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Chapter 13
Presentational Aids
What you’ll know:
• Why you should incorporate presentational aids into your speech
• Different types of presentational aids you can choose from
• Various media you can use to display your presentational aids
What you’ll be able to do:
• Identify effective presentational aids for your speech
• Create effective presentational aids for your speech
• Display presentational aids effectively for your speech
Chapter Outline
I. Identify, Prepare, and Use Appropriate Presentational Aids
A. Presentational aid: any visual, audio, audiovisual, or other sensory material used to enhance a
verbal message
II. Benefits of Presentational Aids
III. Types of Presentational Aids
A. Visual aids
1. Objects: three-dimensional representation of an idea you are communicating
2. Models: useful when an object is too large or too small to be seen
3. Photographs
4. Simple drawings or diagrams
5. Maps
6. Charts: graphic representations that presents information in easily interpreted formats
a. Word chart: used to preview, review, or highlight important ideas
b. Flow chart: uses symbols and connecting lines to diagram the progression through a
complicated process
IV. Choosing Presentational Aids
A. Criteria for choosing presentation aids
1. What are the most important ideas the audience needs to understand and remember?
2. Are there ideas that are complex or difficult to explain verbally but would be easy to
understand visually?
3. How many visual aids are appropriate?
4. How large is the audience?
5. Is the necessary equipment readily available?
6. Is the time involved in making the visual aid cost effective?
VI. Displaying Presentational Aids
A. Posters: easy to use but fairly small
B. White board or chalk boards: easy to prepare but rarely a good choice
C. Flip chart
1. A large pad of paper on an easel
2. Leave pages between so that later pages do not show through
3. Must be neat and easy to read
D. Handouts
1. Make sure it’s the best method
2. Distribute at the end of the speech
E. Document cameras: makes a photo or object larger and easier to see
F. CD/VCR/DVD Players and LCD projectors: ensure it is large enough to see
G. Computer-mediated slide show: make sure you have a backup plan
Discussion and Assignment Ideas
I. If you can tell during your speech that your audience’s level of understanding on a topic is not
what you predicted (based on nonverbal feedback that indicates confusion), what should you do?
Why? How?
II. Quotes: These can be used to introduce topics, question perspectives, or gain individual opinion.
Providing students with a quote and prompting them to write or reflect on their personal feelings
about the quote can help to spark discussion and interest. Suggested prompts may include “Define this
concept in your own words”; “Do you agree with this statement? Explain”; “What text material can be
used to support or refute this idea?”
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
—William Butler Yeats
Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.
—Dorothy Sarnoff
Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless
photography of a printed record.
—Archibald Philip Primrose
III. If you are speaking to a multicultural audience, how can you incorporate the variety of
perspectives represented in the audience? Consider common ground, audience interest, audience
level of understanding, audience attitude toward you as speaker, audience attitude toward your
speech goal, and visual adaptation. Could such attempts at adaptation be perceived differently than
you intended? Provide an example.
IV. Visual aids are often duplicates of verbal information, unnecessary, or unhelpful. Under what
conditions is a visual aid a valuable inclusion in a speech? How do you know if a visual aid will help or
hinder your speech? What risks are involved with visual aids? What steps should be taken to ensure
these risks will not be detrimental?
Technology Resources
Access cengagebrain.com Web Links13.2: PowerPoint Tips and Tutorials. Review the suggestions for
creating a PowerPoint presentation. Consider this advice next time you prepare a PowerPoint
presentation.
Movies
Power of Speech (English File: Using the Power of the Language) (1998)
Questions for discussion
Other Media Resources
Chapter Activities
13.1: Timeliness
Purpose: To provide students with practice in making material timely for a given audience
Time: 20 minutes
Process: Write the following lists of topics and audiences on 3 x 5 cards, using a colored card
for audiences and a card of a different color for topics. Divide students into groups of
three. Have each group select an audience card and a topic card. Ask students to
• Did the five-minute discussion periods allow you to complete this activity
satisfactorily? Why or why not?
• How would you gather further information about your audience to enable more
complex decision-making regarding timeliness?
• Did you rely on stereotypes in your discussion?
Topics
raising chickens
chocolate is good for you
bearing stress
World War I
gangs
shoeing a horse
avoiding traffic citations
public transportation
life in the rain forest
backpacking
stamp collecting
campus parking
divorce
eat healthful to live longer
poverty in the United States
the Sixties
13.2: Audience Adaptation and Cultural Considerations
Purpose: To enable students to process difficult speech situations involving audience adaptation,
stereotyping, cultural differences, perception, and ethnocentrism
Time: 20 minutes
Process: Bring enough strips of colored paper to class for each student to have four strips, each
strip a different color: red, green, blue, and yellow. Ask students to write brief
responses to the following color-coded statements on the matching color-coded strips
(i.e., write down your response to the “red” statement on the red strip). Ask them to
group should then draw their organizer on large sheets of paper, the red group using a
red marker, the green group using a green marker, and so on. Once the organizers
have been created and taped to the walls, facilitate a discussion of the responses.
(See Part Two of this manual for suggestions about how to facilitate a difficult
discussion.)
13.3: Cultural Differences in Public Speaking
Purpose: To help students understand the importance of evaluating the cultural standards of a
“good” speech in the Western European tradition, and to expose students to a speaker
whose culture or subculture differs from the dominant U.S. model
Time: 45 minutes
Process: Invite a guest speaker from an under-represented group on your campus to present a
short speech in your class regarding multicultural interaction. Many campuses have a
multicultural education center or various student unions with speakers available for
classes. Discuss the nature of the assignment with the speaker prior to the
presentation to gain his or her permission to discuss the speech in light of the
following questions. If desired, the speaker may wish to stay for the interactive
discussion session. After the speech is over, conduct a class discussion of the
following:
13.4: Career Speech and Audience Adaptation
Purpose: To enable students to tailor a speech for a specialized audience
Time: 7-9 minutes per student
Process: Give students the following instructions for an in-class speech:
Select a career you think you might like to pursue. Determine an occasion for which
you would be giving a speech in this career. Define your audience for this speech, and
then plan a speech to give in class, using your classmates as your made-up audience.
Here are some examples of careers and related speech topics:
You are required to have three sources, one of which should be an interview with a
person currently in the career you’ve chosen. If the information you get from your
interview cannot be incorporated into your speech but does assist you with how to give
the speech, include that information in your bibliography.
Write introductory remarks for your speech to provide your audience with information
regarding your career and their role as your made-up audience. Your professor will
read these remarks to the class before you begin. Here are a couple of examples:
Journal Assignments
A. Topic and Audience
The text discusses how to build credibility through your audience’s perception of your knowledge,
trustworthiness, and personality. How does your desire to appear credible affect your topic selection?
Make a list of topics and corresponding audiences for which you believe you could appear credible.
Explain your strategy for building credibility.
B. Ethics and Speaker Adaptation
Interview a person who speaks to lots of different groups. Ask the speaker how she or he adapts the
message based on the audience and how much adaptation this speaker considers ethical. Ask if she or
he ever holds back true information so as not to offend anyone. Write a summary and analysis of what
you discovered.
C. Choosing Visual Aids
Choose a topic that is familiar to you and choose a potential audience. Using this information
determine how many different visual aids you can use for this presentation. Give a brief description of
each potential visual aid and choose two you think will be the most effective.
