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THE HIDDEN WORLD OF CHILI PEPPERS: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT VERSION 359
The Hidden World of Chili Peppers
Needs Improvement Version
1 Okay. Chili peppers can be incredibly hot, but they’re still one of my favorite things to
eat. Whether it’s Mexican food, Thai food, or plain old Texas chili, the spicier the better in my
view. So when thinking about a speech topic, I thought it’d be a really neat idea to do it on chili
peppers.
2 Chili peppers have been around for thousands of years. Their scientific name is
capsicum—I think that’s how it’s pronounced. They’re different from black peppers, which come
from Asia. Chili peppers come from South America. In fact, as you can see from this map, they
began somewhere around Bolivia or Brazil. They spread everywhere else after Columbus came to
the New World.
3 The pleasure and pain of eating chili peppers comes from a chemical called caps, caps,
capsaicin—something like that. Here’s a chili pepper that I cut in half. I know it’s kind of small,
you can’t see it, but there are these veins and seeds in there. And that’s where the capsaicin is
held. That’s where all the heat is.
4 As one of the books I read said, there are two ways to measure the heat of a chili pepper.
The HPLC method is more scientific, so scientists prefer to use it.
5 This guy that I held up is an orange habanero pepper, and if you eat it, it’ll burn your
mouth up.
6 So if you do eat a hot pepper, don’t try rinsing out your mouth with water. Instead drink
some milk or eat some yogurt or some other stuff like that. Milk also helps if you burn your skin
from contacting with a pepper.
7 If you’re attacked by a mugger or a robber, you can protect yourself by using a pepper
spray. The spray burns the eyes and skin and gives you enough time to escape.
8 According to Jack Challem, chili peppers also have lots of medical benefits. They’re used
to reduce arthritis pain, to help with indigestion, and cure baldness.
9 Um, well, I guess that’s all I have to say about chili peppers. Can you imagine life with-
out chili peppers? I know I can’t. So, thank you.
360 INFORMATIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
THE HIDDEN WORLD OF CHILI PEPPERS: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT VERSION 361
362 INFORMATIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
The speaker’s body language in the needs improvement version is also much less effective
than in the final version. He does not establish a strong physical presence in the needs improve-
ment version, he does not handle his note cards as well as in the final version, and his gestures
are less confident and purposeful.
Visual Aids: As with many informative speeches, “The Hidden World of Chili Peppers” needs visual
aids to help communicate the speaker’s ideas. To his credit, the speaker in the needs improve-
ment version recognizes this and incorporates several visual aids into his presentation. Unfortu-
nately, he does not use them nearly as well as he might have.
In paragraph 2, for example, he uses PowerPoint to show a map of South America, but he
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