Unit 2

Part II: Public communication

Part II: Public communication
I. Choosing and developing a topic
 1.1 Choosing a topic
Look for a Topic Early
• Choose a topic as soon as possible and then stick
with it.
• Have plenty of time to complete the speech; run
even deeper than that.
• Ideas seem to come automatically to speakers;
things speakers have read or observed.
The earlier you decide on a topic, the more
you can take advantage of these happy
coincidences.
 1.1 Choosing a topic
Choose a Topic That Interests You
• Your topic must be interesting to your
audience, and that is interesting to you.
• The chosen topic will also improve your ability
to create the speech, and it will increase your
confidence when it comes time to present it.
You’d better review your favorite media, discuss
current events with your family and friends, or
just contemplate your interests in solitude.
Checklist used as a guide for choosing
a topic
 PEOPLE PLACES THINGS EVENT
Jesse Jackson Miami Virtual reality Passover
Hillary Clinton Los Angeles Computers World cup
My parents Sahara Desert Cellular phones Job interview
David Letterman New York City Bible Olympic Games
Whitney Houston My hometown Koran Graduation
PROCESSES CONCEPTS NATURAL PHEOMENA PROBLEMS

Getting a tattoo Free trade Hurricanes Teenage gun use

Buying a personal Afrocentrism Earthquakes Sexual harassment
computer Chaos theory Lightning Water shortage
How fiber optics work Conservatism Rain forests Illiteracy
Investing in the stock Multiculturalism Global warming Campus crime
market Prison overcrowding
What happens when
people dream
Adapting to a different
culture
Defining purpose
 General purpose
1. To entertain: To relax your audience by providing it with a
pleasant listening experience.
2. To inform: To enlighten your audience by
teaching it something.
3. To persuade: To move your
audience toward a new attitude or behavior.
 General purpose
To inform
• Act as a teacher or lecturer
• Convey information: clearly,
accurately, interestingly
• Describe, narrate, report,
explain
--> to enhance the knowledge
and understanding of your
listeners – to give
information they did not
know before.
To persuade
• Act as an advocate or a partisan
• Go beyond information to
espousing a cause
• Change or structure the attitudes
or actions of your audience.
• Convince, exhort
 To win over your listeners to your
point of view – to get them to
believe sth or to do sth as a result
of your speech
 Specific Purpose
• Narrow down your choice of
topic: to determiner the specific
purpose of your speech.
• Your general purpose is only a
one-word label, your specific
purpose is expressed in the form
of a purpose statement—a
complete sentence that
describes exactly what you want
your speech to accomplish.
• There are three criteria for a
good purpose statement.
1. A Purpose Statement Should Be Receiver Oriented.

- Your purpose is focused on how your speech will affect your

audience members. For example:
My purpose is to tell my audience about small claims court.
• Your purpose is “to tell” an audience something, which
suggests that the speech could be successful even if no one
listens.
- Your purpose statement should refer to the response you
want from your audience:
1. A Purpose Statement Should Be Receiver Oriented. (cont.)
- It should tell what the audience members will know or be able to
do after listening to your speech:
After listening to my speech, my audience will know more about
small claims court procedures.
- That’s an improvement, because you now have stated what you
expect from your audience. But this purpose statement could be
improved more through the judicious application of a second
criterion:
2. A Purpose Statement Should Be Specific.
A purpose statement with enough to measure or test your
audience, after your speech, to see if you had achieved your
purpose. In the example given earlier, you need something
more specific, such as:
• After listening to my speech, my audience will know how to
win a case in small claims court.
• This is an improvement, but it can be made still better by
applying a third criterion:
3. A Purpose Statement Should Be Realistic.
• You must aim for an audience response that is possible to
accomplish. In your small claims court speech, it would be
impossible for you to be sure that each of your audience
members has a winnable case. So a better purpose
statement for this speech might sound something like this:
After listening to my speech, my audience will be able to list
the five steps for preparing a small claims case.
• This purpose statement is receiver oriented, specific, and
realistic. It also suggests an organizational pattern for the
speech (“the five steps”), which can be a bonus in a carefully
worded purpose statement.
Consider the following sets of purpose statements
 The thesis statement/ central idea

• The thesis statement tells you what the central idea/ the subject
sentence/ the major thought of your speech is.
• It is more precise than your topic or your specific purpose
statement. It is “sums up” your speech in a single sentence.
• The thesis statement is usually formulated later in the speech-
making process, after you have done some research on your topic.
The progression from topic to purpose to thesis is, therefore,
another focusing process, as in the following examples:
 Examples
1, Topic: baseball cards
•General purpose: to inform
•Specific purpose: to inform/tell my audience of/ about the major
factors that determine the value of a baseball card
•Thesis statement/ central idea: The four factors that determine the
value of a baseball card are the fame of the player, the age of the
card, the rarity of the card, and the physical condition of the card.
2, Topic: Can the Internet cure the common cold?
• General Purpose: To inform
• Specific Purpose: After listening to my speech, my audience
members will use the information available on the World Wide
Web to be better informed before they see their doctors.
• Thesis Statement: Online medical data can save you the cost
and hassle of an unnecessary trip to the doctor.
 Practice 1
• Topic:
• Specific purpose:
• Thesis statement:
• Main points:
I. The first major race in alpine skiing is the downhill
II. The second major race in alpine skiing is the slalom
III. The third major race in alpine skiing is the giant slalom
 Practice 2
• Topic:
• Specific purpose:
• Thesis statement:
• Main points:
I.As a social worker, Jane Addams founded the settlement-house movement in
Chicago
II. As a reformer, Jane Addams campaigned for child-labor laws, unemployment
compensation, and better public sanitation
III. As a suffragist, Jane Addams fought to give women the vote
IV. As a writer, Jane Addams is best known for her autobiographical Twenty
Years at Hull House
 Choosing a hot topic
• Watch a video
• Listening carefully
• Take note
• Report main points
..\tips & steps Pre\choosing a hot topic.FLV
 1.3 ANALYZING THE SPEAKING SITUATION

• The audience
• The occasion
• To be successful, every choice you make in putting
together your speech—your choice of purpose, topic,
and all the material you use to develop your speech—
must be appropriate to both of these components.
 Knowing your Audience
• Plan and Research
• Survey and Interviews
• “The only barrier to learning the truth, is to assume you know
it.” (Confucius)
• Are the participants …
– Experienced?
– Average?
– New?
 The Listener: Audience Analysis
• AUDIENCE TYPE :
– passersby: people who aren’t much interested—at least not in
advance—in what you have to say
– captives: who have gathered for some reason besides the joy of
hearing you speak
– volunteers: who have gathered together because of a common
interest.
• AUDIENCE PURPOSE
• DEMOGRAPHICS: number of people, gender, age, group membership,
racial, ethnic, or cultural background, religion,
 The Listener: Audience Analysis
• ATTITUDES, BELIEFS, AND VALUES
- An attitude is a predisposition to respond to
something in a favorable or unfavorable way.
- A belief is an underlying conviction about the truth
of something, which is often based on cultural
training.
- A value is a deeply rooted belief about a concept’s
inherent worth or worthiness. An audience might,
for example, hold the value that “freedom is a good
thing.”
 You can often make an inference about audience
members’ attitudes by recognizing the beliefs and
values they are likely to hold.
 Make questions about your audience
• Who is the audience?
• Why am I writing/presenting? What do I want my audience to
know or do?
• What do they already know? What is their level of
understanding?
• Do you have any points in common with your audience?
• Do you have any points that are different from your audience?
• Does your audience already know
something about the things that
you are discussing?
 Make questions about your audience

• What does your audience need to know about the things that you are discussing?
Why do they need to know these things? Are you presenting these things in the
best possible way to meet your audience’s needs?
• What is in the topic for your audience? Can you give them a really good reason for
listening to you?
• What will the audience be able to do with the information that you give to them?
• Will your audience benefit from the things you have to say?
• Why are you telling the audience this information in the first place?
• Is your audience already interested in the topic? If so, how can you exploit this
interest? If not, what can you do to give them an avenue into the topic so that they
can be interested in it?
 Analysing the occasion
• Time
• Place
 1.4 GATHERING INFORMATION
• Internet Research: find key words, topic, picture,
audio, video…
• Library Research: the Librarians, the Library
Catalogues; the Reference section, Computerized
research services
• Interviewing
• Personal Observation
• Survey Research