Actually it's better NOT to memorize your speech. It tends to end up just coming across as mechanical. What you should memorize are the main ideas that are in your speech and have notes to remind you of some smaller details and then it appears more that you are just talking about what you know and are better able to more relate it to your audience. And if you try memorizing a speech but are nervous or something, you could end up skipping important parts of it without realizing it and then you end up not making sense. So, no, memorizing to get a good grade is not a good idea.

Pff.. Pastrychef had a bad teacher. What's worse for this person, it's kinda common sense that memorizing everything isn't the best way, just as msnelly pointed out.

mcsnelly, your statement was simply stupid. A good orator is perfectly capable of making a memorized speech fun to hear and full of life, i.e. not mechanical.

Actually, Rhaegar, mcsnelly was completely right. In a setting where it's only necessary to get main points across, your speech should not be memorized. No matter how much "life" you put into it, it always will end up sounding scripted because, well, it is. Memorized speeches should only really be used in situations where the precise wording of the speech has to be perfect, ie, not in a classroom. Take a speech class and you might learn something.