Day Six: Supporting Your Speech: Materials & more

1. Day Six: Supporting Your Speech: Materials & more by Yana Cornish Hamilton College

2. Agenda: • Supporting Materials (Ch. 7) • Types of supporting materials (Ch. 8) • Activity

3. Homework: • Read chapters 7 & 8 • Do suggested activity p. 165 • Select a video speech and provide its analysis. • Perfect your introduction and conclusion • Continue selecting supporting materials for your first speech • Continue putting together biographical information

4. Supporting Material • Ideas, opinions, and information that help to explain a presentation’s main idea and purpose. • The best presenters use a mix of many different kinds of supporting material

5. What Materials to Use? • Facts • Illustrations (verbal or visual) • Descriptions & explanations • Definitions • Analogies • Statistics • Opinions • Examples • Stories • Testimonies

6. What Materials to Use? • Fact - verifiable observation, experience, or event known to be true • Most effective when the audience can accept them as true • Illustrations (verbal or visual): • Brief illustration – a short example (a sentence or two) • Extended illustration – a detailed example

7. What Materials to Use? • Descriptions & explanations: • Description – detailed mental images of people, concepts, or things. • Explanation – a statement that makes clear how something is done or why it exists. • They offer causes, effects, characteristics, and background information. • Definition– explanations or clarifications of a word’s meaning.

8. What Materials to Use? • Analogy – a comparison of unfamiliar concepts or objects with familiar ones. • can be alike or different • Examples: • Alike: America is like a quilt- many patches, pieces, colors, and sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. • Different: If a copilot must be qualified to fly a plane, then a U.S. Vice President should be qualified to govern the country.

9. What Materials to Use? • Statistics – systematically collected and numerically classified information. -only factual if analyzed correctly • Opinion– a statement made by an individual • Examples- provides a reference to a specific case or instance in order to make an idea understandable. • can be facts, brief descriptions, or detailed stories

10. What Materials to Use? • Stories-accounts or reports about things that have happened. • Can have a great impact on the audience • Use stories to gain attention, create a mood, or reinforce an important idea.

11. What Materials to Use? • Testimony- statements or opinions that someone has said or written in magazines, speeches, on the radio, books, etc. • Believability depends on the credentials of the speaker or writer, so use testimony from famous people and experts to enhance your credibility. • Expert testimony – an opinion offered by someone who is an authority on the subject. • Lay testimony – an opinion offered by a nonexpert who has firsthand experience.

12. How to choose good materials: • Magnitude – bigger is better! • Proximity – the most relevant to the listeners (‘closest to home’) • Concreteness – use concrete examples and statistics • Variety – use a mix! • Humor – audience will appreciate it! • Suitability of material – to you, your speech, your audience, and occasion.

13. Search for Supporting materials • Start with your own knowledge • Internet/WWW: • To supplement library sources, not replace them • Directories • Search engines • Alta Vista www.altavista.com • Google www.google.com • Yahoo! www.yahoo.com • Lycos www.lycos.com • Dogpile www.dogpile.com

14. Search Engine

15. Directory:

16. Supporting materials: • Library resources: • Books • Periodicals • Full-text Databases • Government documents • Reference resources (maps, encyclopedias, etc.) • Special services (interlibrary loan)

17. Supporting materials: • Interviews: • Needs to be set up • Requires planning • Can provide very useful information • Special groups/organizations

18. Important Questions for Interviews • Why am I conducting this interview? What do I hope to learn? • What do I know about the person I’m interviewing? • What do I want or need to know for my presentation? • In what order should I ask the questions?

19. Evaluating Your Sources • Is the source identifiable and credible? • Are the author and publisher identified and reputable? • Example: Which is more respected and reputable? • The National Inquirer or • The Wall Street Journal • Is the source biased? • Is the information slanted in one direction so much that it isn’t fair?

20. Evaluating Your Sources • Is the information recent? • When was the information collected and published? Use magazines, web sources, etc. for current events. • Is the information consistent? • Is the information similar to other information on the same subject? • Are the statistics valid? • Use sophisticated research methods to provide valid statistics and information.

21. Questions for Determining Validity • Who collected and analyzed the data? • Is the researcher a well-respected expert? • How was the information collected and analyzed? • Who is reporting the statistics: the researcher or a reporter? • Are the statistics believable?

22. Record Your Sources • Make a bibliography card, recording all relevant information for each source you intend to use. • Make copies of the material you will use • Save material you find online by printing it, emailing it to yourself, or saving it to a disk.

23. Record Your Sources • Read the copies you have made carefully • Take careful notes on information related to your paper topic. • Distinguish exact quotations from summaries and record all page numbers.

24. Cite Your Sources • In writing (bibliography) and/or orally during your speech In Writing (bibliography): • Must include author, title, publisher, and date • There should be no question which words are yours and which words belong to other people. • Not necessary for facts regarded as common knowledge (available in many sources), such as chronological events, author’s birth date...

25. Cite Your Sources (cont.) • If you are not sure, cite your sources! • Cite all supporting material unless it is common knowledge. • Cite someone else’s ideas and opinions, even if you restate it in your own words.

26. Citing Your Sources Orally • Provide sufficient information to allow others to find your source, don’t read the whole citation. • Provide the name of the person, saying a word or two about their credentials, and mentioning the source (or title) of the information.

27. Directly: In a 1988 article published by English Journal, Dr. James Stalker described the absurdity of adopting an official language for the United States. He wrote: “We cannot…” Paraphrasing: In a 1988 article published by English Journal, Dr. James Stalker noted that in a Democracy like ours, we cannot pass laws against the use of other languages. Citing: Directly or Paraphrasing

28. Supporting materials: • How to develop a bibliography: • In alphabetical order at the end of the speech outline • Author’s name • Title of the article (book) • Title of the book/website • Date of publication (date when accessed if it is a web site) • Publisher (books only)

29. Outline Review (see pp. 32-33): • Topic • General and Specific Purposes: at the end of the speech… • Central idea • Description: • Introduction (write your statement) • Body (structure only) • Conclusion (write your statement)

30. Homework: • Read chapters 7 & 8 • Do suggested activity p. 165 • Select a video speech and provide its analysis. • Perfect your introduction and conclusion • Continue selecting supporting materials for your first speech • Continue putting together biographical information

31. Questions?