"What is real?" "is there really such thing as a mountain?"

These are a couple of the questions we pondered in class as we considered how to inform someone about something. There are philosophical problems about reality and knowledge that people have been trying to answer for thousands of years. Presenting credible, reliable, dependable and reliable information can be a formatiable task. Some evidence is simply better than other evidence. Likewise, some sources are better than others. Primary data and primary sources are the "best" sources to have but in this class and as an undergraduate (generally) secondary sources are not only acceptable but often preferable.


Examples of good sources of evidence for your informative speeches:
Newspapers
Books
Textbooks
CQ researcher
Interviews
Speeches


It behooves you to have a topic and at least a rough outline of a speech for Saturday's class. If you have an outline and a good portion of your speech, then we will be able to work on the issues YOU have IN CLASS. If you do not have an outline or a topic, then you will have to workout all of those issues by yourself the week leading up to speech day.

In our last class we discussed a lot of important issues. A lot. We had a topic generating activity were we stressed the significance of a topic. Choosing a challenging topic is an essential element of creating an "A" level informative or persuasive speech. I demonstrated how to take a seemingly shallow topic and use questions about interconnectedness and interdependence to supply depth to your discussion. In other words, to find the significance of a topic you need to explore relationships and issues of dependence (you should ask me more questions about this).

Another key issue we discussed is organization. We have been talking about organization over and over again because it is the key to a good speech. How one organizes main points adds to the effectiveness, clarity and creativity of a speech. You have many options for organizing your information, chronologically, by cause and effect, effect and cause, by differences, by simularites. There are many, many ways to organize a speech. 

Stay tuned for more...

 
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.