Public Speaking

Creating Speaking Notes (^145)
Speaking outlines help you maintain eye contact with the audience, secure in the
knowledge that if you lose your train of thought, you can glance at your notes to regain
your place.
To understand the different functions of these outlines, study this section excerpted
from Leif’s content outline, his speaking notes, and the speech itself. Each format
includes source citations:
From his content outline:
D. Hovercraft are very safe.

1. I know from experience that, in a collision, they generally bounce off obstacles and
   inflict no damage to the ground (Borough, 2012).


2. Finally, Borough (2012), a small company, says there is not a single recorded injury
   in the United States in over 40 years.

From his speaking notes:

Finally... safety

... bounce... no ground damage
describe personal experience
ZERO injuries in 40 years (Borough 2012)
From the speech itself: (Note: In extemporaneous delivery, wording will vary somewhat
each time.)
Hovercraft are also very safe because they’re not hitting on the ground at all. If you
have a collision, generally you’ll bounce off of whatever you hit. [slight pause] I hit
a few things on my hovercraft and I wasn’t strapped in—there was no strap—so
I flipped forward a little bit, but the hovercraft itself wasn’t damaged. According to
Borough, a small hovercraft company, there have been no recorded injuries in the
United States for forty years due to hovercraft, which speaks to its safety record.

Diversity

in praCtiCe

individual Cognitive preferences

Diversity takes into account differences in cognitive preferences or thinking

styles. Because each of us has a distinctive thinking style, every classroom contains

“a diverse population of learners.”^6 Your thinking style comprises the ways you

typically prefer to perceive, reason, remember, and solve problems. Culture

and technology influence cognitive styles to an extent, but the way you process

information is unique to you.^7

Research into brain hemispheric dominance discovered that our right brains

process information more globally, intuitively, and artistically, whereas our left-

brain processes are more linear, analytic, logical, and computational.^8 We have

“intelligence preferences,” our inborn predispositions to prefer particular ways

of thinking, including analytical (schoolhouse type), practical (street-smart,

contextual), and creative (imaginative, problem solving).^9 Cognitive researchers

recognize the value of a whole brain approach that gravitates toward our prefer-

ences but flexes as the situation demands.^10

This is not a cognitive science text; however, diversity of cognitive prefer-

ences and the fact that they reflect both a personal and a cultural orientation fit

the emphasis of this book.

cognitive preferences the

way you prefer to perceive,

reason, remember, and solve

problems; it’s culturally influ-

enced but unique to you

(continued)

Copyright 2016 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.