Speech Fundamentals Chapter 2 The Audience Centered Speechmaking

Speech Fundamentals Chapter 2: The Audience. Centered Speechmaking Process

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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. )

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. ”)

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.

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.

Visual Aids • Effective speeches often make use of visual aids, including: – Objects – Posters – Power. Point Slides

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.

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.

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