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Chapter 16
Informative Speaking
CHAPTER OUTCOMES
•
Identify the goals of informative speaking
•
Distinguish each of the eight categories of informative speeches
•
Outline the four major approaches to informative speeches
•
Employ strategies to make your audience hungry for information
•
Structure your speech to make it easy to listen to
LECTURE NOTES
• The Goals of Informative Speaking defines informative speaking as a presentation with the
purpose of increasing the audience’s understanding or knowledge about a topic.
o Meeting the Audience’s Informational Needs requires the following:
information will be useful to their lives
o Informing, Not Persuading.
view.
o Speaking Appropriately and Ethically
• Make sure your speech topic is relevant and interesting to you and your audience, which
requires some prior experience or knowledge about the topic. Topics for Informative
Presentations includes the following:
result. An example topic would be how something works.
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o Concepts: These are abstract or complex ideas, or even theories, which are much more
difficult for us to understand.
o Issues: These are problems or matters of dispute that people hope to resolve, and they should
be addressed objectively.
o Plans and Policies: These help an audience understand the important dimensions of
potential courses of action.
• Approaches to Conveying Information explores the four major approaches to informative
speeches:
− Definition by etymology explains the origin of a word or phrase.
o Explanation covers explanatory speeches that answer the question “Why?” or “What does
that mean?”
1. What are some ways you can keep an informative speech from becoming persuasive?
2. What are some ways that you can obtain information about how much knowledge the
audience has about your topic?
3. What are some different ways that you can define things? Why would knowing about the
different ways to define a concept be important?
4. What are some ways you can create information hunger in people for your speech?
1. Practicing the Demonstration
one- to two-page critique that addresses these questions.
2. Is This Ethical?
page response to this question, including the name of the news show you watched.
3. Your Purpose in Life (or at Least in Speaking)
the text.)
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
1.
How Are You Defining Things?
2. Assign the “ones” operational definitions, the “twos” definition by negation, the “threes”
definition by example, and the “fours” definition by synonym.
4. Ask volunteers from the “ones” for their operational definitions, volunteers from the
“twos” to provide their definition by negation, and so forth.
2.
Information Is Everywhere
Goal: To have students understand the difference between persuasive and informative
1. Have students collect articles from various newspapers and magazines as homework and
bring them to class.
3. Ask students to read and analyze the information presented in the articles. Next, they
should decide as a group whether the articles are informative or persuasive. What is their
reasoning?
3.
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
Goal: To have students practice their informative speeches in front of an audience who will
critique them
Time Required: Thirty to fifty minutes
Materials: Students ready to present their speeches (including visual aids)
use of visual aids as they have learned in the text. The instructor should visit each group, but
from a distance so he or she doesn’t interfere with this private practice.
1.
What is informative speaking, and what are its goals? How is informative speaking different
from persuasive speaking?
and a transformative explanation?
6.
How can you make it easy for an audience to comprehend your informative speech?
7.
Imagine that your audience is a group of fourth-graders. How would you organize an
informative speech about the Hubble Space Telescope? How would you make it interesting
and not overwhelming?
MEDIA
Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, television series (Travel Channel, 2005)
to see these places as more than tourist destinations. Open a discussion with students about
what makes Bourdain’s approach effective. Does he modify his approach depending on
what he perceives as his audience’s prior knowledge about a locale?
Freedom Writers (Paramount Pictures, 2007)
applicable to her students’ lives?
Inception (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2010)
This heady science-fiction film depicts a criminal gang that invades victims’ dreams in
of reality they occupy at any given time. Discussing this film with students can help
emphasize the importance of definition speeches, demonstration speeches, and description
speeches.
Stand and Deliver (Warner Brothers, 1988)
inspires them to achieve more than they thought possible. Ask students to share their
impressions of this powerful film.
Waiting for “Superman” (Walden Media, 2010)
consider the film informative, and how many consider it persuasive. Why do students feel
this way?