in one survey, graduates from five U.S. colleges were asked to rank the speech skills most important to the job. The number one skill? Informative presentations. Today we're going to drill down into informative presentations, specifically focusing on the purposes of informative speeches, and then provide more detail on what actually goes into an informative speech.When you put your informative presentation together, what is it do you want your audience to gain from it? Would you like your audience to gain insight, awareness, or understanding? Insight might be to look at it a different way. Awareness: Hey, I had never heard that before. And Understanding: Oh, now I understand how that works. If your audience gains none of these, then we might question the value of the presentation to the audience. Keep in mind that there are various criteria for effective informative speaking. The most obvious is that the information you provide should be communicated clearly, accurately, and then, probably the most difficult is you need to it communicate in a way that is meaningful and understandable to the audience. When we think about informative speeches, we can talk about the types in terms of what you actually doing during an informative speech, as well as what you may be informing about. What you might be doing is defining, explaining, demonstrating, or describing. And you could do one or more of these in the process of informing about objects, animals, places, or people. Say you're going to do is speech on service animals. Events: 911, Pearl Harbor. Processes: How to make a cup of coffee. Or concepts: Beliefs, theories, principles, or other abstract subjects. If you remember the main organization the speech is really three main parts (you have a beginning, middle, and end). we,ll go into a little bit more detail on those We'll start at the very beginning (a very fine place to start) where you introduce the topic to your audience and then tell them exactly what you're going to talk about. Regardless of the type of introduction you use, you need to make sure that you get your audience's attention, you provide information of value, and you introduce the topic of your presentation. Within that, there are a variety of types of introductions. One of them is a startling or striking statement. Oftentimes this includes a statistic. Say, for example, you're doing a speech on rape. You could start with, "The Centers for Disease Control in 2011 reported that nearly one in five women have been the victim have an attempted or completed rape, and over 1.3 million women were raped in the US in one year. That would likely catch your audience's attention. It would provide information of value to the speech that you're going to do as well as introduce the topic of rape. Another type that introduction could be a rhetorical question. Now a rhetorical question is you ask a question and you don't expect the audience actually answer out loud, but you expect them to think about it. These can be extremely effective or very poor. For example, "Have you ever thought about how important money is to our society?" It's not an especially attention-getting introduction. In comparison H.L. Mencken, who was an American journalist, once said, "Marriage is a wonderful institution but who would want to live in an institution?" It's at least a little bit more thought-provoking. I just used a quotation from H.L. Mencken, and a quotation can often be used very effectively to introduce a speech as well. We talk about quotations in terms that expert and profound quotations. An expert quotation might be something like, astronomer Carl Sagan noted, "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies, were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff." A profound quotation might be from Thomas Edison, who once said many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." You can also make a reference to the subject or the situation. Again you can use this poorly or effectively. If you were going to do a speech on elephants, for example, a very poor reference to the subject might be statements such as, "Let me talk to you about elephants today." Instead you might start with perhaps a story: "When my family went to the zoo, my sister begged my mother for a baby elephant. Me? I was the practical one so I decided to research exactly how much it would cost to feed an elephant. According to Ringling Brothers Circus our shopping list would include 11 pounds of red apples, 8 pounds of carrots, 2 bananas, 2 bales of hay, 2 loaves of whole wheat bread, 7 pounds sweet feed -- and that was just for a single day." That would probably catch your attention a little bit more than "My speech today is on elephants." You can use illustration. Illustrations can be a verbal illustration as well as a visual illustration like a graphic or a picture. And then there's plenty more: You can use demonstrations, sound effects, music. Sometimes you can combine a few of these together. Sometimes, people say that if you want to develop rapport immediately with your audience, tell a joke. Well, humor can be extremely effective but it also can be used poorly. If you're going to use humor, it needs to relate to the subject, of course, be in good taste, and you really need to practice it because timing on humor is everything. We've talked about the types of introductions, now we want to talk about the next step, which is the difference between a thesis and a preview statement. A thesis statement is your central idea. It's your walk away point. It is a single sentence-- statement--that you want people to remember at the end of the speech. Sometimes you state it out loud; sometimes it's just implied in your introduction. A preview statement is when you tell the audience in advance the main points of your speech. It's also been known as the road map. Here's the difference: Let's say that you were doing a speech on Rice Krispies Treats and the thesis your presentation was that Rice Krispies Treats are fun and easy to make. Remember: You're making an argument. In order to support that argument, your main points might be that they have very few ingredients, the process is quick and easy, and they could be varied for any situation. So you have your three main points . Now it's time to preview them to give us a road map so that we know exactly what those three points are before you get to them. So your preview statement might be something like, "Rice Krispies Treats have very few ingredients, are quick to make, and can be varied for any party." Notice that "they have very few ingredients" relates to the first main point, "are quick to make" relates to the second main point, and "can be varied for any party" is specific to the third main point. So somebody listening to your speech will know exactly what you're going to talk about in the order that you plan to talk about it. Connectives are important and you just happened to see one of those, which is your preview statement. Connectives are words or phrases that join the thought of the speech together, and then indicate the relationship between those thoughts. It helps tie speech together, making it more unified and coherent. You can think of sometimes as connectives as the glue that holds the speech together. There are four types of connectives that we can talk about. You have an internal preview--which you just heard one type of them in the preview statement. An internal preview is a statement in the body of the speech that lets the audience know what the speaker is going to discuss next. It could be in addition to your previous statement. Let's say you're on the second point, talking about ingredients and you could say, "Well, there are two types of ingredients that you would need for Rice Krispies Treats: the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients. Which means that you have now internally preview the next part the speech. An internal summary comes at the end: "Now you can remember that you have two types of ingrediends: wet ingredients and dry ingredients. And at the end to the speech you use a summary again--but we'll talk about that at the end of this presentation. A signpost is a very brief statement that indicates where speaker is in the speech or that focuses attention on key issues: "Four simple principles guide our policies... first... second.." so you're signposting the four steps. And you can emphasize the key ideas: "The most important thing to remember is..." Finally there are transitions. A transition is a word or phrase that indicates that you have finished one thought and you're moving on to another. It can be as simple as, "Now let's turn next to... " "not only..." "Now that we have discussed..." "This isn't the only example..." Oftentimes a very effective transition combines a couple of things. You can say look back as well as look forward: " Now that we have an understanding of exactly what the ingredients are in Rice Krispies Treats, let's turn next to how you might vary them for various." parties We've talked about the beginning--the introduction--now it's time to talk about the bulk of the speech. Again, this is why you are giving the speech. You need to support your main points. How can you support them? There are various types to support. Remember that you're making a main point, and as you are supporting the main point, you need to have a variety of different types of support. If you rely upon a single type of support for your entire speech, your speech will be boring. You can explain, you can show how things are similar through an analogy, a very short comparison or an in-depth comparison. You can use specific examples--stories often come under specific examples. You can use a detailed illustration--again it could be verbal or they could be visual. Testimony: cite somebody. Statistics: make sure the statistics are understandable. Oftentimes when we get statistics they're just numbers that really don't make sense to us. And then restatement is to say it another way. Oftentimes you might use two types of support under the same main point, one supplementing the other one or giving a different way to say it. We've gone through the beginning through the middle, now it's time to talk about the end when we go through the summary and the conclusion. A key point here is a concept of redundancy. In a speech, people are less likely to be able to remember information if you don't remind them of the information. A preview statement is you tell them what you're going to tell them, in the body of the speech you tell them, and then at the end of the speech you remind them or you tell them what you told them. When you consider types of conclusions, one type is a statement of summary. Earlier we talked about the preview statement and when we talked about Rice Krispies Treats, we told people in our preview that rice krispies Treats have very few ingredients, are quick to make ,and can be varied for any party. So we told everybody that three main points that we were going to cover in the speech. We covered them in the body of the speech, and now, in the conclusion, we summarize them. Maybe not in exactly the same words but we might say, "So now you know that, with very few ingredients, you can quickly make some Rice Krispies Treats and by just adding a few things here or there. you can be the hit of every party. That's a statement statement a summary. Some people believe that that, in and of itself, is sufficient to end a speech. I prefer to hear speakers go beyond just giving a statement of summary and adding something else to the end that makes it feel much more conclusive. For example, a rhetorical question. Let's say in the introduction you asked a rhetorical question. Now you might want to answer it. Or maybe you're going to leave your audience with a more thought-provoking rhetorical question. You can reference the subject or the situation--tell a story again. Quotations works well here. You can use a demonstration or any illustration that sums it all up. You can make a statement of personal intent: Well, I don't know about you but I'm going to go home and make some Rice Krispies Treats." And you could use a challenge or a plea-- especially effective if you are doing a persuasive speech. Notice how many of these are similar to the types of introductions. Quiz Time here: How effective is an informative speech if the audience does not gain insight, awareness, or understanding?" Can you explain the difference between a thesis and a previous statement? And, finally, can you identify two different techniques that you could use to introduce a speech? And how about to conclude a speech? Mow it's time for you to put all the pieces together: you'll be able to choose an interesting and relevant topic, you will be able to make an argument that you can support in the body of the speech, make it memorable--be creative-- and you can open and close with impact.