Speech Fundamentals

1. Speech Fundamentals Chapter 2: The Audience-Centered Speechmaking Process

2. Consider Your Audience • Audience-centered speechmaking begins with knowing your audience. Some important things to know are: • Age • Gender • Economic Class • Ethnicity • Values • Goals

3. Selecting a Topic • Speech Topic: The key focus of the content of a speech. • To help find a topic, one may ask several questions: • Who is my audience? • What are my areas of knowledge or skill? • What is the occasion?

4. Finding Your Purposes • General Purpose: There are three broad purposes that categorize nearly every speech • Informative • Persuasive • Entertaining

5. Finding Your Purposes • Specific Purpose: Examples of a specific purpose may include (1) the desired learning outcome of an informative speech, (2) the desired change in belief/behavior of a persuasive speech, or (3) the desired reactions (e.g. laughter) of an entertaining speech.

6. Finding Your Purposes • General Purpose: The overarching goal of a speech – to inform, persuade, or entertain. • Specific Purpose: A concise statement of the desired audience response, indicating what you want your listeners to remember, feel, or do when you finish speaking.

7. Central Idea? • Central Idea: A one-sentence summary of the speech content. • If your purposes are what you want to accomplish with your speech, the central idea is the speech itself – a summary of the manifest content.

8. Main Ideas • The key points to a speech. • Main ideas serve the central idea. You develop main ideas by conidering your central idea.

9. Main Ideas • There are three specific ways to develop main ideas through looking at your central idea. • Logical divisions in the central idea. • Reasons the central idea is true. • Can you demonstrate the central idea through a series of steps?

10. Main Ideas • Certain speech purposes lend themselves well to specific strategies for developing main ideas. • Informative speeches often have logical divisions (e.g. central idea = “The water cycle operates in four stages.” The four stages represent each of the main ideas.)

11. Main Ideas • A “reasons” approach is often used in persuasive speeches (e.g. “There are three main reasons why we must increase the minimum wage.”) • A “series of steps” approach is often used in informative or narrative speeches (e.g. “These are the steps that have lead to global warming.”)

12. Supporting Material • Supporting material includes evidence that has been obtained through research. Good researchers use general search engines (e.g. Yahoo!, Google, Ask) only to gain initial information about a topic. This should be followed up by more formal research using library databases such as Lexis Nexis.

13. Supporting Material • When using supporting material, raw data in the form of statistics must be made relevant to the lives and experiences of listeners. A good speaker is an expert who knows how to tell a good story.

14. Visual Aids • Effective speeches often make use of visual aids, including: • Objects • Posters • PowerPoint Slides

15. Outline • All effective speeches use an outline! • Outlines should be divided into an Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. • The body of the speech should be outlined before the introduction and conclusion. • The body of the speech can be organized in a number of ways.

16. Outline • Organizing the body of the speech • Chronological • Topical • Cause/Effect • Problem/Solution • Go to pages 34-35 of the textbook and look at the sample outline.

17. Rehearsal • All good speeches require rehearsal. There is a definite correlation between the effectiveness of a speech and the amount of time spent practicing.