You have reached an important milestone. You have completed your dramatic readings and they were impressive. That being said, we need to change our focus and start working on informative and persuasive speaking. These speeches are more technical and require more structure and more preparation. The information below is intended to provide you with a little more understanding of informative speaking and just as importantly, I will highlight some of the issues we will cover during between now and informative speech day.


What is required:
On informative speech day you will need to present an informative speech no less than 5 minutes and no more than 7 minutes. This speech is worth 10% of your grade and an additional 5% for a mandatory outline. That is a total of 15% and you will not be allowed to give your speech if you do not have an outline to turn on the day of the speech. Your outline is a serious component of this speech and should not be overlooked or taken for granted. You have to option of picking any topic, but there are several parameters and after you turn in a topic proposal I may ask you to slightly or completely change your topic. There are three main issues to focus on for this speech: content, delivery, and structure. So, to be clear, between now and informative speech day you will: (1) turn in a topic proposal, the form is on the assignment page. I encourage you to turn in a topic ASAP, but I expect you to have done it by Saturday November 3rd. (2) Prepare an outline. Your outline must include a topic sentence from each of at least 5 parts of your speech, a thesis statement, all of your evidence with the sources clearly identified. I will provide you with an expample and formatting guidelines.

What it takes to create and perform a good informative speech:
Informative speeches are based heavily on evidence. Informative speeches are all about getting and presenting good evidence. This is what we call research. You need to learn about research to present a good informative speech. Research is something we all do everyday but we are going to learn about using research skills to solve research problems. These topics, research and research problems, will require a great deal of discussion and lecture. Please be prepared to learn about these topics on Saturday. I challenge you to read about these topics in your book.

Let's review some things about informative speeches:
You have learned a little about informative speeches, but let me remind you of the goal of informative speaking: informing your audience. Informing someone of something is a difficult task and you may need to use a variety of tools to lead them toward the knowledge you want them to have. I gave you a running assignment to answer three questions at yahoo Answers and the point of that excercise is to get you to understand just how difficult it is to inform someone of something (do this assignment if you have not already). What you should have encountered in this assignment is how difficult it is to answer even the simplest questions. It is even difficult to find questions to answer! Sometimes it feels like someone else has already answered all of the good questions and the questions people want answers to often seem shallow and unimportant. A lot of information is given over and over without much, if any, variation.

In one of our class meetings we discussed how to find topics worth writing or speaking about and then getting to a workable thesis. *We looked a four step process: questions - topic - questions - thesis. This is a loose guideline and you will find yourself starting and restarting the process before you come to a thesis state ment you want to work with. The general idea is that one starts by thinking of general questions about an area like music . In class we asked several different questions like who sells the most music, who owns what radio stations, how much money do musicians make, etc. We then decided we wanted to know more about Justin Beeber. With a more norrow topic in hand - Justin Beeber - we then ask more specific questions about him. So, at this point we basically started the process over again by asking more questions about the Beeb and then coming up with a refined topic - I think we narrowed it down to how and if his voice change would impact sales. You asked more questions about that narrowed down topic and devised a thesis statement or an argument about Justin Beeber's voice change and music sales. For example: Even if Justin Beeber's voice changes, he will always have a job in hollywood because of his fan loyalty, his looks, and his acting potentional. This form of thesis statement is what I have called a blueprint thesis in that it PREVIEWS the three main points you intend to talk about in that speech or essay. If a reader came across that thesis statement, they would likely expect to hear more about the Beeb's fan loyalty, looks and acting potential.

We will talk more about all of these issues and will give you exercises and daily activities to help you learn these topic better. Again, please bring your book to class.





*Sometimes you have a topic given to you and follow a three step process: topic - questions - thesis.



 
In class we discussed the concept of "knowing all of the messages you send." We used this conversation as a way of understanding non-verbal messages. We also spoke about how your topic or your message can be taken very differently then you intend and send more messages then you are aware. I used an example of the first time I wore a Che Guevara tshirt (not knowing who he was). We discussed how my junior ROTC teacher  (considering the context of his life) may have interpreted the message I was sending about the concert I attended, differently then I intended. My overall point is that we need to try to understand how the messages we are sending may be interpreted differently from different points of view. These messages we want to concern ourselves with range from nonverbal messages to being aware of how others may perceive what we are saying because of how our audiences sees us in their minds.


We also discussed your dramatic reading speech in more detail. In general you are all picking good pieces but I want to reiterate some of the things we talked about. I can see from the documents that you turned that a few of you maybe misunderstanding what I am asking for and a couple of you are missing some things.

This dramatic speech is supposed to be in SOMEONE ELSE'S words and NOT your own. It should be a poem, song, part of a play, movie or book etc. This is not a speech that you have written (except Samantha).

There are two parts to your dramatic reading, an introduction and a main body. Your introduction will include the central theme or thesis and the title of your piece(s). The body should be a poem, song, part of a play, movie or book etc. You have two choices for the organization of your dramatic reading (or oral interp):
1. Introduction (max 45 seconds)
2 Body (max 4 minutes and 15 seconds)

or 

1 Body (max 1 minute)
2. Introduction (max 45 seconds)
3 Body (max 3 minutes and 15 seconds)

I would like you to remember that this speech is an introductory level speech and there is NOT too much pressure on you. I want you to focus on performing well and staying in the time limit. In class I described some of the key things we are looking for in this speech. Time management, a central theme or thesis, clarity, a small amount of organization, preparation. The most important are time management and preparation. In this particular type of speech, preparation is the key to time management and clarity. If you practice your speech over and over again, then you have a good chance of staying in the time limit and giving a good audible speech. Your speech must be more then three minutes and no more than five minutes. I suggest that you try for four minutes and practice in several different settings to make sure you stay with in the time limit. 

If you have not uploaded your dramatic reading, then please do so as soon as possible. Even if you don't care about the daily activity point (which I will still give you part of if you upload your document by Friday at noon), it still helps for me to see what you plan to read. 

If you already turned in the assignment and did not do the assignment correctly by wrote out a speech, having a piece that is significantly too long or too short, or missing all or part of your introduction, then I will still give you your full daily activity point if you turn it in by Friday at noon (I would like to give you feed back if necessary). 
 
I look forward to seeing your performances on Saturday!