Page 252 - Essentials of Human Communication

Step 6: Organize Your Speech Materials 231

PuBliC SPEAkiNg SAmPlE ASSiSTANT

A Poorly Constructed informative Speech

Here is an example of a poorly constructed informative speech. As you’ll see, no one really gives a speech this bad. It was
constructed to illustrate clearly and briefly some of the major faults that can occur in such speeches. The PSSA box in
Chapter 13 offers an example of a truly excellent speech. Together, the negative and the positive speech examples will
offer you a variety of guidelines for errors you’ll want to avoid and principles you’ll want to follow in your own speeches.
Not surprisingly researchers have found that we learn a great deal from negative examples (Hesketh & Neal, 2006).

SPEECh PROBlEmS and CORRECTiVES
Topic/Title: The Falling Dollar The title isn’t bad; it gives listeners a general idea of the
Purpose: To inform my audience about the dollar. topic and arouses interest. The purpose is not specific
Thesis: The dollar falls. enough—it merely repeats what’s in the title. This thesis is
not helpful in guiding the speech preparation process.
A better phrasing might be: To inform my audience about
some consequences of the dollar’s decline in value. A thesis
should be in statement form: The decline in the U.S. dollar
has significant consequences on our own wallets.
intrOductiOn
Ok, I’m here. Whew! I’m not very good at public These comments are usually best avoided. Lead with a
speaking—I only took this course because it’s strong, attention-getting opener. Things like this reveal a
required—and I’m really nervous. decided lack of preparation. The speaker should have the
Let’s see . . . [shuffles through notes, arranging them notes arranged before getting up to speak and should
and mumbling, page 1, page 2,—ok, it’s all here]. have rehearsed with them in place.
This speech is about the dollar. I’m going to explain
what happens when the dollar goes down.
This is a topic that’s really important to everyone in this Although this does announce the topic, it’s weak and
room, so I hope you’ll listen carefully. would fail to gain the attention of most audience mem-
bers. The speaker needs a strong opener to get the atten-
tion of the audience and to perhaps explain what “goes
down” means. Telling the audience they should pay atten-
tion is probably not the best idea. Instead of just telling
the audience that the topic is important, the speaker
needs to explain why the audience should listen and why
the topic is important to them—for example, it’s going to
cost them more when they buy something.
So, as I said, I’m going to talk about the dollar. This is an insufficient orientation. The speaker needs to tell
the audience something more, perhaps identifying the
main points to be considered.
BOdY
As the dollar goes down—say against the Japanese The speaker reveals a lack of knowledge and familiarity
dollar or Europe’s dollar—it becomes more expensive with the topic by not using the terms yen and euro for the
to buy stuff from Japan and Europe. currencies of Japan and Europe. The speaker also needs to
define the relationships among these currencies and state
this in the speech. A simple graph might help. Parallel
wording would also have helped; the speaker might have
said “Japanese dollar and European dollar” (two adjec-
tives) or “Japan’s dollar or Europe’s dollar” (two nouns)
instead of an adjective and a noun.