Informative Speaking

First, you need to pick a topic that will appeal to your audience members. To be appealing to audience members, a topic must be:

1. Dealt with at a stimulating level: If you are merely teaching the audience information that they already know, you will certainly bore them. If you teach them information that is “over their heads”, you will lose their attention and interest. The key is to find a happy medium, new information that they will readily grasp.

2. Dealt with creatively: Surprise your audience. Think about your topic in unexpected ways. Don’t merely step behind the podium with a modified version of an essay you wrote in another class. Be an entertainer. When an audience is entertained, they pay closer attention.

Your audience will also appreciate it if you pick a topic that is relevant to their lives. Whether we care to admit it or not, deep down, we all have one primary interest: ourselves. If your audience does not see a personal benefit that they will receive by listening to your speech, the speech will not be very appealing.

When presenting an informative speech, it is important to have proper supporting material to enhance your audience’s understanding of your topic. Some forms of support include:

• Examples� – It’s difficult to listen to someone speaking about an abstract idea with which you have little familiarity. As a listener in this situation, you are forced to do a lot of mental work and you may or may not fully grasp what the speaker is trying to say. It’s a whole different experience when the speaker uses an example that illustrates the abstract idea. For example (ha-ha), a speaker might be talking about poor economic conditions in a certain area of the country. Rather than just leaving the concept of a “poor economy” as an idea, they should speak about the specific struggles of real live people with names and anecdotes.
• Statistics� – People tend to avoid statistics in a speech because they are afraid that people will find them boring. To the contrary, statistics can be interesting and informative if used correctly. The key is to pick statistics that are particularly startling or shocking. You can’t build an entire speech around statistics, of course. However, as long as the statistics add to the quality of the speech, and they don’t misrepresent the situation, they can be used liberally.
• Facts� – A good informative speech is filled with facts. A “fact” is any bit of information that be verified as being “true”. Whenever you present facts in a speech, you should cite the source of those facts so that the audience believes them (and you) to be credible.
• Expert Opinion� – An informative speech is not the time for your personal opinion, that time will come on the persuasive speech. Expert opinion, however, can and should be used in an informative speech. Expert opinion involves using�excerpts�and quotations from people who are highly respected in the field about which you are speaking. It is important to state the credentials of the person whom you are quoting, if the audience is not familiar with this person. Otherwise, your quote will not have much impact.

Personalize Your Ideas

Listeners want to be entertained as they are being enlightened. Nothing takes the edge off an informative speech more than an unbroken string of facts and figures. And nothing enlivens a speech more than personal illustrations. Remember, people are interested in people. They react to stories, not statistics. Whenever possible, you should try to personalize your ideas and dramatize them in human terms.

Let’s say you are talking about the effects of electromagnetic radiation— the kind of radiation emitted by such everyday items as microwave ovens, CB radios, automatic garage door openers, and video display terminals. You would surely say that sustained exposure to electromagnetic radiation has been linked to headaches, dizziness, fatigue, loss of judgment, sterility, cataracts, and leukemia. You would also note that these health problems have been caused by electromagnetic radiation at one-tenth of a milliwatt, and that a number of consumer products emit radiation at levels 50 to 100 times as high.

But these are only numbers. If you really want to get your audience involved, you will weave in some examples of people who have been harmed by electromagnetic radiation. You might do as one student did and tell the story of Becky Krimson, who worked for the Citizens National Bank in Chicago:

Throughout her three-year period of employment there, Becky often complained of headaches, dizziness, fatigue, and loss of hair. Her boss said she occasionally suffered partial memory loss, while her co-workers frequently complained about Becky’s emotional instability. Upon a visit to her doctor she was given some pills, told to take a few days' rest, and sent home. At the time Becky did not know that the video display terminal she worked with at the bank was zapping her with radiation, and that rest and pills could not cure her symptoms.'⁴

One speaker, discussing the differences between primary school education in Japan and the United States, found an ingenious way to personalize his subject. He created a "fictional, yet typical, Japanese child—Ruriko," and led his audience through a day in Ruriko’s life. Here is an excerpt:

Ruriko awakens at 6:30 a.m. By 7:30 she has put on her neat, plaid-skirted school uniform, eaten her breakfast of rice and fish, picked up the beautifully arranged box lunch made by her mother, and departed for her school in central Yokohama. Ruriko is ten years old.

Classes continue, with only a break for lunch, until early afternoon. Then Ruriko’s mother picks her up and takes her to a gymnastics lesson. (Tomorrow it will be a music lesson, the next day calligraphy, the day after that swimming.) As soon as the lesson is over, Ruriko and her mother jump on the train and hurry to the next scheduled appointment. It is time for juko, the special "cram school” many Japanese children attend to improve their chances of gaining admission to private school. For three hours, at juko, Ruriko is tutored in science and math.

Ruriko and her mother board the train again and return home, where they enjoy a hasty supper. Then Ruriko settles down to her homework. Around 11:00 p.m. her mother brings her a snack of noodles and tea to keep up her energy for study. Shortly after 1:00 a.m. Ruriko goes to bed. Another day in the life of an ambitious Japanese schoolchild has ended.

This speaker could simply have listed facts about the Japanese system of primary education as though he were reciting from an encyclopedia. Instead he chose a better method—inventing "Ruriko”—to bring the topic to life. No matter what your subject, you can almost always find a way to express it in personal terms.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31