern how to receive help while maintaining academic integrity. 

Student-Driven Process That Produces Speaker’s Original Work:

• Family coaches you at the dinner table, giving you feedback on your ideas as to how much they like them, and you use what they seem to prefer more.
• Mom asks questions about your ideas, helping you clarify what you really mean to convey.
• Brother suggests a couple of other character ideas.  You accept one of those ideas as you refine your storyline.
• You ask your friend’s opinion about how a scene makes them feel: was it believable?

Others-Driven Process That Does Not Produce Speaker’s Original Work:

• Family offers a few written examples of how to make your idea better; you copy and paste some of those since you like them.
• You assign your siblings different parts of your story, and then you edit them together to make one story.