Chapter 9: Informative Speaking
You are exposed to Informative Speaking every day that you are in school. In college you listen to informative speaking. When a peer tells you about her senior project, you are getting informative speaking.
YOU will be giving a demonstration lecture in our class on a topic of your choice. Your lecture, including Q &A) will be 15-20 minutes. No one will fall asleep. Your peers and anyone in the audience will rate your effectiveness as an instructor. We should ALL be able to replicate what you demonstrated, in theory at least.
Your demonstration may be observed by our principal, school nurse, or anyone else we can find!
Read chapter 9 and answer the following questions:
Focus on the elements that are relevant to a DEMONSTRATION SPEECH.
- What is the main goal of informative speaking?
- What are the four main categories of informative speaking?
- What is an extended definition?
- What is the difference between an informational process speech and a directional process speech?
- What will you demonstrate?
- Decide what the time, occasion, audience and goals are for your speech. Be creative; you’ll tell us where we are, who we are, and what the occasion is.
- What are the three parts of a speech?
- What are the six methods listed that might help you gain an audience’s attention in the introduction?
- Which method can you apply to your own informational Demo speech?
- What are the five methods suggested for captivating the audience for the duration of your speech?
- Which one will work best for you and your topic?
- You need to “fulfill the need know”; how will you do that for your topic? (be specific, actually write out the part of your lecture that will deal with your specific audience’s need to know (don’t forget about ol’ Maslow).
- How will you tie YOUR topic to your audience’s feelings? Again, write out some ideas.
- Time to start drafting. What are the 3-5 main points you will teach in your demo?
- Time to write your lecture notes. Prepare about 2 pages of lecture notes. Remember, it ALWAYS takes longer to deliver a lecture than to read it at home.
- Revise your lecture: add transitions, and remove excessive “thus” “therefore” and other blahy transitions. Try both transitional words, and what I like to call gum on the shoe transitions… where you pull a little bit of one paragraph out to start the next with. (Yellow lichens are indeed fascinating, but not when compared to the rare blue lichen)
- Pruning time: turn the jargon into English. Normal English. The kind that old ladies like me understand.
- After editing and proofreading… get ready for delivery. Print your speech in big font, with spaces. Highlight or bold key words that you can catch with your eye so you can look at your audience. This copy will be turned in!
- Be prepared for audience confusion and questions! Have some note cards with further information.
- Revise your conclusion! Do not use “To summarize” or other awful enders. Use one of the methods suggested on page 162.
- Yup. You will have to conduct a question and answer period. Be ready. Be nice. You will have to ask questions to your peers’ lectures, so find out what everyone’s topic is, and write one question to ask.