Speech Structure: Mastering the Introduction

Hi there!

It looks like you guys have put a lot of work into the creativity activities last week. We have no doubt that now you can easily generate ideas for any speech and look at the problem from different perspectives.

Once you have clarified the purpose of your speech and come up with creative ideas for its content, it is high time to start working on the speech structure.

Traditionally, every speech as well as any neat text consists of three parts which are introduction, body, and conclusion. There is no point in arguing which one is the most important as they all perform their own function. However, it is a thought-through introduction that helps you to get the audience attention and set the right mood for your speech. Moreover, it is the introduction where you state the topic sentence and give a brief plan of your talk. That is why we are going to focus on the introduction this week.

We suggest that you go over the course book chapter 4.1 and tutorials in this blog, then complete the tasks after each tutorial and email the word document with your answers to Yulia (irychkov@go.olemiss.edu).

Please, contact Yulia if you have any questions or concerns about the tasks.

These tasks are due Sunday, November, 4th.

Best of luck

TASK 1. 
In chapter 4.1 The Introduction Can “Make or Break” You as a Speaker, five most common attention-getters for introduction are mentioned, which are:

• Asking questions
• Making references 
• Making a startling statement
• Giving a quotation
• Telling a story

Watch the following public speech performances and identify the technique(s) used in the introduction (attention-getter) in each performance. 

1. “How will we survive when the population hits 10 billion?” by Charles C. Mann  at TED2018 https://www.ted.com/talks/charles_c_mann_how_will_we_survive_when_the_population_hits_10_billion 
2. “Still Standing” by Ramona J. Smith at the 2018 Toastmasters International World Champion of Public Speaking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tev43VNRIc 
3. “Every kid needs a champion” by Rita Pierson at TED Talks Education https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion/discussion?...en
4. “How great leaders inspire action” by Simon Sinek at TEDxPuget Sound  https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?referrer=playlist-the_most_popular_talks_of_all 
5. “Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model” by Cameron Russell at TEDxMidAtlantic https://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model?referrer=playlist-the_most_popular_talks_of_all&language=en 

TASK 2. 
Once you got the audience attention, you smoothly move towards the thesis statement. I am using the word “smoothly” here on purpose to underline the necessity of this transit between the attention-getter and vocalizing the topic sentence, the main message of your speech.

Get back to the performances you have just watched and do the following for each speech:

1. Identify the thesis statement (write it down). 
2. Evaluate the transition between the attention-getter and the thesis statement on the scale from 0 (poor transition) to 3 (well-done transition). Shortly explain why you think so. 

Tasks for the Upcoming Week

Dear students,

I hope you are doing well.

Here is a saying I heard the other day, "The grass is greener where you water it." 
I beleive nothing good happens by itself. On the contrary, everything needs to be cultivated.

Once you start thinking that you can do better, then you begin building something really big and prominent.

With this inspiring idea, I want to introduce you a few tasks for the upcoming week.

1) Complete challenge #3 and be ready to share your experience in the class.
2) Come up with a topic for your final persuasive speech. Write down the purpose and set out the objectives. Share your ideas in the class.

These tasks are due Thursday, November, 1st. 

Have a good week

Heuristic Methods and Creative Writing

Dear students,

This week we are going to introduce you a few heuristic methods (from the word “Eureka!”) that you can use to create a neat speech.

Go over the activities and complete the tasks in red.

Make a MS Word file, put down your name and email address, then type the completed tasks and email to Yulia to irychkov@go.olemiss.edu  

We hope you will find these techniques helpful and worth using.

These tasks are due Sunday, October, 28th.

The two warm ups we will do, are the "One letter," exercise and the "Random word," exercise:

• One letter

Think about a letter and name as many objects as possible that start with this letter. 

For example, C - computer, course book, case, cucumber you just had for lunch, etc. 

You can play this game with your co-workers, and if everyone thinks of ten words then you're all winners.

Now it is your turn. Pick a letter a write down 10 words.

• Random words 

1. Go to the website https://www.textfixer.com/tools/random-words.php 
2. Generate 5 random words at Random Generator List.
3. Pick a few random words and try and tie them together in the most imaginative way possible. 

Write a paragraph using 5 words generated words. Highlight these words in the text.  

After this, you are ready for the following creative writing prompts:  

I. What if… 

Imagine a problematic situation and think of possible (or impossible) solutions. 

For example, “What if you are in the shower, you have shampoo in your hair, but suddenly the water in the whole building was turned off?” - I’ll melt ice cubes from the fridge in the microwave to rinse my hair. 

Here is another one for you to practice this activity:

What if there were no desks in the classrooms, but only beanbags? Write down 7 ideas.

II. Six Thinking Hats 

To formulate ideas for your speech. First, create a topic sentence, then challenge your brain to think in six different directions. Make notes while considering the following "thinking hats," as points to use in your future speech. 

White thinking hat. This hat covers facts, figures, information needs, and gaps.

Red thinking hat. This hat covers intuition, feelings, and emotions. The red hat allows the thinker to put forward an intuition without any need to justify it.

Black thinking hat. This is the hat of judgment and logic. It is used to point out why a suggestion does not fit the facts.

Yellow thinking hat. This is the hat of optimism. Why something will work, and why it will offer benefits.

Green thinking hat. This is the hat of creativity, alternatives, proposals, provocations, and changes.

Blue thinking hat. This is the hat of overview, and analysis. In technical terms, you look over your final product and see if it makes sense. 

Use this method to come up with ideas for the speech “How many foreign languages should be taught to students in school?” 

Formulate a topic sentence and simply describe the ideas that each hat helped you to generate. 

Challenge #2

Hey guys!

This week's task is to complete challenge #2 and tell about your experience at the class.

Enjoy the weekend!

The task is due Thursday, October, 25th. 

Clarifying Your Purpose and Setting Out Clear Objectives

Hi there!

We hope you’re doing well.

This week we are moving towards such a fundamental topic as preparing your speech. This is a pretty broad topic that is why we are going to work on that doing bite-size tutorials and tasks.

We suggest that you go over the course book chapter (chapter 3) and tutorials in this blog, then complete the tasks after each tutorial and email to Yulia (irychkov@go.olemiss.edu).

Please, email Yulia if you have any questions or concerns about the tasks.

These tasks are due Sunday, October 21st.

Best of luck

CLARIFYING YOUR PURPOSE

The main idea of preparing a speech can be stated this way: Don’t start right from the outline.
Most of great writers and speakers point out the importance of thinking over the topic and clarifying the purpose first.

In chapter 3.1. Clarifying Your Purpose in your course books, you are given the following questions to ask yourself before starting a speech:

- Why should I want to talk about this?
- Why should anybody want to listen to me?
- What single message would I want to put across?
- What need in the audience do I want to have satisfied when I have finished speaking?
- When they all walk away what state would I like them to leave in?

Stop for a moment and go over these questions. They may seem basic but you will be surprised how answering these questions helps not only state the purpose of your talk but also give you some ideas how to structure your speech and what points are crucial to mention.

TASK 1. 
Imagine you were asked to give a speech on the following topics. Consider the Wh-questions mentioned above to clarify the purpose of each speech. Write down your answers to each question. 

Speech 1. 
You are a primary school teacher. You should give a speech to your third graders on the following topic: “Why children should listen to their parents.”

Speech 2. 
You are working as a team leader in a summer language camp with high school students from the whole region. On the second day you are noticing that some guys and girls hesitate to meet new people or make friends within the team. You decide to take action and give a talk to your team stating “You will learn most from friends that are different from you.”

Speech 3. 
You are taking part at 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking “Toastmasters” and you are going to give a speech “Embarrassing moments make you stronger.”


SETTING OUT CLEAR, MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES

Once you figured out the purpose of your speech, make sure you set out clear objectives. A goal or purpose may be fairly general, but an objective needs to be specific. In other words it needs to be measurable and (preferably) quantifiable as well. You might want your audience to buy a product, change their lifestyle, etc. And you would also like to inspire each of them a little.

TASK 2. 
Watch the following performances and identify the possible objectives each speaker has set. 
1. Ken Robinson “Bring on the learning revolution!” at TED2010 https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution
2. Zifang Su “Turn around”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKVTzuvjEpg
3. Matthew McConaughey – winner’s speech at the86th Oscars in 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD2cVhC-63I 

Speech Evaluation Tasks

Hello guys,

Another week - another challenging activities on public speaking craft for you.

1. Evaluate 3 persuasives speeches in your course book (pp. 100-104) using chart 10.3 Speech Content. Write down and bring your analysis to the class.

2. Enjoy watching Top 3 speeches from the "Toastmakers contest 2016", then choose one you like the most and evaluate it using the chart 10.2. Public Speaking Evaluation Chart. Please, make sure you provide examples from the speech and share your impressions on that. Write down and bring your analysis to the class.

3. Together with you classmates, come up with your own evaluating chart that you are going to use for further in-class performances. Starting with Anya Meteleva and Nastya Spondrikova, you all are going to give a talk and evaluate it all together using that chart.

Have a great week

These tasks are due October, 11th.