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131
Chapter 7
Developing
Your Speech
“In all matters, before beginning, a diligent prepa- ration should be made.” —Cicero
7.1 Select and Narrow Your Topic Guidelines for Selecting a Topic Strategies for Selecting a Topic Narrowing the Topic 7.2 Determine Your Purpose General Purpose Specific Purpose
7.3 Develop Your Central Idea A Complete Declarative Sentence Direct, Specific Language A Single Idea An Audience-Centered Idea
Outline
(continued)
132 Developing Your Speech
Learning Objectives
7.1 Select and narrow a topic for a speech that is appropriate to the audience, the occasion, the time limits, and yourself. 7.2 Write an audience-centered specific-purpose statement for a speech. 7.3 State a single audience-centered central idea with direct, specific language in a complete declarative sentence. 7.4 Apply three ways of generating main ideas from a central idea.
Ed Garcia has arranged the books and papers on his desk into neat, even piles. He has sharpened his pencils and laid them out parallel to one another. He has even dusted his desktop and cleaned the computer monitor’s screen. Ed can think of no other task to delay writing his speech. He opens a new word-processing docu- ment, carefully centers the words “Informative Speech” at the top of the first page, and then slouches in his chair, staring glumly at the blank expanse that threatens his well-being. Finally, he types the words “College Football” under the words “Informative Speech.” There is another long pause. Hesitantly, he begins his first sentence: “Today I want to talk to you about college football.” Rereading his first ten words, Ed decides that they sound moronic. He deletes the sentence and tries again. This time, the screen looks even blanker than before. He writes—deletes— writes—deletes. Half an hour later, Ed is exhausted and still mocked by a blank screen. And he is frantic—this speech has to be ready by nine in the morning. Getting from a blank screen or sheet of paper to a speech outline is often the biggest hurdle you will face as a public speaker. Fortunately, however, it is one that you can learn to clear. If your earlier efforts at speech writing have been like Ed Garcia’s, take heart. Just as you learned to read, do long division, drive a car, and get through college registration, so too can you learn to prepare a speech. The first steps in preparing a speech are these:
1. Select and narrow your topic. 2. Determine your purpose. 3. Develop your central idea. 4. Generate your main ideas. At the end of step 4, you will have a plan for the speech, and you will be ready to develop and polish your main ideas further. For most brief classroom speeches (under ten minutes), you should allow at least one week between
7.4 Generate and Preview Your Main Ideas Generating Your Main Ideas
Previewing Your Main Ideas 7.5 Meanwhile, Back at the Computer...
134 .1 Developing Your Speech
needs do the members of this audience have in common?” and “Why did they ask me to speak?” are important questions to ask yourself as you search for potential speech topics. For example, a university president who has been invited to speak to a civic organization should talk about some new university program or recent accomplishment; a police officer speaking to an elementary school’s PTA should address the audience’s concern for the safety of young children. Not only should a speaker’s choice of topic be relevant to the interests and expectations of his or her listeners; it should also take into account the knowledge listeners already have about the subject. For example, the need for a campus- wide office of disability services would not be a good topic to discuss in a speech to a group of students with disabilities, who would already be well aware of such a need. The speech would offer them no new information. Finally, speakers should choose topics that are important —topics that mat- ter to their listeners as well as to themselves. Student speaker Roger Fringer explains the stakes for students in a public-speaking class: We work hard for our tuition, so we should spend it wisely. Spending it wisely means... we don’t waste our classmates’ time who have to listen to our speeches.^3
CONSIDER
THE
AUDIENCE
Deliver Speech
Generate Main Ideas
Develop Central Idea
Gather Supporting Material
Select and Narrow Topic
Rehearse Speech
Determine Purpose
Organize Speech
Figure 7.1 Selecting and narrowing the topic and determining
the general and specific purposes of the speech are early speechmaking tasks. copyrighted by pearson education, upper Saddle river, nJ
Select and Narrow Your Topic 7.1 135
Several years ago, communication scholar and then-president of the National Communication Association Bruce Gronbeck reminded an audience of communication instructors that students should be giving “the important kinds of... speeches that show... people how to confront the issues that divide them.” 4 Table 7.1 offers examples of topics that are appropriate for the interests, expectations, knowledge, and concerns of particular audiences.
Consider The oCCasion On December 17, 1877, Mark Twain was invited to be one of the after-dinner speakers at American poet John Greenleaf Whittier’s seventieth-birthday celebration. 5 The guest list included such dignitaries as Oli- ver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Dean Howells, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. When it was Twain’s turn to speak, he began with a humorous sketch featuring Longfellow, Emerson, and Holmes as drunken card- playing travelers in Nevada. Used to laughter and applause from his audiences, Twain was stunned by the silence. What had gone wrong? Was Mark Twain’s topic of interest to his listeners? Undoubtedly. Did they expect to hear someone talk about the distinguished guests? Yes. Could Twain add to their knowledge of the subject? Probably. Was his topic appropriate to the occasion? Definitely not! Although after-dinner speeches are usually humorous, Twain’s irrever- ence was inappropriate to the dignity of this birthday observance. Even though he had considered his audience, he had not considered carefully enough the demands of the occasion. Twain’s irreverent talk aroused quite a commotion at the time and is said to have embarrassed him for years afterward. To be successful, a topic must be appropriate to both audience and occasion.
Consider Yourself What do you talk about with your friends? You prob- ably discuss school, mutual friends, political or social issues, hobbies or leisure activities, or whatever other topics are of interest and importance to you. Like most people, your liveliest, most animated conversations revolve around topics of personal concern that arouse your deepest convictions. The best public-speaking topics are also those that reflect your personal experience or especially interest you. Where have you lived? Where have you traveled? Describe your family or your ancestors. Have you held any part-time jobs?
Table 7.1 Sample Audience-Centered Topics
Copyrighted by Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
Audience Topic Retirees Prescription drug benefits Civic organization The Special Olympics Church members Starting a community food bank First graders What to do in case of a fire at home Teachers Building children’s self-esteem College fraternity Campus service opportunities
Select and narrow Your Topic .1 137
The How To box list gives you step-by-step instructions for brainstorming. If your brainstorming yields several good topics, so much the better. Set aside a page or two in your class notebook or an electronic file where you list topic ideas that you don’t end up choosing. You can then reconsider them when you get your next assignment.
LISTENING AND READING FOR TOPIC IDEAS Very often, something you see, hear, or read triggers an idea for a speech. A current story from your favorite news source may suggest a topic. The following list of topics was brought to mind by recent headline stories in a large daily newspaper:
Cyber-espionage Recovery in the housing market Issues for same-sex married couples The rising cost of flood insurance Mexican drug wars Optimal advance warning time for tornadoes In addition to discovering topics in news stories, you might find them in an interesting segment of 20/20, Dateline , or even a daytime talk show. Chances are that a topic covered in one medium has been covered in another as well, allow- ing extended research on the topic. For example, Dr. Oz’s report on the germiest places in your home may be paralleled by Time ’s article on the dangers of over- using antibacterial cleaning products. You may also find speech topics in one of your classes. One of the topics that we’ve mentioned so far might cause you to get an idea, or a lecture in an economics or political science class may arouse your interest and provide a good topic for your next speech. The instructor of that class could probably suggest additional references on the subject. Sometimes even a subject that you discuss casually with friends can be developed into a good speech topic. You have probably talked with classmates about such campus issues as dormitory regulations, inadequate parking, or your frustration with registration and advisors. Campuswide concerns would be
Brainstorm for a Topic
- Start with a blank sheet of paper.
- Set a time limit for brainstorming.
- Begin writing; list as many possible topics for a speech as you can.
- Do not stop to evaluate your topics; just write them down.
- Let one idea lead to another—free-associate; piggyback off your own ideas.
- Keep writing until your time is up.
HOW TO
138 .1 Developing Your Speech
relevant to the student audience in your speech class, as would such matters as how to find a good summer job or the pros and cons of living on or off campus. Just as you jotted down possible topics generated by brainstorming sessions, remember to write down topic ideas that you get from what’s trending in social media you use, class lectures, and informal conversations. If you rely on memory alone, what seems like a great topic today may be only a frustrating blank tomorrow. SCANNING WEB DIRECTORIES By now, you probably have a list of topics from which to choose. But if all your efforts have failed to produce any ideas that satisfy you, try the following strategy: Access a Web directory such as Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com), and select a category at random. Click on it, and look through the subcategories that come up. Click on one of them. Continue to follow the chain of categories until you see a topic that piques your interest—or until you reach a dead end, in which case you can return to the Yahoo! Directory homepage and try again. A recent random directory search yielded the following category and sub- categories, listed from general to specific: Society and culture Environment and nature Ecotourism This search took only a few minutes (as will yours, as long as you resist the temptation to begin surfing the Web) and yielded at least one possible topic: The pros and cons of ecotourism. An additional advantage of this strategy is that you begin to develop your preliminary bibliography while you are searching for a topic.
Quick check
Selecting a Topic Guidelines:
- consider the audience.
- consider the occasion.
- consider yourself. Strategies:
- Brainstorm.
- listen and read.
- Scan Web directories.
Narrowing the Topic
After brainstorming, reading the newspaper, surfing the Web, and talking to friends, you have come up with a topic. For some students, the toughest part
140 .2 Developing Your Speech
General Purpose
The general purpose , or overarching goal, of virtually any speech is to inform, to persuade, or to entertain. The speeches that you give in class will generally be either informative or persuasive. It is important that you fully understand what constitutes each type of speech so that you do not confuse them and fail to fulfill an assignment. You certainly do not want to deliver a first-rate persuasive speech when an informative one was assigned! Chapter 15–18 discuss the three general purposes at length. We also offer you a summary of the basic principles of each here.
SPEAKING TO INFORM An informative speaker is a teacher. Informative speakers give listeners information. They define, describe, or explain a thing, person, place, concept, process, or function. In this excerpt from a student’s informative speech on anorexia nervosa, the student describes the disorder for her audience: Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder that affects 1 out of every 200 American women. It is a self-induced starvation that can waste its vic- tims to the point that they resemble victims of Nazi concentration camps.^7 Most lectures that you hear in college are informative. The university presi- dent’s annual “state of the university” speech is also informative, as is the tour guide’s talk at Colonial Williamsburg. Such speakers are all trying to increase their listeners’ knowledge. Although they may use an occasional bit of humor in their presentations, their main objective is not to entertain. And although they may provoke an audience’s interest in the topic, their main objective is not to persuade.
SPEAKING TO PERSUADE Persuasive speakers may offer information, but they use the information to try to change or reinforce an audience’s convictions and often to urge some sort of action. For example, Brian offered compelling statistics to help persuade his audience to take steps to prevent and alleviate chronic pain: A hundred million Americans, nearly a third of the population, [suffer] from chronic pain due to everything from accidents to the simple daily stresses on our bodies.^8 The representative from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) who spoke at your high-school assembly urged you not to drink and drive and urged you to help others realize the inherent dangers of the practice. The fraternity president talking to your group of rushees tried to convince you to join his fraternity. Appearing on television during the last election, the candidates for president of the United States asked for your vote. All these speakers gave you information, but they used that information to try to get you to believe or do something.
Determine Your purpose .2 141
SPEAKING TO ENTERTAIN The entertaining speaker tries to get the members of an audience to relax, smile, perhaps laugh, and generally enjoy themselves. Storyteller Garrison Keillor spins tales of the town and residents of Lake Wobe- gon, Minnesota, to amuse his listeners. Comedian Louis C.K. delivers comic patter to make his audience laugh. Most after-dinner speakers talk to entertain the banquet guests. Like persuasive speakers, entertaining speakers may inform their listeners, but providing knowledge is not their main goal. Rather, their ob- jective is to produce at least a smile and at best a belly laugh. Early on, you need to decide which of the three general purposes your speech is to have. This decision keeps you on track throughout the develop- ment of your speech. The way in which you organize, support, and deliver your speech depends, in part, on your general purpose.
Quick check
General Purposes for Speeches To inform: To share information with listeners by defining, describing, or explaining a thing, person, place, concept, process, or function To persuade: To change or reinforce a listener’s attitude, belief, value, or behavior To entertain: To help listeners have a good time by getting them to relax, smile, and laugh
Specific Purpose
Now that you have a topic and you know generally whether your speech should inform, persuade, or entertain, it is time you decided on its specific purpose , the concise statement of what you want your listeners to know, feel, or be able to do when you finish speaking. Unlike the general purpose, which can be assigned by your instructor, you alone must decide the specific purpose of your speech, because it depends directly on the topic you choose.
IDENTIFY A BEHAVIORAL OBJECTIVE To arrive at a specific purpose for your speech, you must think in precise terms of what you want your audience to be able to do at the end of your speech. This kind of goal or purpose is called a behavioral objective , because you specify the behavior you seek from the audience. The How To box offers a formula you can use to develop a specific-purpose statement for a speech with any general purpose. For a speech on how television comedy represents the modern family, you might write, “At the end of my speech, the audience will be able to explain how television comedies portray American family life today.” The specific-purpose statement for a how-to speech using visual aids might read, “At the end of my speech, the audience will be able to use
Develop Your central idea .3 143
Observable : At the end of my speech, the audience will be able to list five points of interest in the town of Hannibal, Missouri.
- Limit the specific purpose to a single idea. If your statement of purpose has more than one idea, you will have trouble covering the extra ideas in your speech. You will also run the risk of having your speech “come apart at the seams.” Your speech is likely to lack unity of ideas and coherence of expression. Two ideas : At the end of my speech, the audience will be able to write a simple computer program in BASIC and play the video game Bioshock Infinite. One idea : At the end of my speech, the audience will be able to write a simple computer program in BASIC.
- Make sure your specific purpose reflects the interests, expectations, and knowledge level of your audience. Also be sure that your specific purpose is important. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed these criteria as guidelines for select- ing a speech topic. Consider them again as you word your specific-purpose statement. Behavioral statements of purpose help to remind you that the aim of public speaking is to win a response from the audience. In addition, using a specific purpose to guide the development of your speech helps you to focus on the au- dience during the entire preparation process.
USING THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE Everything you do while preparing and de- livering the speech should contribute to your specific purpose. The specific pur- pose can help you to assess the information you are gathering for your speech. For example, you may find that an interesting statistic, although related to your topic, does not help to achieve your specific purpose. In that case, you can sub- stitute material that directly advances your purpose. As soon as you have decided on it, write the specific purpose on a three- by five-inch note card. Then refer to it as often as necessary while developing your speech.
Develop Your Central Idea
7.3 State a single audience-centered central idea with direct, specific language in a complete declarative sentence.
Having stated the specific purpose of your speech, you are ready to develop your central idea, the first step highlighted in Figure 7.2. The central idea (sometimes called the thesis ) states in one sentence what the speech is about. You can use your specific-purpose statement to help you write your central idea. However, as Table 7. summarizes, a central idea differs from a purpose statement in both focus and ap- plication. A purpose statement focuses on audience behavior, whereas the central idea focuses on the content of the speech. A purpose statement guides your deci- sions as you prepare the speech; the central idea becomes part of your final speech.
144 .3 Developing Your Speech
Professional speech coach Judith Humphrey explains the importance of a central idea: Ask yourself before writing a speech... “What’s my point?” Be able to state that message in a single clear sentence. Everything else you say will support that single argument.^9
CONSIDER
THE
AUDIENCE
Deliver Speech
Generate Main Ideas
Develop Central Idea
Gather Supporting Material
Select and Narrow Topic
Rehearse Speech
Determine Purpose
Organize Speech
Figure 7.2 State your central idea as a one-sentence summary
of your speech, and then generate main ideas by looking for natural divisions, reasons, or steps to support your central idea. copyrighted by pearson education, upper Saddle river, nJ
Table 7.2 purpose Statement versus central idea
The Purpose Statement The Central Idea Indicates what the audience should be able to do by the end of the speech
Summarizes the speech in one sentence
Guides the speaker’s choices throughout the preparation of the speech
Is stated in the speech
The Central Idea Should...
- Be a complete declarative sentence
- Use direct, specific language
- Be a single idea
- Be an audience-centered idea copyrighted by pearson education, upper Saddle river, nJ
146 .4 Developing Your Speech
An Audience-Centered Idea
The central idea should reflect consideration of the audience. You considered your audience when selecting and narrowing your topic and when composing your purpose statement. In the same way, you should consider your audience’s needs, interests, expectations, and knowledge when stating your central idea. If you do not consider your listeners, you run the risk of losing their attention before you even begin developing the speech. If your audience consists mainly of college juniors and seniors, the second of the following central ideas would be better suited to your listeners than the first. Inappropriate : Scholarships from a variety of sources are readily available to first-year college students. Appropriate : Although you might think of scholarships as a source of money for freshmen, a number of scholarships are available only to students who have completed their first year of college.
Generate and Preview Your Main
Ideas
7.4 Apply three ways of generating main ideas from a central idea. Next to selecting a topic, probably the most common stumbling block in devel- oping speeches is coming up with a speech plan.
Generating Your Main Ideas
Trying to decide how to subdivide your central idea into two, three, or four key points, or main ideas —detailed points of focus that help you develop your cen- tral idea—can make you chew your pencil, scratch your head, and end up as you began, with a blank sheet of paper. The task will be much easier if you use the three-question strategy described in the How To box. Let’s see this technique at work with several central idea statements. FINDING LOGICAL DIVISIONS Suppose your central idea is “A liberal arts education benefits the student in two ways.” You now turn to the three ques- tions. But for this example, you needn’t go beyond the first one. Does the central idea have logical divisions? The phrase “two ways” indicates that it does. You can logically divide your speech into ways in which the student benefits:
1. Appreciation of culture 2. Concern for humankind A brief brainstorming session then could help you to come up with more spe- cific examples of ways in which a liberal arts education might benefit students.
generate and preview Your Main ideas .4 147
At this stage, you needn’t worry about Roman numerals, parallel form, or even the order in which the main ideas are listed. We will discuss these and other features of outlining in Chapter 9. Your goal now is simply to generate ideas. Just because you write them down, don’t think that the ideas you come up with now are engraved in stone. They can—and probably will—change. After all, this is a preliminary plan. It may undergo many revisions before you actually deliver your speech. For example, your speech might have four points, but four points might well prove to be too many to develop in the brief time allowed for most classroom speeches. Because it is much easier to eliminate ideas than to invent them, list them all for now.
ESTABLISHING REASONS Suppose your central idea is “Upholstered furni- ture fires are a life-threatening hazard.”^10 Asking yourself whether this idea has logical divisions is no help at all. There are no key phrases indicating logical divisions—no “ways,” “means,” “types,” or “methods” appear in the wording. The second question, however, is more productive: Having done some initial reading on the topic, you can think of reasons this central idea is true. Asking yourself “Why?” after stating your central idea yields three answers:
1. Standards to reduce fires caused by smoldering cigarettes have lulled furni- ture makers into a false sense of security. 2. Government officials refuse to force the furniture industry to reexamine its standards. 3. Consumers are largely ignorant of the risks. Notice that these main ideas are expressed in complete sentences, whereas the ones in the preceding example were in phrases. At this stage, it doesn’t mat- ter. What does matter is getting your ideas written down. You can rewrite and reorganize them later.
Determine Your Main Ideas
- Write your central idea at the top of a clean sheet of paper or computer screen.
- Ask yourself the following three questions. You should be able to answer yes to one or more of these questions:
- Does the central idea have logical divisions? These may be indicated by such phrases as “three types” or “four means.”
- Are there several reasons why the central idea is true?
- Can I support the central idea with a series of steps or a chronological progression?
- Write down the divisions, reasons, or steps you thought of. These will become the main ideas of your speech.
HOW TO
Meanwhile, Back at the computer... .5 149
your central idea plus a preview of your main ideas. Some speakers, like Nicole, integrate their central idea and preview into one blueprint sentence:
Obsolete computers are straining landfills because they contain hazard- ous materials and take a distinctively long time to decay.^12 In this example, Nicole started with a central idea: “Obsolete computers are straining landfills.” Asking herself “Why?” yielded two reasons, which became her two main points: “They contain hazardous materials” and “They take a dis- tinctively long time to decay.” Combining these reasons with her central idea produced a blueprint. Like Nicole, you should preview the ideas in the same order in which you plan to discuss them in the speech. Other speakers, like Patrick, in his speech on the problems associated with mining oil by hydraulic fracturing, state their blueprints in several sentences:
In order to understand the fundamental threat fracturing poses, we must first understand the dangers at each step of the process. Second, expose the corrupt legal maneuvering that protects it. And, finally, champion the simple solution that will save American lives.^13 Patrick also started with a central idea: Fracturing poses a fundamental threat. Like Nicole, he generated reasons for his central idea, which in this case were “dangers at each step of the process” and “corrupt legal maneuvering that protects it.” He decided at this early point in the speech to mention that there is a “simple solution that will save American lives.” Thinking that a single sentence might become unwieldy, Patrick decided to use three shorter sentences for his blueprint.
Meanwhile, Back at the Computer...
It’s been a while since we left Ed Garcia, the student in the opening paragraphs of this chapter, struggling to write a speech on college football. Even though he has procrastinated, if he follows the steps we have discussed, he should still be able to plan a successful informative speech. Ed has already chosen his topic. His audience is likely to be interested in his subject. Because Ed is a varsity defensive tackle, the audience will probably expect him to talk about college football. And he himself is passionately inter- ested in and knowledgeable about the subject. It meets all the requirements of a successful topic. But the topic “college football” is too broad for a three- to five-minute talk. Ed needs to narrow his topic to a manageable size. He goes online to Yahoo! Directory and clicks on the category Recreation Sports, then on Sports. He is just about to select College and University when another category catches his eye: Medicine. Sports medicine? Hmmmm.... Ed has suffered several injuries and feels qualified to talk about this aspect of football. Ed doesn’t need to go further. He has his topic: “Injuries in college football.”
150 .5 Developing Your Speech
Now that he has narrowed the topic, Ed needs a purpose statement. He decides that his audience might know something about how players are injured, but they probably do not know how these injuries are treated. He types, “The audience will be able to explain how the three most common injuries suffered by college football players are treated.” A few minutes later, Ed derives his central idea from his purpose: “Sports medicine specialists have developed specific courses of treatment for the three most common kinds of injuries suffered by college football players.” Generating main ideas is also fairly easy now. Because his central idea men- tions three kinds of injuries, he can plan his speech around those three ideas (logical divisions). Under the central idea Ed lists three injuries:
1. Bruises 2. Broken bones 3. Ligament and cartilage damage Now Ed has a plan and is well on his way to developing a successful three- to five-minute informative speech.
