Persuasive Speech Instructions
This course requires you to present a persuasive
speech to an audience of 3 or more adults. You must use a camcorder to record
the presentation. After recording the presentation, you must download it from
your camcorder onto your computer and then upload it onto YouTube.* To do this, you will need to set up a free YouTube account, if you do
not already have one. After uploading a speech file to YouTube, you must submit
the uploaded speech’s URL link (http://www.youtube. . . .) to your instructor
via the designated Blackboard submission link so he/she can access and grade
it. Your grade for the speech will be determined by the degree to which it
satisfies the requirements listed below.
Topic Selection:
This assignment requires you to research
a global, national, regional, state or local problem that apparently exists
because humans in general or a specific group of humans are neglecting their
duty to promote the things God values in this world. (See the Alban text, pp. 73–76,
for more about the things God values.)
·
The problem may be political, economic, educational, environmental, medical,
religious, or cultural. It may be a false belief or set of beliefs (about God,
nature, or other people) that needs correction, a wrongful attitude or type of
attitude (toward God, nature, or other people) that needs adjustment, a neglectful
or wrong way of acting (toward God, nature, or other people) that needs to
change, or a state of needfulness or brokenness that exists as it does because
of human indifference or inactivity.
·
The problem must be a social one—a problem, that is, that deters many individuals,
not just a few isolated lives, from experiencing life as God, according to His
Word, meant it to be experienced when He created us.
Among the social issues that could
generate a qualified speech topic are the following:
abortion, infanticide, or
euthanasia discrimination
(racism, sexism, ageism)
abuse (child, elder, self,
spousal) ecology
(climate change, pollution, littering)
addictions/codependency/eating
disorders education
(underachievement or illiteracy)
air, land, or water
pollution famine,
drought or diseases
animal abuse or
vivisection labor
issues (child labor or sweatshops)
bioethics (cloning,
eugenics, stem cell research) marriage
(divorce, cohabitation)
birth or population
control poverty
(world hunger or homelessness)
crime (street, juvenile,
gang, or white collar) sex
(pre-marital, extramarital, homosexual)
criminal justice (prison
crowding, recidivism) slavery
or human trafficking
The following sites may be helpful
for discovering or exploring these and other qualified topics:
Speech Goals: Because this is an persuasive speech—a speech
in which you try to persuade the audience to believe or value something or to act
in a specific way (see the Alban text, pp. 809–829, for more about this)—and
because you are to use this particular speech to advocate a redemptive solution
to a social problem (see the Alban text, pp. 72–77, for more about this), your
goal in this presentation is to use information from appropriately credited
expert sources in 2 ways:
(1) To identify the social problem and
to establish, with information from credible sources, that it exists somewhere
in the world, and
(2) To prescribe a redemptive remedy
for the problem—a remedy that, if implemented by someone or a group of someones,
would promote something that God, according to Scripture, values and that, if implemented,
could help somebody experience life as God, according to His Word, meant it to
be experienced. For a helpful but inexhaustive list of things God values and
corresponding Biblical prooftexts, see the Alban text, pp. 73–76.
Examples: In such a speech, you might use
information from documented expert sources to establish that abortions claimed
630 lives in your home county last year, then use Scripture to argue that God
values human life, including preborn human life, and argue in the light of this
that the county must take three specific steps, described by you, to eliminate
or diminish the frequency of abortion in the county. You might also use
information from documented expert sources to establish that the federal
government authorizes the use of a certain chemical in the treatment of
drinking water and that credible research from sources A, B, and C indicates
this chemical actually causes cancer. You could use Scripture to establish that
God wants us to protect the bodies He has given us and given others and then
argue, in the light of this, that the federal government must take steps to
protect our bodies by banning the chemical from use in the treatment of
drinking water.
As you promote something God values (e.g., life, quality of life, creation
care, etc.) through this speech, be sure you do not condone or promote
something God’s Word discourages or prohibits (e.g., fornication, adultery,
homosexuality). After all, a solution is redemptive only if it promotes something
that God values, according to Scripture. If you are uncertain whether your
proposed solution to a social problem satisfies this standard, discuss this in
advance of the project’s deadline with your instructor.
.
·
Topic Originality: Your speech topics MUST be researched, selected,
and delivered primarily for this course and not primarily for, or in
conjunction with, a presentation for a church group, a Sunday School class, a
social group, or any other small group. You may not give a speech that serves a
double purpose.
·
Topic Grading Criteria: Finally, you must choose a topic that enables
you to construct the speech in a way that satisfies the specific requirements
of the Informative Speech Grading Rubric, which lists the criteria that your instructor
will use when grading your presentation.
Research, Organization, and Outlining:
Basic
Requirements: For your
persuasive speech, you are required to:
(1) Research credible sources for information about
your topic.
(2) Form a thesis (a statement that argues for a
position) for your speech in the light of what your research discloses.
(3) Express this thesis as a complete thought in a
single-sentence, declarative thesis statement.
(4) Choose the information from your research that
most powerfully delivers the type of information that this thesis statement
requires.
(5) Present this information in a logically
sequenced outline of properly documented main points, sub-points, and perhaps
even sub-sub-points, using the Informative Speech Outline Template document as
your formatting guide. Your outline, in its final form, will serve as the
blueprint that you mentally must follow while extemporaneously delivering the
recorded speech to your audience.
Research
Requirements: For your
persuasive speech, you are required to:
·
Use Four Expert Sources: You must use and explicitly cite supportive
material (examples, illustrations, statistics, quotations from experts, etc)
from at least 4 expert sources in this project. An
expert source is a person, group of persons, or organization with documentable
expertise in the area it addresses. Information from such sources typically
derives from personal interviews with credentialed experts or from documentable
print and/or electronic publications (see the Alban text, pp. 637–661, for more
about this).
·
The Bible as an Expert Source: While you may, of course, use the Bible as a
source when related to your topic, it must be in addition to the 4
required sources.
·
The Alban Text as an Expert Source: The
third section of the Alban text and the U.S. Government’s Occupational Outlook
Index count as 1 of your 4 sources, not as 2 separate sources.
·
Non-Expert Sources: Never use
information from anonymous or questionable sources, such as Wikipedia or any
printed source authored by someone whose credentials for addressing the topic
are not clearly established.
·
.
Organization and Outlining
Requirements:
Topical Sequencing Required: You must use the Problem-Solution organizational
patterns for addressing your topic (see the Alban text, pp. 700–701, for more
about this).
The
Draft and the Final Outlines:
The speech outline submission process involves 2 stages— (1) the submission of
an ungraded draft outline, in MS-Word format, at the end of Module/Week 4 and
(2) a graded revised final outline, also in MS-Word format, at the end of
Module/Week 6. After reviewing your draft outline, your instructor will post
constructive feedback that you must heed as you must assimilate as you compose
the revised final outline. The draft outline and the revised final outline must
be submitted via the designated Blackboard submission links.
Use the
Outline Template: You also must
use the Persuasive Speech Outline Template document as a guide for constructing
your speech outline. Retain its formatting. Provide information for each of its
categories—an audience description, its organizational pattern, purpose
statement, etc. Include a clearly distinguished introduction, body, and
conclusion section.
Outline
Parts:
·
The
introduction must list, in order, your attention-getter, credibility statement,
thesis statement, and preview statement.
·
The body
must include 2 to 5 main points, each with supportive subpoints and perhaps
even sub-subpoints, consisting mainly of documented examples, illustrations,
statistics, quotations from experts, etc. that you have derived from the 4 or
more expert sources that this project requires.
·
The
conclusion must include a summary statement, a call to action, and a concluding
element that refocuses the audience’s attention on the thesis.
·
The Works
Cited (MLA), Reference page (APA), or Bibliography (Turabian) page must
properly credit your sources and must do so in the format prescribed by MLA,
APA, or Turabian style to format.
Document
Your Sources Properly:
·
In-Text and End-Page Citations: Whether you directly quote, summarize, or
paraphrase it, any information that you present in your outline and in the
speech itself must be explicitly attributed to the source from which you derived
it. This requires you to use parenthetical citations or footnotes in the
outline itself to show which information derives from which expert source. This
also requires you to list the same sources on a Works Cited (MLA), Reference
(APA), or Bibliography page (Turabian) in the format prescribed by the style
manual for this project that you choose. Failure to cite sources is tantamount
to plagiarism, a serious offense that can result in automatic failure of an
assignment and possibly of the course.
·
Use Direct Quotes Sparingly: If you include directly quoted material from
another source in your outline, it must account for no more than 20-percent of
the outline’s content
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