Chapter 8 - Supporting Your Ideas
What are hypothetical examples?
A description of an imaginary situation.
What is the first major kind of supporting material?
Examples
What are the two kinds of testimony?
Expert and Peer
What are examples?
An excellent way to get an audience involved with a speech
What are the three types of examples?
Brief, extended, and hypothetical
How should speakers evaluate their statistics carefully?
By making sure their statistics are representative of what they claim to measure, understanding the differences among basic statistical measures such as mean, the median, and the mode, and determining whether their statistics come from reliable sources.
How can testimony be presented?
By quoting or paraphrasing
How is oral citation different from written citation?
Oral citations don't follow a standard format
How do speakers identify the sources of their supporting materials?
Orally
Where does peer testimony come from?
Ordinary people who have firsthand experience with a topic.
Where does expert testimony come from?
People who are acknowledged authorities in their fields.
How does a speech composed of unsupported assertions leave an audience?
Skeptical & unconvinced
What is more convincing than unsupported generalizations?
Specific and credible details
What are brief examples?
Specific instances that a speaker refers to in passing.
What is the second major kind of supporting material?
Statistics
What is the third kind of supporting material?
Testimony
What do smoothly integrated oral citations usually combine?
The document title, the author or sponsoring organization, the author's qualifications, and the date on which the document was published.
What does the content of an oral citation depend on?
The topic, the audience, the speaker's claim, and the kind of supporting material being used.
What is the disadvantage to using statistics?
They can be easily manipulated and distorted.
What are some tips for using testimony effectively?
They should come from unbiased, qualified sources, and they should be quoted or paraphrased accurately from identified people.
What are extended examples?
They're longer and more detailed than brief examples.
What is the purpose of strong supporting materials in a speech?
To bolster the speaker's point of view
What are some tips for using examples effectively?
Use examples to clarify, reinforce, and personalize ideas. Use extended examples that are vivid and richly textured. Practice delivery to enhance the impact of extended examples.
What are some tips for using statistics effectively?
Use them sparingly and to quantify ideas, their sources should be identified in the speech, they should be explained and made meaningful to the audience, complicated statistics should be rounded off, and statistical trends should be clarified with visual aids.