Types of Informative Speeches (^203)
III. Step 3: Draw around the basic outline in Step 1.
IV. Step 4: Add details of knuckles, fingernails, creases, rings, and so on.
V. Step 5: Shade, using dark, medium, or light shades.
VI. Step 6: Erase excess lines.
In her introduction, she made sure each student had a pencil and a blank sheet
of paper. Then, as she spoke, each student completed the step she described.
- Time the entire process. If the process is too long, then just demonstrate it and
provide handouts with step-by-step instructions for listeners to do later. (One
student could not teach her classmates to fold an origami crane in a seven-minute
speech; twenty-two minutes later, everyone had half-folded cranes when the class
ended.) For a lengthy process, another strategy is to prepare several versions,
stopping each at a different point. Cooking and art instructors commonly do this.
A cook, for example, begins a complicated dish, but instead of waiting twenty
minutes for it to bake, he sets aside the partly finished pan, reaches for a second
pan that contains a baked version of the dish, and then adds finishing touches.
Similarly, a sculptor shows an essential step in creating a pot; then she leaves it to
dry and takes up a pot prepared in advance for the next step.
Not all “how-to” speeches require a demonstration. You can give tips on topics like
resolving conflict, listening more effectively, or managing time wisely. In these cases, you
focus on instructions or pointers that provide information listeners need to accomplish
the goal.
Giving Descriptions
Descriptions answer the question, “What’s it like?” Before you can describe an object,
place, or event to someone else, again use the principles of division or classification to
analyze it. For instance, to describe a painting, divide it into sections and point out details
of color, form, and texture that listeners might miss at first glance. Or classify several
paintings according to era or style and compare and contrast the details. Descriptions of
places, objects, and events range from personal to global. Because listeners are generally
more interested in topics close to their daily lives in location, time, and relevance,
explicitly relate each topic to their perceived interests and needs.Describing Places
People often want information about places such as a college campus or a tourist
site. Consequently, college guides describe campus sites as they show prospective
students around. And travel authors or park rangers are just two types of professionals
who describe places. In fact, Rick Steves is famous for his descriptions of tourist
destinations.
In descriptive speeches, provide vivid, precise imagery. Use visual aids including
maps, drawings, slides, brochures, or enlarged photographs, and consider spatial or
topical organizational patterns. International topics such as the Gobi desert or Vatican
City make good topics. For his speech about Ha Noi,^13 Namky showed photos and
described four attractions: Sword Lake, The Temple of Literature, Ho Chi Minh’s
Mausoleum, and the One Pillar Pagoda.Describing Objects
Descriptions of objects, including natural objects (glaciers), human constructions
(the Vietnam War Memorial), huge things (the planet Jupiter), or microscopic matter
(carbohydrates), are common. Students have described inanimate (wind generators) or
animate (brown recluse spiders) objects by providing information such as their origin,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).
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