Real Communication An Introduction

454 Part 4  Public Speaking

his films to show the way Eastwood has been perceived at different points in

his career.

When you are offering examples to explain a concept, it’s important to

choose examples that your audience will understand. Some examples may

be familiar enough to your audience that you can make quick references to

them with little explanation. If you are giving a speech today on community

planning and rebuilding after disasters, you could probably mention Moore,

Oklahoma, after the 2013 tornados or Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, and

almost any adult member of your audience will get it. But other examples

or audiences might require more detail and explanation. For example, if you

are giving a speech about conformity, you might wish to use as an example

the incident in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, when more than nine hundred

members of a religious cult committed mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced

punch. As with many aspects of delivering a speech, audience analysis is cru-

cial: if you are speaking to a younger audience, you’ll need to offer a good deal

of explanation to make this example work. However, an audience consisting

mainly of baby boomers, historians, or social psychologists would require little

more than a brief reference to “Jonestown” to get the point of the example.

Use Appropriate Presentation Aids

As you will recall from Chapter 14, presentation aids can add value to your

speech by helping audiences follow and understand the information you pre-

sent. Such aids can be especially helpful in informative speeches. For example,

in an informative speech about the importance of a person’s credit score, the

speaker might show (via slides or handouts) sample credit reports. Seeing this

information in addition to hearing about it will underscore the importance of

your message: everyone has a credit report and a credit score.

Informative speeches also benefit greatly from the use of graphic presenta-

tion aids. In a speech describing a process, for example, a flowchart outlining the

steps you describe in your speech can help audiences visualize how the process

works. Graphs can also be helpful in conveying numerical or statistical informa-

tion. The combination of hearing your message (the speech content) and seeing

your message (through presentation aids) helps the

audience retain the content of your informative

speech.

Let’s take a look at an informative speech by

Anna Davis. She chose to inform her audience

about how and why social media are being har-

nessed as a tool to advance social causes and moti-

vate people to act on them.

Anna organizes the speech in a topical pattern:

each of her main points is a subtopic or category

of the overall speech topic of social media move-

ments. This is one of the most frequently used

patterns for informative speeches. Anna’s speaking

outline and references are included here as well.

Consider your specific

speech purpose. What are

your objectives for your

informative speech? Now

consider what types of pres-

entation aids might help

you achieve your purpose.

How might you use aids to

drive home the point you are

trying to make or the central

idea that you wish to convey

to your audience?

AND YOU?

PRESENTATION AIDS
are especially appropriate in
informative speaking because
they enable the audience to
not only hear about but also
to visualize a new topic. Justin
Sullivan/Getty Images