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172
Chapter 13
Preparing and Researching Presentations
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
•
Describe the power of public speaking and how preparation eases natural nervousness
•
Identify the purpose of your speech
•
Conduct audience analysis
•
Choose an appropriate topic and develop it
•
Support and enliven your speech with effective research
•
Give proper credit to sources and take responsibility for your speech
LECTURE NOTES
• Public speaking always includes the following elements:
• Clarify the General Purpose of Your Speech explores the three general categories of
speeches:
• Analyze Your Audience shows how audience analysis is a critical step in the speech
preparation process.
they plan a speech.
© 2018 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
− Psychographics are an audience’s psychological qualities, such as attitudes, values,
lifestyles, behaviors, and interests.
• Knowing this information can help you narrow your topic to one of interest to the
group.
• Doing general research on the type of audience you are likely to get will help you
understand these demographics and understand which characteristics may be more
salient to the speech.
• Be careful—relying on this information can lead to stereotyping.
o Anticipating Your Audience’s Response
− Consider disposition—How does your audience feel about your topic?
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o Types of Information to Consider
− Testimony
• Include expert testimony, which is the opinion or judgment of an expert in your topic.
• Lay testimony is the opinion of a nonexpert who has personal experience or has
witnessed an event related to your topic.
• Scientific research findings carry a lot of weight with audiences because they bolster
testimonies with hard numbers and facts.
• Statistics, or information in numerical form, may be more impressive than words to an
audience. They are most effective when paired with factual statements.
− Anecdotes
perspective, and timeless eloquence.
o Research Supporting Material for your speech by:
− Talking to people
• Search engines are programs that index website content (Google and Yahoo).
• Research search engines search only for researched published academic books and
journals.
o Evaluate Supporting Material and use only that which is the most credible.
o Credibility is a measure of the quality, authority, and reliability of a source as related to
• Ethical Speaking: Taking Responsibility for Your Speech discusses the ethical
responsibility of a public speaker.
o Recognizing Plagiarism
o Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s words or ideas as your own—intentionally or
unintentionally.
and be fair in presenting opposing views.
© 2018 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. What are some ways you can make sure your informative speech doesn’t turn into a
persuasive speech?
2. Why do you think it’s important to pick a speaking topic that is important or interesting to
you?
3. Why do you think some people plagiarize?
4. When do you think testimony from an interview is appropriate as a source for a speech?
5. What are some ways to choose a speech topic?
1.
Speeches That Move Us
the speech more powerful for you?
2.
Speaking “Right”
Given the list of basic rules of ethical speaking that are presented on p. 363 of the text, think
of additional items you might add to that list. Why do you think that aspect is important to
include? (See the And You? on p. 000 of the text.)
© 2018 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
3.
Informative or Persuasive?
Take a topic that you have brainstormed for a speech. Can you make the topic into an
informative speech? A persuasive speech? What do you find to be the main difference in
changing from one type of speech to another?
1. Avoiding Plagiarism 101
4. Blank paper and writing implements for students
Directions:
2.
Ask students to then share their paraphrase with the student next to them.
3.
Once students are finished sharing, put up the overhead with the paragraph with only a few
4.
Ask students to volunteer their own paraphrases and compare them to the original as well
as to the one that was incorrectly paraphrased on the overhead.
2. APA Matching
Goal: To have students learn to put together citations correctly in APA format (this exercise
2.
Information from each of these citations for students to put in the correct format (follow
the example below)
4.
Prizes (optional)
© 2018 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
Directions:
1. Have students form teams of two to three people.
3. After ten minutes, ask students to call out the correct APA (or other) format (one at a time)
for each citation. Check the answers against the citations list. Give prizes (if desired) to
teams that get the information right.
Debriefing: Have teams correct their own papers. If you see mistakes that are made frequently
3. Audience Matching
Goal: To have students understand how their speech topics need to be adjusted based on the
1.
“Speech Topics” handout (provided at the end of this chapter)
1.
Ask students to write an audience type on their note card. Encourage them to go beyond
2.
Have students then hand in their audience types.
3.
Give students the list of topics. Tell them they must give a one-minute, impromptu speech
about one of these topics. Make it fun—tell them it won’t be graded. Depending on the
4.
One by one, have students stand up (using volunteers at first works best) and tell you which
topic they want to speak on. Then give them the top card on the stack of audience type note
cards. Give students one minute to gather their thoughts on the topic, and then one minute
© 2018 Bedford/St. Martin’s. All rights reserved.
at the end of the period to discuss the importance of tying your topic to your audience, and how
doing this can make you a better speaker.
4. Deconstructing a Public Speech
2. Video clip of the same speech and method of viewing it in class
Directions:
2. Show the video clip of the person giving the same speech.
4. Have students consider the following questions: Is the speech ethical? Why or why not?
Who is the audience? How did the speaker tailor the speech to the audience?
5. Brainstorming and Clustering
Goal: To have students understand how to brainstorm topics
1.
Assign students to groups of three to four (if students have been assigned to give group
speeches, put them in those groups).
3.
Explain the rules of brainstorming: No ideas are ruled out; all ideas are written down.
5.
Have a contest for the group that has the most topics, the most interesting topics, the most
unusual topics, and so on.
6. The Speaker
Goal: To have students understand how professionals prepare to speak
1.
Invite a professional speaker or broadcaster to your class as a guest lecturer.
3.
Email the questions to the guest speaker before the day he or she is to speak in class.
4.
Ask the speaker to respond to the student’s questions about preparing for a presentation.
Debriefing: After the speaker has left or during the next class period, ask students what they
learned from the speaker that they did not learn from reading the chapter. Ask students to share
one tip they learned that they will apply the next time they have to give a presentation.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
REVIEW QUESTIONS
2.
Why is analyzing your audience so important to making a presentation?
3.
Imagine you are writing an informative speech on college majors. Show the process of
narrowing down the topic using the clustering technique.
5.
Write a thesis statement for a persuasive speech on why colleges should provide each student
with a free bicycle.
6.
Describe why the time of day of your presentation might influence your audience. How might
you, as the speaker, compensate for this?
7.
How do you evaluate whether you can use a particular source for your speech?
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companies devastated. In the movie’s most iconic moment, Gekko tells a group of
stockholders that “greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” Throughout the speech, Gekko
employs such principles as anecdotes, comparisons, and a thesis statement as well as
statistics. His speech is informative and persuasive, with great consideration given to
audience expectations and situational factors. Discuss the ways in which public speaking
can be used to make morally dubious principles seem palatable, and the ways in which this
technique permeates American business and politics.
“We Just Decided To” episode of The Newsroom (HBO, 2012)
Creator/writer Aaron Sorkin courted controversy with the first episode of this series about
a fictional television news show. The opening sequence features main character Will
McAvoy, a popular news anchor, delivering a blistering speech refuting the aphorism that
America is the greatest country in the world. Employing facts and figures, McAvoy argues
that corporate corruption and political inefficiency have allowed the United States to fall
behind other countries in education, health, and other important areas. Ask students to
analyze this speech and discuss the power of public speaking to challenge assumptions and
fallacies. The fact that McAvoy experiences negative repercussions from the speech further
affirms the power of public speaking.
Steve Jobs at Stanford University (Stanford University, 2005)
This commencement speech by Apple founder Steve Jobs is an excellent example of a
well-prepared speech. He has a strong thesis and understood his audience. Jobs’s speech is
a perfect example of a persuasive, yet personal, presentation that used ethos, pathos, and
logos. Students can practice analyzing the speech and its effectiveness.
HANDOUTS
Speech Topics
Use the following ideas for speech topics to complete the classroom activity “Audience
Matching.”
1. Vegan diets
2. Computer viruses
4. Driverless cars
6. Selfies
8. Social media privacy
10. “Fake news”
