Show how the support material clarifies or proves your assertion by a summarizing the point, or b explaining the link between support and assertion. At the very least you should remind listeners of your point after you present the support material to reinforce what you want them to remember. This may seem repetitious to you but it won't to your audience. They may not have gotten the assertion in step 1 and need a summary.
Sometimes you may need to do more than summarize. The audience may not be able to see how your support proves your point This is especially true when the support is statistical. When that is possible you should be sure to explain the link as well as summarize. An Example from a Student Speech. Step 1. Cardiovascular disease, the nation's leading cause of death, is caused by inactivity. Step 2. Clogged arteries and veins are a result of inactivity. Step 3. Statistically, then, you will die at an earlier age if you do not exercise.
Not all supporting evidence, however, is created equally. For example, scientific evidence is absolutely necessary in settings such as an exam. Appealing to the emotions of the professor is unlikely to yield a positive result, while articulating and analyzing the correct facts is.
Scientific evidence is used to prove that a set of facts or conditions is present in the world. In other instances, more experiential evidence will help you connect to the audience on a personal level. Personal experiences and anecdotes are great for establishing an emotional connection with the audience.
Being able to connect emotionally helps to mitigate some of the boredom that often accompanies appeals that are just facts. Using non-scientific evidence comes with some dangers, however. Non-scientific information is not often generalizable. That is, just because there is a story or series of stories does not mean that they necessarily represent the broader truth.
Some audiences are skeptical of non-scientific supporting materials for this very reason. Using an anecdote of a boat sinking, for example, is unlikely to persuade most audiences that all boats sink. Attempting to use this type of evidence can actually weaken the appeal by decreasing your perceived reliability as a source. Supporting materials are the difference between an opinion and a convincing argument.
Supporting materials are effective only if they help to persuade the audience. The type of supporting materials that should be deployed depend on the following:. Gathering Evidence : An individual must have enough supporting material evidence in order to write a convincing speech.
If the supporting materials are not delivered in a way that advances that goal, they are not deployed effectively. If the audience cannot see the chart, then it will not be understood or effective. In regard to sources, depend on the reliable ones. Table 7. Do not overuse statistics. While there is no hard and fast rule on how many to use, there are other good supporting materials and you would not want to depend on statistics alone.
You want to choose the statistics and numerical data that will strengthen your argument the most and drive your point home. Statistics can have emotional power as well as probative value if used sparingly. Use graphs to display the most important statistics. If you are using presentation software such as PowerPoint, you can create your own basic pie, line, or bar graphs, or you can borrow one and put a correct citation on the slide.
However, you do not need to make a graph for every single statistic. More information on these types of visual aids and what type of information they convey best can be found in Chapter 9. Explain your statistics as needed, but do not make your speech a statistics lesson. Explain the context of the statistics. You can also provide a story of an individual, and then tie the individual into the statistic. If you do your own survey or research and use numerical data from it, explain your methodology.
It goes without saying that you will use the statistic ethically, that there will be no distortion of what the statistic means. However, it is acceptable and a good idea to round up numerical data to avoid overwhelming the audience. Earlier we used the example of the U. That is a rounded figure.
Additionally, do not make statistics mean what they do not mean. Otherwise, you would be pushing the boundaries on ethics. Seventy-five percent of the students you surveyed indicated agreement, but since your study did not meet scientific standards regarding size of sample and how you found the sample, you can only use the information in relation to students in your college, not the whole country. An effective technique with numerical data is to use physical comparisons.
What does that mean? That is 9. In terms closer to home, of the 32 people in this classroom, 3 of us would have diabetes. Finally, because statistics can be confusing, slow down when you say them, give more emphasis, gesture—small ways of helping the audience grasp them.
Testimony is the words of others. You might think of them as quoted material. Obviously, all quoted material or testimony is not the same. Some quotations you just use because they are funny, compelling, or attention-getting. They work well as openings to introductions. Other types of testimony are more useful for proving your arguments. Testimony can also give an audience insight into the feelings or perceptions of others. Testimony is basically divided into two categories: expert and peer.
What is an expert? Experts spend time studying the facts and putting the facts together. They may not be scholars who publish original research but they have in-depth knowledge.
They may have certain levels of education, or they have real-world experience in the topic. For example, one of the authors is attending a quilt show this week to talk to experts in quilting. This expertise was gained through years of making, preserving, reading about, and showing quilts, even if they never took Quilting in college.
In using expert testimony, you should follow these guidelines:. Any quotation from a friend, family member, or classmate about an incident or topic would be peer testimony. It is useful in helping the audience understand a topic from a personal point of view. For example, in the spring of , a devastating tornado came through the town where one of the authors and many of their students live. One of those students gave a dramatic personal experience speech in class about surviving the tornado in a building that was destroyed and literally disappeared.
They survived because she and her coworkers at their chain restaurant were able to get to safety in the freezer. While she may not have had an advanced degree in a field related to tornadoes or the destruction they can cause, this student certainly had a good deal of knowledge about surviving a tornado.
However, do not present just any testimony of a peer or friend as if it were expert or credentialed. Peer testimony. In Chapter 2, we discussed how public speaking as an oral form of communication is different from written forms of communication. Therefore, as a speaker, you must work to maintain the attention of your audience. Attention and perception are closely tied concepts, but they are not exactly the same. If you have taken an introduction to psychology course, one of the earliest chapters in the textbook was probably about perception, since our perceptual processes are so foundational to how we think and process.
Perception deals primarily with how we organize and interpret the patterns of stimuli around us. The key words in this definition are patterns, organize, and interpret. The brain does the work of taking thousands of stimuli around us and making sense of them. Sensation is taking in the stimuli in the physical realm; perception is doing something with it psychologically.
Perception is obviously influenced by memory, experiences, past learning, etc. If you taste a desert, the scent and taste are physically going to your brain, and thus you are sensing it.
Attention, on the other hand, is focused perception. Attention is defined as focus on one stimulus while ignoring or suppressing reactions to other stimuli. Although we think we can multitask and pay attention to three things at a time, we cannot. The diagram in Figure 7. In the figure, two balls from the upper chutes which represent the two sources of stimuli, such as two auditory messages are trying to enter the central chute at the same time.
Only one ball can go through the single chute at a time, which is representative of your focus the ideas or tasks you can actually think about at a given moment. When you try to pay attention to two things at once, you are going to let the information in but have to switch back and forth on the pathways, making your attention listening, reading, processing less efficient.
Multitudes of studies have been done on how inefficient multitasking behavior is, especially for students Weimer, When you pay attention, you focus and other stimuli become muted or nonexistent in your mind for that amount of time. Perception is not something we have a good deal of control over, but we do have more say in attention. There are basically five reasons we pay attention to what we do when confronted with lots of competing stimuli.
We choose to focus on one thing over another. Plain and simple, we grit our teeth and pay attention, such as when we are making ourselves study difficult material for a test. While this is a behavior we accept as adults, as public speakers we should not expect the audience to do all the work of paying attention just because they feel a duty to do so; they probably will not.
We should attempt to meet the audience half way by using our understanding of attention. We should use various techniques in our speech to help the audience pay attention. Need states. Have you ever noticed that the hamburgers on the fast food commercials look juicier and more delicious when you are hungry?
When we are in a need state, we will be focused on those items that meet the need. When your instructor begins discussing in class what you can expect on the next exam, you probably perk up a bit, since this is information students generally need to know in order to do well in the class.
Because that information meets a personal need, they will be more receptive to and focused on it. Past training and experiences. You will notice what you have been taught or trained, either directly or indirectly, to focus on.
Sometimes you will not even be aware that you are doing so. For example, if you have a background in rodeo competition, you will see aspects and details in a rodeo scene in a movie that someone else would just take for granted.
All of these reasons for paying attention are relevant to the public speaker, but the last one is most directly usable and related to supporting material. There are certain qualities or characteristics of stimuli that naturally attract our attention.
Our attention can wane rather quickly and a speaker must work to keep the audience engaged. Incorporating attention factors can help. The list of factors that can help you get or maintain attention during your speech is rather long, and a speaker cannot, of course, use all of them in one speech, but they are useful tools in certain speech situations. The first factor in getting or maintaining attention is movement.
Definition the number will vary depending on the topic, setting, and your own expertise. Initial audience disposition. Common ground. A hypothetical example is a fictional example that can be used when a speaker is explaining a complicated topic that makes the most sense when it is put into more realistic or relatable terms.
Types of Supporting Material They include examples, explanations, statistics, analogies, testimony, and visual aids. There are two major types of testimony : peer testimony and expert testimony.
Key Points The introduction has five important responsibilities: get the audience 's attention, introduce the topic, explain its relevance to the audience, state a thesis or purpose, and outline the main points. By the end of the introduction , you should provide a road map that outlines your main points. Summarizing a Speech : It's important for public speakers to have a strong conclusion. The role of a conclusion in a speech is to signal to the audience that the speech is coming to a close and help them remember the most important points from the speech.
Brief examples are used to further illustrate a point that may not be immediately obvious to all audience members but is not so complex that is requires a more lengthy example.
Brief examples can be used by the presenter as an aside or on its own. A testimony is a statement or endorsement given by someone who has a logical connection to the topic and who is a credible source. Testimony can be used to either clarify or prove a point, and is often used by referring to the research of experts. Expert authorities.
Adapt your remarks to the occasion. Adapt your remarks to the main speaker. Adapt your remarks to the audience. Terms in this set Organizing your thoughts logically. Tailoring you message to your audience.
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