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Beebe/Beebe/Ivy Communication: Principles for a Lifetime 6e
Instructor’s Manual
171
CHAPTER 14:
Speaking to Inform
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After studying this chapter, students will be able to:
1. Describe five types of informative speeches.
2. Identify and use appropriate strategies for organizing informative speeches.
3. Identify and use strategies for making informative speeches clear.
4. Identify and use strategies for making informative speeches interesting.
5. Identify and use strategies for making informative speeches memorable.
TEACHING OUTLINE
I. Types of Informative Presentations
A. Speeches about Objects
B. Speeches about Procedures
C. Speeches about People
D. Speeches about Events
E. Speeches about Ideas
II. Strategies for Organizing Your Informative Speech
A. Organizing Speeches about Objects
B. Organizing Speeches about Procedures
C. Organizing Speeches about People
D. Organizing Speeches about Events
E. Organizing Speeches about Ideas
III. Strategies for Making Your Informative Speech Clear
B. Use Attention-Getting Supporting Material
C. Establish a Motive for Your Audience to Listen to You
D. Use Word Pictures
E. Create Interesting Presentation Aids
F. Use Humor
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V. Strategies for Making Your Informative Speech Memorable
A. Build in Redundancy
B. Use Adult Learning Principles
C. Reinforce Key Ideas Verbally
D. Reinforce Key Ideas Nonverbally
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTION SETS
The authors suggest that speakers who inform take on the role of teachers.
Do you think of yourself as a teacher?
• What are qualities that make some teachers stand out from others? Create
a list.
• What about the simile that, “Receiving information today is like drinking from
a fire hose”? Do you agree?
• What are some of the various sources that bombard our senses?
• Is it possible to give the same attention to all messages?
• So if I stand up here and fulfill the terms of my contract and say a certain
number of words to you, have I successfully communicated my message?
• What then is successful communication? When the listener makes sense of
the information?
What can an informative speaker do?
• In other words, what are the various types of informative speaking?
• Of the five, which do you think would be most challenging? (Normally the
event is the most common answer.)
• Then what is the ultimate challenge for a speaker? (Reduce the slippage.)
The first challenge for an informative speaker/teacher is to organize your
presentation. How do you do this?
• In other words, what are the different ways to organize an informative
presentation? How do you know which organizational method to use?
(Usually depends on your topic.)
• Is there a right and wrong way to organize your information presentation? (It
needs to appeal to your audience’s particular backgrounds, needs, and
interests.)
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• How do you know if you have organized your presentation in a logical or
The next challenge for an informative speaker/teacher is to make the
informative message clear. How do you do this?
• What are simple ideas as opposed to complex ones?
• Does this mean speakers should avoid issues dealing with philosophical
depth?
• How do you build to the complexity?
• What do the authors mean by “edit ruthlessly”?
• Why is it important to pace the information flow?
• The argument was made earlier to limit a presentation to 2 to 5 main points.
What might this suggest about your sub-structuring? (2 to 5 points whenever
possible.)
• If you have more than this, what can you do to keep the information clear?
(Visual aids.)
• What is an analogy? (Like to like.)
• Why should speakers reason this way? (Links past to present, Familiar with
unfamiliar.)
• (Instructors who wish to pick up on Aristotle’s argument of enthymemes
should do so here.)
• Let’s go back to describing the taste of a strawberry. Wouldn’t we have to
link it to what it tastes like before we could begin to share our experience?
How does a speaker make a presentation interesting?
• Why did the authors introduce the idea of adult learners? (Most
presentations are directed here.)
• How do adults process information differently than children?
• Identify and use strategies for making an informative presentation
interesting.
• So how can a speaker make ideas immediate? (Tie to recent/local events.)
• How does humor work? Are these good techniques? Can you overdo
them?
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• Now, we’ve talked about analogy, but how else can you link information to an
audience? (Use actual names of audience members and real examples
they’ve experienced.)
• How do you make information relevant? (Must be achievable.)
• How do you make information practical? (Relates to needs.)
• What are word pictures? How do they relate to the ideas of figurative
language, drama, and cadence?
• What is fear appeal?
• What happens if you are too graphic? (Audience uses defense
mechanisms.)
• How can you relate the ideas of immediacy, involvement, familiarity,
relevance, and practicality to building visual aids?
How does a speaker make ideas memorable?
• How do you create a motive for your audience?
• Certainly, the initial audience relation helps, but how do you reinforce this?
• Is it ethical to build in quasi-threats? “You’ll need this for the mid-term.”
• How do you build in redundancy into a presentation?
JOURNAL QUESTIONS
1. Reflect on a professor you feel is a good communicator. Think about specific
techniques he/she uses to make lectures clear, interesting, and memorable. If
you had a magic wand and could steal one of their abilities, what would it be?
Why? Given that you don’t have a magic wand, what should you do to develop
this quality yourself? How would this relate to the five guidelines for effective
communication offered by your authors?
2. Think of a recent sensation you found particularly pleasing. It could have been
a taste, sound, touch, odor, sight, or state of mind. Try to describe the
3. Think about a time you heard a very ineffective informative presentation. What
about this presentation was poorly done? Imagine you are writing a letter to this
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presenter to provide constructive advice for improving his/her future speech-
making efforts. For the purposes of this journal entry, focus only on how this
presenter can improve the content of his/her speech (versus his/her delivery).
Make sure your suggestions cover this chapter‘s objectives including effective
organizational strategies as well as ways to make an informative presentation
clear, interesting, and memorable.
4. Think about your upcoming presentation. How have you attempted to make the
presentation clear, well-paced, and rich with appropriate analogy? Evaluate
your presentation on each of these dimensions. What might you do to make the
presentation clearer? What nonverbal messages might you use to make the
message clearer to your audience?
5. Still thinking of your presentation, have you designed it for a sophisticated, adult
audience, fully embracing the ideas of immediacy, involvement, familiarity,
6. Reflect on your presentation one last time. What have you done to make it
memorable? Do you feel your use of transitions, redundancy, and memory
devices are sufficient? What nonverbal elements might you use to make the
address more memorable? How might you improve the presentation itself?
ACTIVITIES
Activity 14.1: Climate Control
Of course, the most important activity during presentations is to prepare the class
and set a supportive climate for all speakers. Experienced instructors will have
their own systems and techniques to use, but new instructors may find the following
suggestions helpful.
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2. The day of the presentation, do not evaluate any speaker’s outline prior to their
presentation. The slightest nonverbal leakage may cause unintended anxiety.
Simply tell students to take the confidence of their preparation into class.
3. Begin class with uplifting comments and, where possible, use humor to break
4. If you sense the class is particularly anxious, remind them of tension relaxation
exercises and lead the class in a quick breathing exercise.
5. Reveal to students how time signals will be delivered.
6. Ask students to remain at the podium following their presentations to field the
audience’s questions. (If your class is particularly large, you may limit to only
one question per speaker.) Tell students that they are responsible for asking
questions and that there is a participation component to the class.
7. Following the first presentation, provide an uplifting statement, “We’re off to a
good start, who is next?”
8. Leave 5 to 10 minutes at the end of class for student comments. Normally, I ask,
“What did you like?”
9. Follow-up points: While all instructors have particular points they wish to
emphasize, I have found the following to be particularly helpful:
• Following each round, ask students what they liked. Try to identify one
positive point for each student. Do this each day; even if you have to
repeat a concept it will stress its importance and aid students in gaining
confidence.
• On the first day, I like to make students aware of the difference that
occurred when they were speaking and when they were answering
questions. Normally, students will visibly relax when they answer a
question because of the direct eye contact and audience relationship.
• On the second day, it is helpful to reinforce the differences between good
writing and good speaking. Create a T-chart on the board and ask
students to identify techniques of good writing while you examine the
qualities of good speaking.
• On the third day, vocal production is a solid point to wrap up with.
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• The fifth day provides a wonderful opportunity to distinguish the
dimensions of credibility: competence, dynamism, and trustworthiness.
An important wrap-up point is to have students identify both verbal and
nonverbal elements that relate to each dimension. Some overlap of ideas
will occur, but that only demonstrates the importance of that particular
technique.
Activity 14.2: Dealing with Late Work
Again, all instructors will have to establish their own policies with regard to dealing
with late work. The most important concern is that policies MUST be consistent
across board. One point that is important to consider is that many times a student’s
claim of lack of preparation for a SPEAKING assignment, is actually a coping
strategy for dealing with anxiety. By telling students that they cannot deliver their
presentation we fall into the student’s trap. Consequently, I have found the
following techniques successful in dealing with late work:
1. Give the presentations enough weight in the syllabus that students cannot pass
2. Allow all students one (and only one) late assignment. Do not tell them this in
advance as they will take advantage; rather, when a student needs additional
time, grant it under the following conditions:
• Regardless of circumstance (verifiable medical and verifiable family
emergencies excluded) all make-up work will be done at a 10-point
deduction.
• Presentations may not be delivered privately to the professor one on one,
but must take place in class with a full audience.
• The student must be told this will be their only make-up and that
subsequent late work will not be accepted.
• All scheduled presentations must be given before make-up work is
allowed to perform.
• No make-ups for late work will be allowed except for the two conditions
noted above.
3. Record late work in your grade book in a different color than all other work. This
will allow you to track student patterns and know when students have exercised
a late option.
Require that students approach you with regard to extra consideration for time;
students must be willing to take responsibility for their actions.
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One of the techniques the textbook offers for providing a memorable speech is to
build in redundancy. Have students form groups and ask them to prepare a short
presentation on a particular topic that they can agree on for this assignment. In the
presentation, they are to incorporate the facets of the principle of redundancy.
(Students should be encouraged to make the short presentation fun, but
appropriate). After each group presents, they should be able to explain how they
incorporated redundancy, where in the presentation they did so, and what the
benefit9s) was/were that they found by incorporating redundancy into their
presentation.
ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 14.1: Informative Presentation Evaluation
Refer to the “Informative Presentation Evaluation Form” to evaluate students’
informative presentations.
Assignment 14.2: Presentation Evaluation Form
Refer to the “Presentation Evaluation Form” to evaluate students’ presentation
presentations.
Assignment 14.3: Peer Evaluations
Sometimes it is helpful for students to receive feedback from peers. Often peer
responses provide interesting insights that students seem to value in different ways
than teacher responses. To be effective though, you have to prepare students.
Unless prepared, students will often respond with polite and superficial responses
to avoid confronting difficult issues. The following suggestions help to make
responses more genuine:
1. Student evaluators are to remain anonymous.
2. Student evaluators are to be as honest as possible and realize that glib answers
are not helpful.
3. Students should not evaluate friends.
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the peer evaluations. If you require the critique, there will be many students taking
notes at any given time so performers will not know who is evaluating them. Refer
to the “Peer Evaluation Form” for this assignment.
Assignment 14.4: Informative Presentation Critique
(The following assignment fulfills the majority of objectives in Chapters 11 through
14.)
This assignment is designed to help students:
1. Identify specific techniques they find useful in presentational speaking.
2. Evaluate various elements of presentational speaking.
3. Apply critical standards to their own work.
4. Enhance their listening skills.
Choose a day you will not speak and evaluate the presentations you hear. Write a
1. Identify the best introduction you heard. What made it outstanding? Evaluate
the attention getter, credibility, audience relation, central idea, and preview.
Describe what element truly stood out and why you thought it was successful.
Compare these techniques with the way you presented your introduction. Do
you feel you had strong, average, or weak techniques? What did you like most
about your introduction? What do you feel was the weakest element? If you
could steal one thing from the person you evaluated, what would it be?
2. Identify the best presentation body you heard. What made it outstanding?
Evaluate how the speaker used transitions, language, evidence, logical
3. Identify the best conclusion you heard. What made this conclusion outstanding?
Evaluate how the speaker signaled the conclusion, reviewed main ideas,
emphasized the central idea, called for audience motivation, and closed the
presentation. Describe what element truly stood out. Why? Compare the
techniques used by this speaker against your own conclusion. Do you feel your
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conclusion was strong, average, or weak? Why? What do you feel you did
particularly well? What element do you feel needed the most improvement?
4. Identify the speaker who presented the strongest delivery. Why did you choose
this person? Evaluate their physical delivery (appearance, confidence, and
5. In a final paragraph, identify two things you would like to improve upon in your
next presentation. Why did you choose these elements? What affect will they
have on your speaking skill? Formulate a specific plan that will allow you to
accomplish your goals.
Please Note: ALL RESPONSES WILL BE KEPT IN THE STRICTEST
CONFIDENCE. The goal of the assignment is not that you agree with your
professor, but that you consciously create your own critical standards when
evaluating presentations. To aid you in doing this, be sure to fully describe the
techniques you identify, evaluate them, and justify your responses.
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Informative Presentation Evaluation
Name ______________________ Total Score_____________
Date_______________________
Topic______________________ Total Time______________
I. ORGANIZATION
A. Introduction
Total_______ (25 points)
B. Body
1. Clear transitions to main points
2. Main points were well chosen
3. Sufficient supporting material
4. Appropriate use of language
Total_______ (20 points)
C. Conclusion
Total_______ (25 points)
II. CONTENT
A. Vivid and memorable use of language
B. Provided fresh insights on the topic
C. Presented valid logical links
Total_______ (15 points)
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Presentation Evaluation Form
Introduction
Body
Conclusion
Delivery
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Peer Evaluation Form
Performer’s Name:
1. What I liked most about your introduction was:
4. One thing I feel you could do to improve the body is:
5. What I most liked about the conclusion of your presentation was:
6. One thing you could do to improve the conclusion is:
