Business and Professional Communication, 3rdedition
Kelly M. Quintanilla, Shawn T. Wahl
Chapter 12: Speech Design
Chapter Activities
Activities to Illustrate Key Concepts
Activity 1: Audience Demographic Activity
Description: This is a class activity that has two parts: the discovery part that can be assigned
to individuals or teams and the class discussion part. The goal is to illustrate the importance
of knowing your audience.
Directions:
1. The assignment for this activity should be given one week before the class discussion on
analyzing the audience in chapter 12.
2. Assign students to complete the following assignment either as an individual or working
together with one other person of their choosing from the class.
3. The assignment is for students to gather as much demographic information as they can
about the students at their college or university, record this, and bring the information
to class.
Activity 2: Introduction Practice
Description: This is a small-group and individual practice activity. The purpose is to help
students to write more effective introductions to speeches.
Directions:
1. Divide the class into groups of four people.
2. Introduce students to the concepts of introductions and the purpose of a strong
introduction as discussed in chapter 12.
3. Each student is to individually spend 3 to 5 minutes composing a two to three sentence
beginning—introduction—to a business speech. The topic that can be used is addressing
6. The class is then called back together and each group representative has an opportunity
to share his or her introduction with the class.
7. The instructor should be sure to end the activity with positive feedback to the student
speakers.
Activity 3: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
Description: This is an individual research and class discussion activity. The goal is to help
students identify and be able to structure a speech presentation using the Monroe’s
Motivated Sequence outline structure.
Directions:
1. A week before the class discussion on the topic of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence as an
outline form, the instructor should give the following assignment.
2. The assignment is for students to study the de#nition of Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
as described in chapter 12 and video examples on YouTube of this type of presentation.
The easiest examples to #nd are commercials for products that use this approach in the