SPC 1315 / 1321
Making Effective
Presentations
When is the correct time to ask questions
during class lectures?
When is the correct time to ask questions
during someone’s speech?
What should you do if you arrive for
class while someone is giving a
speech?
Dealing with Fear
 Accept some fear as normal
 Desire to do well, adrenalin for energy
 Good preparation and practice
 Welcoming environment
Dealing with Fear
 List your fears
 I’m afraid ... (will happen)
 Classify your fears
 Helps identify solutions
 Reconceptualize the audience
 From ‘critic’ to ‘recipient’
 ‘Talk with’ them
 Look for friendly faces
Dealing with Fear
 Build confidence with preparation and
practice
 Learn techniques for tension release
 Visualize success (field goal / golf shot)
 ‘Cognitive restructuring’ -- replace mental
negatives with positive ones
 Practice ‘systematic desensitization’ -gradual exposure over time
Fear might lead to...
 Monotone delivery
 Or, a constant vocal pattern
 Instead of good pace, rate, inflection and
overall good vocal variety
 AND -- limited gestures or overexaggerated
gesturing, lack of eye contact and effective
speaker posture and movement, instead of
useful ‘nonverbal communication’
Some advice examples
 Fear of speaking assessed
 Imagine the audience loves you
 Overcoming Fear
 Four steps for overcoming fear
Apprehension or Fear?
 True high level nervousness and symptons
 Sink or swim?
 Shake it off?
 Common anxiety and uncertainty
 Energy
 Breathing right
 Just chat
Chapter 5
Developing the
Presentation:
Planning
Getting Started
 Four phases of the creative process
 Preparation, incubation, illumination,
refinement
 Make a realistic timetable
 List tasks, estimate time
 Determine order
 Set intermediate deadlines
 Reason for spreading out speeches, rough draft,
final outline and notes before speech due date
 Developing a speech Sunday for Monday presentation?
Preparation Realities
 Extemporaneous speech
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Outline organization
Reduced to note cards
Practice with focus on main ideas
Enhanced conversation
 Because a speech is delivered orally, it must be
composed orally
 Three key phases
 Preparation, practice, presentation
Planning Pitfalls
 Failing to allow time for incubation
 Not finding good evidence to support
assertions
 Failing to allow adequate margin of error
 Stalling progress because of ‘writer’s block’
 Not practicing orally, and over several
practice sessions
Chap. 6 -- Topic Selection
 Select a topic
 Something you like
 Something you know about
 Something you feel strongly about
 Unusual experience you’ve had
 Special expertise you have?
 Something that fits the occasion
 Develop a purpose
 Write a statement and summary
 Come up with main points
Establishing a Purpose
 General Purpose
Inform? Persuade? Entertain? Invite?
 Specific Purpose
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Describe the Reaction You Are Seeking
Be As Specific As Possible
Make Your Goal Realistic
Be aware of your audience
 Specify the primary audience outcome
 Develop a clear Thesis Statement (p. 82)
Methods for Defining a
Thesis Statement
 Imagine that you met a member of your audience
at the elevator and had only a few seconds to
explain your idea before the doors closed.
 Imagine that you had to send a one- or twosentence text message that communicated your
main ideas.
Methods for
Defining a Thesis Statement
continued….
 Ask yourself, “If my listeners heard only a
small portion of my remarks, what is the
minimum they should have learned?”
 Suppose that a friend asked one of your
listeners what you were driving at in your
presentation. What would you want the
audience member to say?
Thesis Statement Steps
 Formulate a single declarative sentence
 All sentences in your outline are declarative
 Each sentence is an outline point or subpoint.
 Break the thesis statement into a list of
questions
 This helps you identify subtopics
 All speeches have 2-5 main points
 Select a speech title if necessary
 Not all speeches require a title
Audience Analysis -- Ch. 7
 Analyzing the Audience
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What are their positions?
What are their personal preferences?
What demographic characteristics are significant?
What size is the group?
Why is the audience there?
What does the audience know?
What are the listeners’ attitudes?
Audience Demographics
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Age
Sex (gender)
Religion
Cultural Background
Intellectual Level
Occupation
Socioeconomic Level
Community Status
How do you get to know them?
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Direct Observation
Systematic data collection
Selected interviews or focus groups
Talk with the contact person
Use intelligent inference
Don’t assume ‘they’re all just like the rest
of us’
Analyzing Yourself
As the Speaker
 Your Purpose
 Your Knowledge
 Your Feelings About the Occasion
Speaker Credibility
 “A speaker’s character is the most
important means of persuasion he
possesses”.
--Aristotle
 It consists of…
Character
Intelligence
Good will
Analyzing the Occasion
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Facilities
 Lighting
 Furniture arrangement
 Physical comfort
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Time
 Time of day
 Time limit
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Context
 Visit the location
Research (Reasoning)
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Chap. 8 -- Research
APA style
Citing in the outline / reference list / in the speech
Full sentence outline preparation
Note card preparation
Speech tomorrow
 4 minutes :30 / 3:00 / :30
 Outline and note card Wednesday night
 Hard Copy – exactly the same version – Thurs. 9 am
Research
 A good extemporaneous speech is based on
information you find, organize, and cite as
evidence within your speech
 Speech outline must have APA style citations
 End of outline must have APA style References
 References must come from traditional, retrievable
sources
 Rerences list: tell me where to find it
 NOT: how you found it (database)
 APA style online
Research -- Gee Library
Research -- Gee Library
Research -- Gee Library
 http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/library/
NOT ....
 Google, Bing, Yahoo and related web pages
 Wikipedia, or encyclopedias in general
 More than a a few ‘unretrievable sources’
 Primary evidence is better than secondary
 Personal interviews are not cited
 APA (and all others) have specific citation
styles -- you must check and use APA style
Best sources
 Recent, relevant evidence found in journal
article
 Recent, relevant evidence found in
magazine, newspaper or similar publication
 Recent, relevant evidence found in a book
or book chapter
 Primary evidence collected from your own
research
Example
 Thesis statement: “Sexual content on television
leads to an increasingly relaxed sexual attitude in
American society.” (a persuasive topic)
 Main point: Teenagers are more frequently
engaged in sexual activity now than a generation
ago.
 Main point: Society is more accepting of
homosexuality than a generation ago.
 Main point: Married Americans are more
promiscuously unfaithful to their marriage than a
generation ago.
What do I need to define?
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Sexual content on TV
Teenagers. 13 or 19?
‘A generation’
Relaxed sexual attitude
What is ‘on television?’ Prime time TV
shows? Movies? Soap operas? Reality
shows? Sit-coms? Children’s shows?
 Importance of topic?
What facts are important?
 Studies from the 1950s to today showing a
relationship between TV viewing and human
behavior
 Studies from the early 1900s about film content
and audience behavior
 Sociology / psychology studies about changes in
ethical perspectives over the past 100 years
 Broader history of human sexuality over hundred
of years (Romans, Greeks, Shakespeare plays)
What evidence?
 Find only studies that support my thesis?
 What theoretical basis was there for a particular
study? (qualitative / quantitative) (of these,
specific theories)
 ‘hegemony’ is qualitative. Social learning / cognitive is
quantitative (measure statistics -- Bobo doll)
 Facts, statistics, expert opinions... (more on this
later)
 ‘Proof’
 Revisit ethical perspectives
Research strategy
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Refer back to Topic Selection issues
Refer back to Planning issues
Prepare based on speech time allotted
Move from General to Specific
Develop a list of key terms and do some
overall reading about your topic
 Use the library --->>
Library Research
 Online -- as demonstrated
 Talk to a librarian
 Locate books, journals, specialized dictionaries
etc.
 Use the Internet
 Some information on web pages
 The Netherlands: Hilversummary
 Johnson, D. (1993, October 11). Dutch need to
feed a second private station. Variety, M6.
Doing Research
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Talk to people
Locate people with information
Conduct interviews
Conduct surveys
BACK TO CITING
 APA & MLA -- us, APA (pp. 121-123 / online)
 Conversational in speech, style in outline
More Speech samples as time
permits
 Persuasive ? -- or motivational? Correction of
errors? Clear overview? Enough evidence?
(answers.com as a source?) His verbal ‘filling in
of silence? His attention getting technique? His
‘are you ready’? Pounding the lectern a problem?
 Informative with annotations
 Pacing issue? Enough vocal variety? Thesis tied to
clincher? Good transitions?
Summary of main ideas from this
week...
 Are improved communication skills
important?
 What and who do we use as a theoretical
basis for evaluating ‘good communication’
 ‘Western’ perspective
 Negotiating shared meaning
 What goes into an extemporanous speech?
Main ideas...
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Talk about things you have an interest in
Understand how we communicate
Importance of listening
Ethics
Fear
Preparation
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Planning
Topic Selection
Audience Analysis
Research
Organization of Ideas
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Full sentence outline
Specific purpose and thesis statement
Main Points with subpoints and ‘proof’
Transitions (connectives) between points
Introduction and Conclusion
Staying on time -- based on organization
and practice
Finally...
 The basic issue of a speech is
 Get the audience’s attention and tell them what
your speech is about
 Guide the audience through the speech by your
language and delivery -- making main points
obvious
 Transition into a conclusion and remind the
audience what the speech was about. Have a
clear ‘clincher.’
Thursday / Friday
 9:00 - speeches -- final Informative preparation
 After test Friday, go to ‘Mini Lab’ or Gee Library
computer lab and work on Informative Speech
(Gee Library -- librarian help)
 Find a minimum of 5 retrievable sources
 Create a rough draft full sentence outline
 Create a rough draft 4x6 note card (see sample)
 Weekend: continue reading, fine tune outline and
note card, practice and time speech, submit final
draft of outline and note card by 10 pm Sunday
 Submit these as .doc, .pdf or .rtf attachments to
demarsmedia@gmail.com
 Samples
linked on
course
outline
Other Speech reminders
 Timing Speeches
 3:30 - 4:30 / 9:30 - 10:30
 letter grade reduction per :30 / stopped after 4:30
 Practice timing to 4:00 / 10:00
 Length of intro? Length of conclusion? Length of
each main point?
 Attention-getting open , clincher close?
 How to practice? Record yourself / use an
audience / realistic set up
What you turn in at 9:00 Monday
-- late to class = late
 Final Draft full sentence outline -- same as was
sent to e-mail address
 Final draft note card -- same as was sent to e-mail
address
 No outline and note card = no speech
 Improper note card will not be given back for use
 Whatever you hand me must be what you take to
the lectern for your speech
 Speech order selected at random / posted on
outline
Questions / Discussion
Break ... 10 minutes .. speeches