Chp 16: Informative Speaking

BOOK: pgs. 241-253

PDF: pgs. 251-263

What you need to Know

• To inform versus to persuade

• Ways to organize your speech: spatial, chronological, cause-effect, problem-situation, topical ways to help audience understand speech concepts: repetition, provide rewards, show and tell, build on base knowledge and provide new insight, use humor, ask questions to see if they understand

Informative Speaking

• Information speeches - speeches that teach something new

  • Inform: Make the audience aware of a phenomenon

  • Explain it to them to deepen their understanding

Information We Explain

• Objects - tangible items

  • Artifacts, mementos, souvenirs, buildings, places, or even people

• Processes - explains the steps needed to accomplish something; usually arranged chronologically

  • “How to” speech intended to teach the audience how to accomplish something

  • Explain processes specific to a particular industry

  • Explain how things happen in science and medicine

• Events - focus on something that happened, is happening, or might happen at some point in the future.

  • Often organized chronologically

  • Allows the speaker to explain the event as it unfolds

  • Could be arranged topically, especially when many things are happening simultaneously

• Concepts - explains an abstract idea instead of a concrete object

  • Presentations about theories, ideas, religions, economics, political ideology, or laws.

  • Challenging; they require the speaker to take something abstract and intangible and make it easy for the audience to understand by

    • Vivid descriptions, examples, or illustrations.

Patterns of Organization

• Spatial: how parts are physically related to one another

• Chronological: how events or processes occur in time

• Cause-effect: how causes led to outcomes

• Problem-solution: how solutions address problems

• Topical: dividing by categories or subtopics

Difficult Concepts

• According to Dr. Katherine Rowan, there are 3 reasons why informative speeches explain difficult concepts

  • Language or concept is difficult

  • Structures or processes are hard to envision

  • Ideas are difficult to believe

Difficult Language

• Use elucidating explanations (an explanation that helps an audience understand the definition of a term and distinguish its essential characteristics from the associated characteristics that are only sometimes present in that which you are defining) with difficult vocabulary

• Dr. Katherine Rowan explains that elucidating explanations should have four parts to process

• Provide:

  • Common exemplar, or ideal example

  • The definition that explains the essentials characteristics of the concept

  • Several examples and non-examples

  • Opportunity to practice identifying examples and non-examples

Difficult to Picture

• Two ways something might be difficult to imagine

  • Challenging to get an overall impression of the phenomenon

  • Challenging to see the parts, processes, and interrelations of the phenomenon

• Use a quasi-scientific explanation (an explanation that helps the audience get an overall picture of a phenomenon and see relationships among the parts) in this case

  • Offer a graphic feature to help (e.g., diagram)

  • Provide clear explanation of how parts relate

Difficult to Believe

• Something concepts are counterintuitive

• Use a transformative explanation (explanations that help audience members transform their everyday ideas about how something works into a more scientifically accurate understanding of the phenomenon) in this case

  • Acknowledge lay theories of concept

  • Acknowledge why theories are plausible

  • Explain why their perspective is incorrect

  • Explain the new concept and why it’s effective

Strategies to Help Audience Understanding

• Use repetition

  • Expose your audience to the same idea multiple times in multiple ways

  • The audience is more likely to remember the info

  • Aids your audience in understanding important complicated material within your speech

  • Provide more than one example

  • Find creative and different ways to express the same idea to help the audience achieve understanding.

  • The more you repeat something, the greater the chance the audience will pick up on it.

• Provide rewards

  • Your audience will pay more attention to what you’re saying

  • Rewards can be:

    • Explicit (giving candy to members who can answer questions correctly) or

    • Implicit (telling the audience how they will benefit from the knowledge you’re sharing)

  • The reward lasts much longer for the audience.

  • Creating intrinsic rewards for listening to the speech assists the audience in investing time in paying attention to you.

  • When we invest time in something, it shows that we care about it.

• Show and tell

  • Vital role in helping audiences understand the material

  • Uses visual and verbal organizational cues to help the audience identify the most important concepts and how they relate to each other.

  • Examples of visual organization cues:

    • Putting keywords for each main point on a PowerPoint slide

    • Showing important definitions or quotations while you’re talking about them

    • Showing your audience diagrams or images that will help them visualize how the concepts are related

    • Giving your audience a paper handout that will help them follow along during your speech

  • Use matrixes or other diagrams to help the audience understand the connections between the concepts.

  • Examples of verbal organizational cues:

    • Signposts

    • Reviews

    • Previews that help draw the audience’s attention to important concepts and

      • Help the audience understand how ideas are related

• Build on what they already know

  • Connect the new information to something that the audience already knows.

  • Use an analogy or metaphor to show the similarities between something familiar and something new.

  • Connect your topic or info to something which they are already familiar with.

    • Helps the audience make the association themselves in terms they understand; info will be remembered.

• Use humor

  • Capture and keep the audience’s attention.

  • Be careful; make sure that your humor enhances their attention rather than distracts from it.

  • Humor must help them focus on the content and not you.

  • The use of idioms and terms you expect the audience will know can be easily understood by the audience.

• Check for understanding (periodically)

  • Ask your audience questions or provide examples

  • If not, adapt your speech by explaining the ideas in a slightly different way

  • Prepare a few different ways to explain the same point.

Delivering Information Dialogically

• Provide multiple examples

• Notice the audience’s nonverbal cues

• Achieve understanding, not agreement

• Ask clarifying questions

• Maintain interest throughout your speech

• Provide clear points and references