Monday, October 27, 2014

Thinking about the Persuasive Speech

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence
StepsAudience Response
Attention—Getting AttentionI want to listen to the speaker.
Need—Showing the Need, Describing the ProblemSomething needs to be done about the problem.
Satisfaction—Satisfying the Need, Presenting the SolutionIn order to satisfy the need or fix the problem this is what I need to do.
Visualization—Visualizing the ResultsI can see myself enjoying the benefits of taking action.
Action—Requesting Audience Action or ApprovalI will act in a specific way or approve a decision or behavior.

Attention

The first step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the attention step, in which a speaker attempts to get the audience’s attention. To gain an audience’s attention, we recommend that you think through three specific parts of the attention step. First, you need to have a strong attention-getting device. A strong attention getter at the beginning of your speech is very important. Second, you need to make sure you introduce your topic clearly. If your audience doesn’t know what your topic is quickly, they are more likely to stop listening. Lastly, you need to explain to your audience why they should care about your topic.

Needs

In the needs step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the speaker establishes that there is a specific need or problem. In Monroe’s conceptualization of need, he talks about four specific parts of the need: statement, illustration, ramification, and pointing. First, a speaker needs to give a clear and concise statement of the problem. This part of a speech should be crystal clear for an audience. Second, the speaker needs to provide one or more examples to illustrate the need. The illustration is an attempt to make the problem concrete for the audience. Next, a speaker needs to provide some kind of evidence (e.g., statistics, examples, testimony) that shows the ramifications or consequences of the problem. Lastly, a speaker needs to point to the audience and show exactly how the problem relates to them personally.

Satisfaction

In the third step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the satisfaction step, the speaker sets out to satisfy the need or solve the problem. Within this step, Monroe (1935) proposed a five-step plan for satisfying a need:

  1. Statement
  2. Explanation
  3. Theoretical demonstration
  4. Reference to practical experience
  5. Meeting objections
First, you need to clearly state the attitude, value, belief, or action you want your audience to accept. The purpose of this statement is to clearly tell your audience what your ultimate goal is.
Second, you want to make sure that you clearly explain to your audience why they should accept the attitude, value, belief, or action you proposed. Just telling your audience they should do something isn’t strong enough to actually get them to change. Instead, you really need to provide a solid argument for why they should accept your proposed solution.
Third, you need to show how the solution you have proposed meets the need or problem. Monroe calls this link between your solution and the need a theoretical demonstration because you cannot prove that your solution will work. Instead, you theorize based on research and good judgment that your solution will meet the need or solve the problem.
Fourth, to help with this theoretical demonstration, you need to reference practical experience, which should include examples demonstrating that your proposal has worked elsewhere. Research, statistics, and expert testimony are all great ways of referencing practical experience.
Lastly, Monroe recommends that a speaker respond to possible objections. As a persuasive speaker, one of your jobs is to think through your speech and see what counterarguments could be made against your speech and then rebut those arguments within your speech. When you offer rebuttals for arguments against your speech, it shows your audience that you’ve done your homework and educated yourself about multiple sides of the issue.

Visualization

The next step of Monroe’s motivated sequence is the visualization step, in which you ask the audience to visualize a future where the need has been met or the problem solved. In essence, the visualization stage is where a speaker can show the audience why accepting a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior can positively affect the future. When helping people to picture the future, the more concrete your visualization is, the easier it will be for your audience to see the possible future and be persuaded by it. You also need to make sure that you clearly show how accepting your solution will directly benefit your audience.
According to Monroe, visualization can be conducted in one of three ways: positive, negative, or contrast.[195] The positive method of visualization is where a speaker shows how adopting a proposal leads to a better future (e.g., recycle, and we’ll have a cleaner and safer planet). Conversely, the negative method of visualization is where a speaker shows how not adopting the proposal will lead to a worse future (e.g., don’t recycle, and our world will become polluted and uninhabitable). Monroe also acknowledged that visualization can include a combination of both positive and negative visualization. In essence, you show your audience both possible outcomes and have them decide which one they would rather have.

Action

The final step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the action step, in which a speaker asks an audience to approve the speaker’s proposal. For understanding purposes, we break action into two distinct parts: audience action and approval. Audience action refers to direct physical behaviors a speaker wants from an audience (e.g., flossing their teeth twice a day, signing a petition, wearing seat belts). Approval, on the other hand, involves an audience’s consent or agreement with a speaker’s proposed attitude, value, or belief.
When preparing an action step, it is important to make sure that the action, whether audience action or approval, is realistic for your audience. Asking your peers in a college classroom to donate one thousand dollars to charity isn’t realistic. Asking your peers to donate one dollar is considerably more realistic. In a persuasive speech based on Monroe’s motivated sequence, the action step will end with the speech’s concluding device. As discussed elsewhere in this text, you need to make sure that you conclude in a vivid way so that the speech ends on a high point and the audience has a sense of energy as well as a sense of closure.
Now that we’ve walked through Monroe’s motivated sequence, let’s look at how you could use Monroe’s motivated sequence to outline a persuasive speech:
Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that the United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments.
Main Points:

  • Attention: Want to make nine thousand dollars for just three weeks of work lying around and not doing much? Then be a human guinea pig. Admittedly, you’ll have to have a tube down your throat most of those three weeks, but you’ll earn three thousand dollars a week.
  • Need: Every day many uneducated and lower socioeconomic-status citizens are preyed on by medical and pharmaceutical companies for use in for-profit medical and drug experiments. Do you want one of your family members to fall prey to this evil scheme?
  • Satisfaction: The United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments to ensure that uneducated and lower-socioeconomic-status citizens are protected.
  • Visualization: If we enact tougher experiment oversight, we can ensure that medical and pharmaceutical research is conducted in a way that adheres to basic values of American decency. If we do not enact tougher experiment oversight, we could find ourselves in a world where the lines between research subject, guinea pig, and patient become increasingly blurred.
  • Action: In order to prevent the atrocities associated with for-profit medical and pharmaceutical experiments, please sign this petition asking the US Department of Health and Human Services to pass stricter regulations on this preying industry that is out of control.

Problem-Cause-Solution

Another format for organizing a persuasive speech is the problem-cause-solution format. In this specific format, you discuss what a problem is, what you believe is causing the problem, and then what the solution should be to correct the problem.
Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that our campus should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech.
Main Points:

  1. Demonstrate that there is distrust among different groups on campus that has led to unnecessary confrontations and violence.
  2. Show that the confrontations and violence are a result of hate speech that occurred prior to the events.
  3. Explain how instituting a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy against hate speech could stop the unnecessary confrontations and violence.
In this speech, you want to persuade people to support a new campus-wide policy calling for zero-tolerance of hate speech. Once you have shown the problem, you then explain to your audience that the cause of the unnecessary confrontations and violence is prior incidents of hate speech. Lastly, you argue that a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy could help prevent future unnecessary confrontations and violence. Again, this method of organizing a speech is as simple as its name: problem-cause-solution.





Comparative Advantages

The final method for organizing a persuasive speech is called the comparative advantages speech format. The goal of this speech is to compare items side-by-side and show why one of them is more advantageous than the other. For example, let’s say that you’re giving a speech on which e-book reader is better: Amazon.com’s Kindle or Barnes and Nobles’ Nook. Here’s how you could organize this speech:
Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that the Nook is more advantageous than the Kindle.
Main Points:

  1. The Nook allows owners to trade and loan books to other owners or people who have downloaded the Nook software, while the Kindle does not.
  2. The Nook has a color-touch screen, while the Kindle’s screen is black and grey and noninteractive.
  3. The Nook’s memory can be expanded through microSD, while the Kindle’s memory cannot be upgraded.
As you can see from this speech’s organization, the simple goal of this speech is to show why one thing has more positives than something else. Obviously, when you are demonstrating comparative advantages, the items you are comparing need to be functional equivalents—or, as the saying goes, you cannot compare apples to oranges.

Here is one list of 50 ideas
And here is another list of 50 ideas

Here are the ideas you can't choose:
Abortions
Drug Legalization
Gay Marriage
Guns
Israel v Palestine

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

The Mid Term

Mid Term

1. Why is audience the most important part of developing a speech?

2. What does it mean to be persuasive and how does it work?

3. What are ethos, pathos and logos and how do they work in a speech?

4. What are the basics of good speech organization?


5. What is the difference between your speech purpose and your thesis statement?

Do a speech outline for the following topic including a speech purpose and a thesis statement. Follow the format I gave to you.


How to cook an egg



This document is due Friday at 5 p.m. 
Send it to me as a Google Doc

Monday, September 22, 2014

The Demonstration Speech




"This is how we do it . . ."
                                      Bel Biv DeVoe

A demonstration speech is a form of informative speech where the speaker’s primary purpose is to teach the audience how to complete a task (or process).




A demonstration speech is about training the audience to perform a task or complete a process. Just as with any educational task, it helps tremendously if your audience is motivated to learn.
This is why it’s important to tell your audience how they will benefit from the knowledge you are about to share. Once your audience knows why they are learning this new task, they will be motivated to learn.
Will learning this new task or process help your audience:
  • Earn or save money?
  • Earn a promotion?
  • Build their range of skills?
  • Save them time?
  • Make their life easier?
  • Provide enjoyment or satisfaction?
  • Make them happy?
There are many ways to motivate your audience, but one of the best ways is to open with a story. Paint a picture of how their life will improve with this new knowledge.
This speech requires a high degree of creativity, so take chances with it and give it some thought. Talk about something you know about and satisfy the needs of your audience.

  1. Find a topic that is closely related to your hobbies, skills, favorite sports, or interests. Organize your rough ideas on good speech topics. Make a list of the things you love to do or make.

  1. Now develop your demonstration speech topic. The easiest way is to show how to do something, how something is done, how to make something, or how something works. Start with one of these example phrases. Fill in the informative topic of your choice:
    1. How to make…
    2. How to fix…
    3. How to use…
    4. How to do…
    5. How ... works
    6. How ... is done, produced or made
Take a look at this: 


Examining Mario

What does Mario do that's so effective as a demonstration speech?
  • He is an expert in his content, which allows him to 'multi-task'
  • He uses tangents to be interesting and to have something to say while he's cooking
  • He gives the audience details about his subject
    • little background information we'd find interesting
    • these bits are likely prepared and thought of ahead of time
  • ingredients/materials are prepared ahead of time and ready to be used
  • He has obviously practiced
    • he's not "thinking" about what he's doing, he's just doing it
  • He doesn't over-narrate
    • over-describing would be boring, so he tells stories and gives interesting information as we watch his hands
    • Like a television sports' announcer, he realizes we can see what he's doing

For Next Class
List at least five things you can do as well as Mario
We will discuss your ideas and how to set them up in the public speaking template. 

MEANWHILE
Start thinking about how you will record your video. 
You may need someone to help you record your work or you can set up your iPad or phone at a distance to record yourself.