Public Forum Speech Outline

A Public Forum speech is more like a persuasive essay than a Policy Debate Speech would be. You still need to prove your point(s) with evidence and logic, but the amount of evidence used is smaller, the speech is shorter overall, and you need to make text and evidence blend together in a way that sounds persuasive. Below is a quick outline to help you write you speeches. Resolved: In a democracy, civil disobedience is an appropriate weapon in the fight for justice. I. Introduction. Youll want to start with a paragraph that a) States your position on the resolution in a way that, b) grabs the listeners interest. A general statement about what you intend to show, and/or a pertinent quotation from an authoritative source about the legitimacy of civil disobedience will do nicely. You need not make all your arguments here, but stating the main one clearly and persuasively is important. One other thing you might want to do in this paragraph is state what you will and will not debate in the round. For example, on this topic you might want to make a statement about what defines democracy and how it frames what you do and do not have to defend. Reasoning. Once youve made your overall claim, the bulk of the speech should be devoted to proving why its true. Here, you can develop as many reasons as you wish, but the reality of a four-minute speech and the need to sound persuasive suggest that you should limit yourself to two or three good ones. These are your warrants, and you should use evidence from qualified sources to back them up. However, there are two key differences in evidence use from what you did in your Policy Debate speeches. First, you should not use long, extended quotes. Rather, you should be looking for something that backs up your warrant in a few sentences. There are sometimes reasons to throw out this advice, but for the most part, short and rhetorically sweet works well. Second, you need to embed your evidence into your argument. That means, rather than separating tag, citation, and evidence, you should make your sources qualifications and words blend into the speech. This only takes the addition of a few transition words. For example, if I want to back up my argument for the existence of gnomes, I would say, Leading authorities say theyre everywhere. According to Dr. Ima Elf, a Professor of Engineering at the University of Delaware, Gnomes have been spotted in suburban settings, and they have even been known to frequent the local bowling alleys on Saturday nights. Again, you should not try to pack a bunch of reasons into the body of your speech. Some you can save for later; and so for those first speeches, you need to choose your best two or three and develop them. Closing. By this time youve hopefully proved your point, and so you want to close on a high note. This last paragraph is your sales pitch, and so it should be well worded and memorable. A good metaphor, a statement about how allowing civil disobedience (or not) would affect the world, or even another famous quote (dont get carried away with evidence, though) would work here. You want the judge to be thinking about your speech when the next speaker is up there.

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