Page 392 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

Chapter 13 Informative Speaking 359

be perfectly obvious to the speaker, however, may be just the opposite for the au-
dience. Consider a case with which you already have some experience—college
classes. Regardless of the subject matter of their classes, most college professors
believe that the information they have to share is absolutely essential to every
student’s intellectual well-being. So secure are they in this belief, in fact, some
seldom spend any time convincing students that there are “good reasons” for
their being in the professor’s class.
Occasionally, this oversight doesn’t much matter—for example, when students
are taking a course in their major. Students listen because they know they “have
to learn” what is being taught, regardless of how well it’s being taught. This is
seldom the case, though, when they fi nd themselves in a required course outside
their major. “Why do I need a course in art history?” complains the computer
science major, while the chemistry major asks, “Why do I need a class in public
speaking?”
Just as teachers have an obligation to connect their course to the professional
aspirations of students, speakers have the same kind of obligation to their audi-
ences. It’s not enough that their information is perceived as involving or appro-
priate by their audience. Their information—their speech—must also be readily
perceived as enriching audience members’ lives.
The two speeches outlined in this chapter are by students who make a spe-
cial effort explain the life-enriching aspects of their topics. The fi rst speech on
bees and beekeeping by Trevor Morgan, explains that bees are essential to the
production of about one-third of all the food we eat. Rather than treating bees
as pesky insects, he hopes his listeners will learn to appreciate their value to
our lives. The second speaker, Arin Larson, speaks about a topic that probably
doesn’t immediately affect most of her college-age audience—preselecting the sex
of a child. But she points out that this knowledge can enrich one’s life later on,
especially in helping couples avoid sex-linked diseases. You may wonder why
she even mentions color blindness in her speech. In fact, she spoke shortly after
another speaker who had discussed the causes of color blindness, including how
it is a sex-linked trait. Thus, she took advantage of the audience having been
primed to be concerned about such sex-linked disorders.

Putting Theory Into Practice

Now that we have covered some of the principles related to conveying informa-
tion to an audience, it’s time to plan your own informative speech. This sec-
tion offers some practical suggestions for how to give an informative speech. We
discuss four ways to inform an audience: explanation, instruction, demonstra-
tion, and description. Informative speeches may employ more than one of these
modes of informing. And the list is not exhaustive. Nevertheless, these four cat-
egories should be a useful way of thinking about how to translate the principles
of informative speaking into an actual speech.

Speeches That Explain a Process

One of the primary functions you may wish to accomplish in an informative
speech is to explain a process. Technically, a process is a continuous phenomenon
without an obvious beginning or end. Examples of processes are plentiful in sci-