Chapter 8

 First four steps in preparing a speech  Select and narrow your topic ▪ Give yourself at least 1 week from topic selection to delivery  Determine your purpose  Develop your central idea  Generate your main ideas

 Select & Narrow Topic  Choose a topic to speak about ▪ Narrow this topic to fit time limits.  When selecting a topic: ▪ Consider the audience ▪ Topic should be relevant to audience interests ▪ Should consider account audience knowledge ▪ Video ClipVideo Clip

 Consider the occasion ▪ A successful topic should be appropriate to audience and occasion  Consider Yourself ▪ Best speech topics are those that reflect experiences or interests

 Strategies to generate speech topics  Brainstorming ▪ Lets Brainstorm personal experience topics  Listen and read for topic ideas  Search the web for possible topics

 Narrowing the topic for your presentation  Create categories ▪ General topic followed by more specific  Find the right level ▪ Don’t be too broad (Cars, Insects, TV, Etc) ▪ Don’t be too narrow  If you can’t find any/enough info, broaden it back out some

 Determine purpose  Speaking to Inform ▪ Gives listeners information  Speaking to Persuade ▪ Attempts to change or reinforce audience views, behaviors or actions  Speaking to Entertain ▪ Get audience to relax, smile, laugh, & Enjoy themselves

 To develop your specific purpose ▪ Consider what audience should get from speech ▪ What kind of behavior should they exhibit  Using hands free device ▪ What action do you want them to take  To go out and vote ▪ Use specific purpose to determine what information will be gathered

 Develop Your Central Idea  Your central idea should be ▪ A one sentence summary of your speech ▪ Express your central idea in a complete declarative sentence ▪ Use direct specific language ▪ “Censorship of school textbooks threatens the rights of school children”

 Develop Your Central Idea  Your central idea should be ▪ Specific purpose should be a single idea ▪ “Today I will persuade you to help the homeless” ▪ “Today I will inform you about natural disasters” ▪ Central idea should reflect consideration of the audience ▪ “Exercising voting rights will make a difference in your community”

 Generate and preview your main ideas  Write central idea at the top of a sheet of paper ▪ Then ask 3 questions ▪ Does the central idea have logical divisions ▪ Are there several reasons why the central idea is true  Legalizing Marijuana will help the economy  California is a fascinating place to live  A college education is beneficial to everyone

▪ Can I support my central idea with a series of steps ▪ Or chronological progression  There were many phases in the development of Airplanes  Computer technology has improved the mass media

 Meanwhile, Back at the computer  Once topic is narrowed ▪ Write central idea ▪ Write specific purpose statement