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13 Chapter 13: Presentations to Inform

“After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth.”

—Helene Deutsch

Opening Case Study: The Eighteen-Minute Escapement

The 1913 streetcar barn on South Rogers Street had two kinds of silence. The first was the deep silence of the nave — a long, high-ceilinged hall where forty-seven clocks in various stages of restoration ticked at forty-seven slightly different cadences, and where the late-afternoon Bloomington light came through the clerestory windows in slanting yellow bars. Dr. Anastasia Kapoor-Wojciechowski had been director of the Tempus Atelier for eleven years, and she could tell what time it was, roughly, by which clocks were chiming in sequence. It was 1:47 p.m.

The second silence was the silence in Board Room C at the Indiana Regional Arts Commission, six blocks north. That silence was harder to read. She had never presented there before, but she had heard about it from her predecessor, who had presented there exactly once — last year, a twenty-minute pitch for the Tempus Atelier’s operating grant renewal — and who had, as Bart put it, “walked in with a case and walked out with his hands in his pockets.”

Anastasia had eleven minutes. At 1:58 she would need to walk out of the atelier, cross Rogers Street, cut through the alley behind the Runcible Spoon, and be seated in Board Room C by 2:15 for a 2:30 slot. Her briefing folder was open on the workbench in front of her. Beside it lay a half-disassembled 1887 Seth Thomas shelf clock that Thiago was supposed to be working on but was instead standing over her shoulder pretending he wasn’t.

“What are you going to open with?” he asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“You have to know. It’s in forty-three minutes.”

Anastasia pressed her thumb against her closed right eye, which had been twitching since ten that morning. The problem was not that she had nothing to say. The problem was that she had four complete presentations, stacked up in her briefcase like four different suits for four different weddings, and she could not decide which one to wear.

The first was a technical explanation — what a fusee mechanism does, why a verge escapement produces a different gait than a deadbeat, how the 1687 Coster-pattern Dutch brass clock in the atelier’s vault was synchronized to an error of less than four seconds per week using only a pendulum and the position of the Bloomington latitude. Twenty-two minutes, six slides, and it opened with a cross-section diagram of an anchor escapement. She had written it first because it was what she knew best. Bart had read it and said nothing, which was how Bart said a lot of things.

The second was a report. Grant cycle outcomes. Apprentice placement rates. Dollars leveraged. Restorations completed by category, by value, by building of origin. Thirty-seven data points organized into eight tables. It looked like a quarterly earnings call. Willa — Wilhelmina Eskildsen-Chavez, eighty-eight years old, who had founded the atelier in 1962 in the back of her husband’s optometry shop and who still came in on Tuesdays — had read it over the phone the night before and said, “Anastasia, darling, that is a perfectly good report. You should send it to them. In writing. And then give a different speech.”

The third was a description. Stories of landmark restorations. The tower clock at the Monroe County Courthouse, which the atelier had brought back from a 1967 water-damage incident that the courthouse staff had assumed was terminal. The music box that a family in Nashville, Indiana had mailed in a shoebox with a note that said This was my mother’s and we were told it was dead. I don’t have much money. The fifteen-foot street clock on Kirkwood Avenue that had been dark for nineteen years and that ran, now, because Bart had hand-cut three gear teeth on a lathe older than he was. That one opened with a photograph of the Kirkwood clock at night, illuminated, and it made her own eyes wet, which was a very bad sign for a professional presentation.

The fourth was a demonstration. Bring a 1919 Elgin railroad pocket watch, a loupe, a set of tweezers, and a microfiber cloth. Open the caseback on the conference table. Walk the commissioners through what an escapement is and why it matters. Hand the watch to whoever wanted to hold it. Twelve minutes of prepared remarks, six minutes of show-and-tell, two minutes of questions. Bart had built the demonstration tray that morning and had muttered, while building it, “They’re going to think it’s a gimmick.”

Her phone buzzed face-down on the workbench. She didn’t look at it.

Thiago looked at it for her. “It’s Roderick’s aide.”

“Read it.”

Thiago held the phone at arm’s length. “Commissioner Hoffmann-Chibuzo has asked me to let you know he will be asking about public ROI within the first four minutes. He suggests you be ready with a number. Smiley face. Question mark.”

Anastasia laughed. It was not a good laugh. Roderick Hoffmann-Chibuzo had been a commercial real estate developer before his appointment to the commission, and he was the reason the commission had started requiring “informative, not persuasive” briefings from grant renewal applicants. Last year, after her predecessor’s presentation, Roderick had told the Herald-Times that “nonprofit arts directors come in here and advocate for themselves. What I want is for someone to tell me what it is they actually do. Tell me the facts. I’ll decide whether I find it valuable.”

The memo had gone out in October. Her presentation had to be informative. It had to help the commissioners understand what the atelier did. It could not, in its language or its framing, attempt to persuade them to continue the grant. She had been living inside that constraint for three months and she still did not know what to do with it.

Bart came in through the side door with a travel mug in one hand. “Thirty-four minutes.”

“I know.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“You’ve known for three weeks,” Bart said mildly. He was sixty-one years old, had trained at a workshop in Coventry, England in the late 1980s, and had never in his life been visibly in a hurry. “You’re stuck on whether you’re teaching them or selling them. They’re not the same thing and you keep trying to make them the same thing.”

“The grant is —”

“The grant is not the presentation. The presentation is the presentation.” He set the travel mug down next to the shelf clock. “What do you want them to know about us that they don’t know now?”

Anastasia closed her eyes. The clerestory light was red-orange through her eyelids.

What she wanted them to know, if she was honest, was not a number. It was not a story about the Kirkwood clock. It was not a diagram of an escapement. It was one thing: that a clock is not an object. A clock is a set of decisions a craftsperson made about how to measure time, and when you restore a clock you are restoring those decisions, and when you teach someone else to restore a clock you are passing those decisions forward so that the people in 2073 can still wind the thing. That was the residual message. That was what she wanted them to leave the room with, three hours after she was done, when they were at dinner and someone asked what did you learn at the commission today?

She opened her eyes.

Thiago was watching her. His apprenticeship, his tuition stipend, and his studio housing were all downstream of the grant. She knew this. He knew she knew this. Neither of them had ever said it out loud because to say it out loud was to load the conversation in a way that was not fair to either of them.

She pulled the yellow legal pad toward her and wrote, in block letters:

SHARE. UNDERSTAND. CHANGE PERCEPTIONS. GAIN SKILLS.

And beneath it, smaller: expose, don’t interpret.

And beneath that, smaller still: teach them clocks.

She closed the folder containing the technical explanation. She closed the folder containing the report. She closed the folder containing the description. She picked up the demonstration tray Bart had built for her and put the 1919 Elgin pocket watch in the center of it. She put the loupe in the velvet-lined indent to the right of the watch. She put the tweezers in the indent to the left.

“Bart.”

“Mm.”

“If I get eighteen minutes and Roderick interrupts me in the first four, can I still land this?”

Bart considered the pocket watch for a long moment.

“If you teach them,” he said, “yes. If you try to sell them, no.”

At 1:58 exactly she zipped the demonstration tray into its protective case, slung her briefcase over her shoulder, and walked out of the streetcar barn into the October afternoon. Rogers Street smelled like someone’s early-leaf fire. A woman she did not know was walking a dachshund on a red leash. The Kirkwood clock was visible four blocks north, its hands at a little past two.

She still did not know, as she crossed Rogers Street, whether the demonstration was going to work.

Opening Case Questions

  1. Anastasia has four complete presentations prepared — an explanation, a report, a description, and a demonstration. What does the fact that she built all four, and still cannot decide between them at 1:47 p.m., tell you about her understanding of the rhetorical situation?
  2. Bart says, “You’re stuck on whether you’re teaching them or selling them. They’re not the same thing and you keep trying to make them the same thing.” How does this line map onto the distinction between informative and persuasive speaking that this chapter will introduce?
  3. The commission has required that the briefing be “informative, not persuasive.” Why might Roderick have pushed for that rule after last year’s renewal hearing? What does it reveal about how audiences can lose trust in a speaker?
  4. Anastasia writes three things on her legal pad: the four functions of an informative speech, the phrase “expose, don’t interpret,” and the sentence “teach them clocks.” Which of these three is the residual message, and which are the tools she will use to deliver it?
  5. Thiago’s apprenticeship is funded by the grant. Neither he nor Anastasia mentions this out loud. What ethical principle from this chapter is operating in that silence?

Before You Read: Self-Assessment

Before you work through this chapter, rate each statement from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). You will revisit these at the end of the chapter.

  1. I can clearly state the difference between an informative speech and a persuasive speech.
  2. I know the difference between my point of view on a topic and my bias on it.
  3. I can name at least three of the four types of speeches to inform.
  4. I know how to frame a complex topic for an audience that does not share my background.
  5. I can identify at least three of the seven questions audience members silently ask themselves when deciding whether to listen.
  6. I know what gatekeeping and agenda setting are and how they shape an informative message.
  7. I can name at least four of the seven learning styles associated with multiple intelligences theory.
  8. I can describe three ethical principles that govern an informative speaker’s relationship with the audience.

Scoring: Add your responses. 8–15 = this chapter will introduce most of these ideas to you from scratch; 16–28 = you have some working knowledge and this chapter will fill in the gaps; 29–40 = you have strong prior knowledge and this chapter will sharpen your vocabulary and your ethical framing.

Getting Started

Introductory Exercises

  1. Make a list of five activities you’ve participated in recently. Choose one and create a time order list, from start to finish, of at least five major steps involved in accomplishing the activity.
  2. From the list of five activities above, consider which of the activities the audience (or your class) has probably had the least experience with. Now, make a list from that activity of at least three things you’d explain to them so they could better understand it. From that new list, consider how you might show those three things, including visual aids.

Storytelling is a basic part of human communication. You’ve probably told several short stories just today to relate to friends what the drive to school was like, how your partner has been acting, what your boss said to a customer, or even what your speech teacher did in class. With each story you were sharing information, but is sharing the same as informing? At first, you might be tempted to say “sure,” but consider whether you had a purpose for telling a friend about another friend’s actions, or if the words you used to discuss your boss communicated any attitude.

At some point in your business career, you’ll be called upon to teach someone something. It may be a customer, coworker, or supervisor, and in each case, you’re performing an informative speech. It’s distinct from a sales speech or persuasive speech, in that your goal is to communicate the information so that your listener understands. For example, let’s say you have the task of teaching a customer how to use a smart TV remote to program a recording on their favorite streaming service. Easy, you say? Sure, it’s easy for you. But for them, it’s new, so take a moment and consider their perspective. You may recommend this unit versus that unit, and aim for a sale, but that goal is separate from first teaching them to be successful at a task they want to learn to perform. You may need to repeat yourself several times, and they may not catch on as fast as you expect, but their mastery of the skill or task they want to learn can directly lead to a sale. They’ll have more confidence in you and themselves once they’ve mastered the task, and will be more receptive to your advice about the competing products available.

While your end goal may be a sale, the relationship you form has more long-term value. That customer may tell a friend about the experience, show their family what they learned, and before you know it, someone else comes in asking for you by name. Communicating respect and focusing on their needs is a positive first step. The informative speech is one performance you’ll give many times across your career, whether your audience is one person, a small group, or a large auditorium full of listeners. Once you master the art of the informative speech, you may mix and match it with other styles and techniques.

13.1 Functions of the Presentation to Inform

Learning Objectives

  1. Describe the four core functions of a speech to inform: sharing, increasing understanding, changing perceptions, and helping the audience gain skills.
  2. Explain the difference between exposition and interpretation and identify how each shapes the speaker’s choices.
  3. Distinguish between a speaker’s point of view and a speaker’s bias, and explain why the distinction matters in an informative context.
  4. Define objectivity and subjectivity in the context of an informative speech.
  5. Apply at least three of the five strategies for presenting a neutral informative speech to a topic of your own choosing.

Informative presentations focus on helping the audience understand a topic, issue, or technique more clearly. You might say, “Is that all?” and the answer is both yes and no. An affirmative response underscores the idea that informative speeches don’t seek to motivate the audience to change their minds, adopt a new idea, start a new habit, or get out there and vote. They may, however, inform audiences on issues that may be under consideration in an election or referendum. On the other hand, a negative response reaffirms the idea that communicating a topic, issue, or subject clearly is a challenge in itself and shouldn’t be viewed as a simplistic process. There are distinct functions inherent in a speech to inform, and you may choose to use one or more of these functions in your speech. Let’s take a look at the functions and see how they relate to the central objective of facilitating audience understanding.

Share

The basic definition of communication highlights the process of understanding and sharing meaning. An informative speech follows this definition in the aspect of sharing content and information with an audience. You won’t be asking the audience to actually do anything in terms of offering a response or solving a problem. Instead, you’ll be offering to share with the audience some of the information you’ve gathered relating to a topic. This act of sharing will reduce ignorance, increase learning, and facilitate understanding of your chosen topic.

Increase Understanding

How well does your audience grasp the information? This should be a guiding question for you on two levels. The first involves what they already know—or don’t know—about your topic, and what key terms or ideas might be necessary for someone completely unfamiliar with your subject to grasp the ideas you’re presenting. The second involves your presentation and the illustration of ideas. A bar chart, a pie graph, and a video clip may all serve you and the audience well, but how will each ingredient in your speech contribute to their understanding? The audience will respond to your attention statement and hopefully maintain interest, but how will you take your speech beyond superficial coverage of content and effectively communicate key relationships that increase understanding? These questions should serve as a challenge for your informative speech, and by looking at your speech from an audience-oriented perspective, you’ll improve your ability to enhance audience comprehension.

Change Perceptions

How you perceive stimuli has everything to do with a range of factors that are unique to you. We all want to make sense of our world, share our experiences, and learn that many people face the same challenges we do. Many people perceive the process of speaking in public as a significant challenge, and in this text, we’ve broken down the process into several manageable steps. In doing so, we’ve to some degree changed your perception of public speaking. When you present your speech to inform, you may want to change the audience members’ perceptions of your topic. You may present an informative speech on air pollution and want to change common perceptions, such as the idea that only cars contribute to pollution, or that all factories have the same environmental impact. You’d be helping your audience shift their perceptions of your topic without telling them what to believe.

Gain Skills

Just as you want to increase the audience’s understanding, you may want to help the audience members gain skills. Suppose you’re presenting a speech on how to make salsa from fresh ingredients. In that case, your audience may thank you for not only the knowledge of the key ingredients and their preparation but also the product available at the conclusion. If your audience members have never made their own salsa, they may gain a new skill from your speech. In the same way, perhaps you decide to inform your audience about selling items on a platform like Etsy, a person-to-person marketplace for handmade goods. You may project the main website onto a screen in class and take the audience through a step-by-step process on how to sell an item.

Case Connection: Why Anastasia Wrote the Four Functions on Her Legal Pad

When Anastasia writes SHARE. UNDERSTAND. CHANGE PERCEPTIONS. GAIN SKILLS. on her yellow legal pad at 1:55 p.m., she is not making a checklist. She is making a decision tree. Sharing is what all four of her draft presentations do. Increasing understanding is the narrower goal of the technical explanation and the report. Changing perceptions — the specific perception that a clock is “just a thing” rather than a decision someone once made — is what the description and the demonstration can do but the explanation and the report cannot. Helping the audience gain a skill is, strictly speaking, what only the demonstration can do in eighteen minutes. When she maps her four folders against the four functions, the demonstration tray is the only one that touches all four. That is not an accident. When you find yourself with multiple viable approaches to a speech, map each one against these four functions and ask which approach reaches the most of them. The one that reaches all four is rarely the one that feels the safest — but it is usually the one that does the most work.

Exposition versus Interpretation

When we share information informally, we often provide our own perspective and attitude for our own reasons. But when we set out to inform an audience, taking sides or using sarcasm to communicate attitude may divide the audience into groups that agree or disagree with the speaker. The speech to inform the audience on a topic, idea, or area of content isn’t intended to be a display of attitude and opinion. Consider the expectations of people who attend a formal dinner. Will they use whatever fork or spoon they want, or are there expectations of protocol and decorum? In any given communication context, there are expectations, both implicit and explicit. Suppose you attend a rally on campus for health care reform. In that case, you may expect the speaker to motivate you to urge the university to stop investing in pharmaceutical companies, for example. On the other hand, if you enroll in a biochemistry course, you expect a teacher to inform you about the discipline of biochemistry, not to convince you that pharmaceutical companies are a good or bad influence on our health care system.

The speech to inform is like the classroom setting in that the goal is to inform, not to persuade, entertain, display attitude, or create comedy. If you’ve analyzed your audience, you’ll be better prepared to develop appropriate ways to gain their attention and inform them on your topic. You want to communicate thoughts, ideas, and relationships, and allow each listener, specifically, and the audience generally, to draw their own conclusions. The speech to inform is all about sharing information to meet the audience’s needs, not your own. While you might want to tell them about your views on politics in the Middle East, you’ll need to consider what they’re here to learn from you and let your audience-oriented perspective guide you as you prepare.

Exposition

This relationship between informing as opposed to persuading your audience is often expressed in terms of exposition versus interpretation. Exposition means a public exhibition or display, often expressing a complex topic in a way that makes the relationships and content clear. Expository prose is writing to inform; you may have been asked to write an expository essay in an English course or an expository report in a journalism course. The goal is to communicate the topic and content to your audience in ways that illustrate, explain, and reinforce the overall content, making it more accessible to the audience. The audience wants to learn about your topic and may have some knowledge on it, as you do. It’s your responsibility to consider ways to display the information effectively.

Interpretation and Bias

Interpretation involves adapting the information to communicate a message, perspective, or agenda. Your insights and attitudes will guide your selection of material, what you focus on, and what you delete (choosing what not to present to the audience). Your interpretation will involve personal bias. Bias is an unreasoned or poorly thought-out judgment. Bias involves beliefs or ideas held on the basis of conviction rather than current evidence. Beliefs are often called “habits of the mind” because we come to rely on them to make decisions. Which is the best, cheapest, most expensive, or middle-priced product? People often choose the middle-priced product and use the belief “if it costs more, it must be better” (and the opposite: “if it’s cheap, it must not be very good”). The middle-priced item, regardless of actual price, is often perceived as “good enough.” All these perceptions are based on beliefs, and they may not apply to the given decision or even be based on any evidence or rational thinking.

By extension, marketing students learn to facilitate the customer “relationship” with the brand. If you come to believe a brand stands for excellence, and a new product comes out under that brand label, you’re more likely to choose it over an unknown or lesser-known competitor. Again, your choice of the new product is based on a belief rather than evidence or rational thinking. We take mental shortcuts all day long, but in our speech to inform, we have to be careful not to reinforce bias.

Bias is like a filter on your perceptions, thoughts, and ideas. Bias encourages you to accept positive evidence that supports your existing beliefs (regardless of whether they’re true) and reject negative evidence that doesn’t support your beliefs. Furthermore, bias makes you likely to reject positive support for opposing beliefs and accept negative proof (again, regardless of whether the evidence is true). So what’s positive and what’s negative? In a biased frame of mind, that which supports your existing beliefs is positive and likely to be accepted, while that which challenges your beliefs is likely to be viewed as negative and rejected. There’s a clear danger in bias. You’re inclined to tune out or ignore information, regardless of how valuable, useful, or relevant it may be, simply because it doesn’t agree with or support what you already believe.

Point of View

Let’s say you’re going to present an informative speech on a controversial topic like same-sex marriage. Without advocating or condemning same-sex marriage, you could inform your audience about current laws in various states, recent and proposed changes in regulations, the number of same-sex couples who have gotten married in various places, the implications of being married or not being able to marry, and so on. But as you prepare and research your topic, do you only read or examine information that supports your existing view? If you only choose to present information that agrees with your prior view, you’ve incorporated bias into your speech. Now let’s say the audience members have different points of view, even biased ones, and as you present your information, you see many people start to fidget in their seats. You can probably anticipate that if they were to speak, the first word they’d say is “but” and then present their question or assertion. In effect, they’ll be having a debate with themselves and hardly listening to you.

You can anticipate the effects of bias and mitigate them to some degree. First, know the difference between your point of view or perspective and your bias. Your point of view is your perception of an idea or concept from your previous experience and understanding. It’s unique to you and is influenced by your experiences, as well as factors like gender, race, ethnicity, physical characteristics, and social class. Everyone has a point of view, no matter how hard they may try to be open-minded. But bias, as we’ve discussed previously, involves actively selecting information that supports or agrees with your current belief and takes away from any competing belief. To make sure you’re not presenting a biased speech, frame your discussion to inform from a neutral stance and consider alternative points of view to present, compare and contrast, and diversify your speech. The goal of the speech is to present an expository speech that reduces or tries to be free from overt interpretation.

This relates to our previous discussion on changing perceptions. Clearly, no one can be completely objective and remove themselves from their perceptual process. People aren’t modern works of minimalist art, where form and function are paramount and the artist is completely removed from the expression. People express themselves and naturally relate what’s happening now to what has happened to them in the past. You’re your own artist, but you also control your creations.

Objectivity involves expressions and perceptions of facts that are free from distortion by your prejudices, bias, feelings or interpretations. For example, is the post office box blue? An objective response would be yes or no, but a subjective response might sound like “Well, it’s not really blue as much as it is navy, even a bit of purple, kind of like the color of my ex-boyfriend’s car, remember? I don’t care for the color myself.” Subjectivity involves expressions or perceptions that are modified, altered, or impacted by your personal bias, experiences, and background. In an informative speech, your audience will expect you to present the information in a relatively objective form. The speech should meet the audience’s needs as they learn about the content, not your feelings, attitudes, or commentary on the content.

Here are five suggestions to help you present a neutral speech:

  1. Keep your language neutral and not very positive for some issues, while very negative for others.
  2. Keep your sources credible and not from biased organizations. The National Rifle Association (NRA) will have a biased view of the Second Amendment, for example, as will the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights.
  3. Keep your presentation balanced. If you use a source that supports one clear side of an issue, include an alternative source and view. Give each equal time and respectful consideration.
  4. Keep your audience in mind. Not everyone will agree with every point or source of evidence, but diversity in your speech will have more to offer everyone.
  5. Keep who you represent in mind: Your business and yourself.

Common Mistake: Letting Your Point of View Quietly Become Your Bias

Point of view is unavoidable. Anastasia has a point of view about clock restoration — she has spent eleven years running the atelier, and she cares about the work with an intensity that no detached observer could match. That is her point of view, and the commissioners will hear it in her voice whether she wants them to or not. Point of view is not the problem. The problem is the slide from point of view into bias. Bias begins the moment she starts cherry-picking her examples — using only the Kirkwood clock success story and omitting the three restorations the atelier had to turn away last year because the staffing was not there. Bias begins when she describes Hartford’s foundation-funded rival program as “the one that just throws money at the work” instead of naming it and letting the commissioners draw their own conclusions. The test is simple: would a commissioner who disagreed with you be able to recognize your description of their position as fair? If yes, you are on the right side of the point-of-view line. If no, you have crossed into bias.

Key Takeaways

  • The purpose of an informative speech is to share ideas with the audience, increase their understanding, change their perceptions, or help them gain new skills.
  • An informative speech incorporates the speaker’s point of view but not attitude or interpretation.

Exercises

  1. Consider the courses you’ve taken in the past year or two, and the extent to which each class session involved an informative presentation or one that was more persuasive. Do some disciplines lend themselves more to informing rather than interpretation and attitude? Discuss your findings with your classmates.
  2. Visit a major network news website and view a video of a commentator such as Rachel Maddow or Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC) or Sean Hannity or Dana Perino (Fox News). Identify the commentator’s point of view. If you were giving a presentation to inform, would you express your point of view in a similar style?
  3. On the same network news website you used for Exercise no. 2, view a video reporting a news event (as opposed to a commentator’s commentary). Do you feel that the reporter’s approach conveys a point of view, or is it neutral? Explain your feelings and discuss with your classmates.
  4. What’s the difference between an informative presentation and a persuasive one? Provide an example in your response.
  5. Consider a sample speech to inform on a topic where you have a strong opinion. In what ways would you adjust your key points so as not to persuade your listeners? Discuss your ideas with a classmate.
  6. Case application: Reread the scene in which Anastasia writes the four functions on her legal pad. For each of the four functions (share, increase understanding, change perceptions, gain skills), write one sentence describing how her demonstration approach serves that function, and one sentence describing a function her demonstration does not clearly serve. What does your analysis tell you about the limits of any single presentation type?
  7. Case application: Roderick has required that all grant renewal briefings be “informative, not persuasive.” Write a short paragraph explaining what he is trying to protect the commissioners from, in the language of this section (exposition vs. interpretation, point of view vs. bias). Then write a second paragraph explaining the risk in his requirement — is it possible for a presentation to be so strictly “informative” that it fails to communicate anything at all?

13.2 Types of Presentations to Inform

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify and describe the four main types of informative speech: explanation, report, description, and demonstration.
  2. Provide an example of each type drawn from a workplace or community setting.
  3. Match a topic to the informative type most likely to serve the audience’s needs.
  4. Recognize at least six of the specialized informative presentation formats common in business and industry.
  5. Explain how a single topic can be recast as any of the four types depending on the rhetorical situation.

Speaking to inform may fall into one of several categories. The presentation to inform may be

  • an explanation,
  • a report,
  • a description, or
  • a demonstration of how to do something.

Let’s explore each of these types of informative speech.

Explanation

Have you ever listened to a lecture or speech where you didn’t get it? It wasn’t that you weren’t interested, at least not at first. Perhaps the professor used language and jargon, or gave a confusing example, or omitted something that would have linked facts or concepts together. Soon, you probably lost interest and sat there, attending the speech or lecture in body but certainly not in mind. An effective speech to inform will take a complex topic or issue and explain it to the audience in ways that increase audience understanding. Perhaps the speech where you felt lost lacked definitions upfront, or a clear foundation in the introduction. You undoubtedly didn’t learn much, and that’s exactly what you want to avoid when you address your audience. Consider how you felt and then find ways to explain your topic—visually, using definitions and examples, providing a case study—that can lay a foundation on common ground with your audience and build on it.

No one likes to feel left out. As the speaker, it’s your responsibility to ensure that this doesn’t happen. Also know that teaching someone something new—perhaps a skill that they didn’t possess or a perspective that allows them to see new connections—is a real gift, both to you and the audience members. You’ll feel rewarded because you made a difference and they’ll perceive the gain in their own understanding.

Report

As a business communicator, you may be called upon to give an informative report where you communicate status, trends, or relationships that pertain to a specific topic. You might have only a few moments to speak, and you may have to prepare within a tight time frame. Your listeners may want “just the highlights,” only to ask pointed questions that require significant depth and preparation on your part. The informative report is a speech where you organize your information around key events, discoveries, or technical data and provide context and illustration for your audience. They may naturally wonder, “Why are sales up (or down)?” or “What’s the product leader in your lineup?” and you need to anticipate their perspective and present the key information that relates to your topic. If everyone in the room knows the product line, you may not need much information about your best seller, but instead emphasize marketing research that seems to indicate why it’s the best seller.

Perhaps you’re asked to be the scout and examine a new market, developing strategies to penetrate it. You’ll need to orient your audience, provide key information about the market, and demonstrate leadership as you articulate your strategy. You have a perspective gained by time and research, and your audience wants to know why you see things the way you do, as well as learn what you learned. A status report may be short or long, and may be an update that requires little background, but always consider the audience and the common ground you share.

Description

Have you ever listened to a friend tell you about their recent trip somewhere and found the details fascinating, making you want to travel there or visit a similar place? Or perhaps you listened to your chemistry teacher describe a chemical reaction you were going to perform in class, and you understood the process and could reasonably anticipate the outcome. Describing information requires emphasis on language that’s vivid, captures attention, and excites the imagination. Your audience will be drawn to your effective use of color, descriptive language, and visual aids. An informative speech that focuses on description will be visual in many ways. You may choose to illustrate with images, video and audio clips, and maps. Your first-person experience combined with your content will allow the audience to come to know a topic, area, or place through you, or secondhand. Their imagination is your ally, and you should aim to stimulate it with attention-getting devices and clear visual aids. Use your imagination to place yourself in their perspective: how would you like to have someone describe the topic to you?

Demonstration

You want to teach the audience how to create a basic financial spreadsheet or how to edit a short video clip for social media. These topics rely on a clear demonstration of a process, where you show each step and provide essential details so the audience can follow along. Each of these topics will call on your kindergarten experience of “show and tell.” A demonstrative speech focuses on clearly showing a process and telling the audience essential details about each step so that they can imitate, repeat, or do the action themselves. If the topic is complicated, think of ways to simplify each step.

Consider the visual aids or supplies you’ll need. You may have noticed that cooking shows on television rarely show the chef chopping and measuring ingredients during the demonstration. Instead, the ingredients are chopped and measured ahead of time, and the chef adds each item to the dish with a brief comment like, “Now we’ll stir in half a cup of chicken stock.” If you want to present a demonstration speech on the ways to make a paper airplane, one that will turn left or right, go up, down, or in loops, consider how best to present your topic. Perhaps illustrating the process of making one airplane, followed by an example on how to make adjustments to the plane to allow for different flight patterns would be effective. Would you need additional paper airplanes made in advance of your speech? Would an example of the paper airplane in each of the key stages of production be helpful to have ready before the speech? Having all your preparation done ahead of time can make a world of difference, and your audience will appreciate your thoughtful approach.

By considering each step and focusing on how to simplify it, you can understand how the audience might grasp the new information and how you can best help them. Also, consider the desired outcome; for example, will your listeners actually be able to do the task themselves, or will they gain an appreciation of the complexities of a difficult skill like piloting an airplane to a safe landing? Regardless of the sequence or pattern you’ll illustrate or demonstrate, consider how people from your anticipated audience will respond, and budget additional time for repetition and clarification.

Informative presentations come in all sizes, shapes, and forms. You may need to create an “elevator speech” style presentation with the emphasis on brevity, or produce a comprehensive summary of several points that require multiple visual aids to communicate complex processes or trends. The main goal in an informative presentation is to inform, not to persuade, and that requires an emphasis on credibility, for the speaker and the data or information presented. Extra attention to sources is required, and you’ll need to indicate what reports, texts, or websites were sources for your analysis and conclusions.

Here are additional, more specific types of informative presentations:

  • Biographical information
  • Case study results
  • Comparative advantage results
  • Cost-benefit analysis results
  • Feasibility studies
  • Field study results
  • Financial trends analysis
  • Health, safety, and accident rates
  • Instruction guidelines
  • Laboratory results
  • Product or service orientations
  • Progress reports
  • Research results
  • Technical specifications

Depending on the rhetorical situation, the audience, and the specific information to be presented, any of these types of presentation may be given as an explanation, a report, a description, or a demonstration.

Case Connection: Anastasia’s Four Folders, Mapped to the Four Types

Each of Anastasia’s four prepared presentations maps onto one of the four types this section introduces. The technical walkthrough of fusee mechanisms and verge escapements is an explanation — its job is to take a complex system the audience does not understand and make its parts and relationships visible. The grant cycle outcomes with apprentice placement rates and dollars leveraged is a report — its job is to organize status, trends, and results around a specific topic and hand the audience the facts in a tight, credible package. The story of the Kirkwood Avenue street clock and the shoebox music box from Nashville, Indiana is a description — its job is to use vivid language and first-person experience to help the audience imagine what the atelier’s work looks and feels like. The 1919 Elgin railroad pocket watch on the demonstration tray is a demonstration — its job is to show the audience a process step by step so they can, to at least some small degree, imitate or understand what the craftsperson does. She did not build four presentations because she was confused. She built four because she was ruling out three. The process of ruling them out is what turned her toward the demonstration, and this chapter will give you the vocabulary to rule types in and out the same way.

Pro Tip: Pick the Type That Matches the Audience’s Need, Not Your Comfort

Most speakers pick the informative type they are most comfortable delivering — engineers default to explanation, analysts default to reports, storytellers default to description, and hands-on practitioners default to demonstration. Comfort is not a bad reason, but it is not the deciding reason. Ask instead: what does this particular audience most need in order to understand this particular topic? A board of arts commissioners who has never disassembled a watch does not need an explanation of escapement physics (that would lose them in the first ninety seconds) or a report of apprentice placement rates (that would sound like a brochure). They need to see a watch come apart on the table in front of them. A room of fellow horologists would need exactly the opposite — they have seen the watch, so hand them the report. When in doubt, rank your type options by how much of the audience’s prior knowledge they can skip, and pick the one that skips the least.

Key Takeaways

An informative speech may explain, report, describe, or demonstrate how to do something.

Exercises

  1. Watch a “how-to” television show, such as one about cooking, home improvement, dog training, or crime solving. What informative techniques and visual aids are used in the show to help viewers learn the skills that are being demonstrated?
  2. Prepare a simple “how-to” presentation for the class. Present and compare your results.
  3. Compare and contrast two television programs, noting how each communicates the meaning via visual communication rather than words or dialogue. Share and compare with classmates.
  4. Case application: Pick a topic you know well from your own job or studies. Write four one-paragraph treatments of that topic, one for each of the four types of informative speech. Which of the four felt easiest to write? Which felt hardest? Which do you think would actually work best for an audience of people who know nothing about your topic, and why?
  5. Case application: Imagine Anastasia had chosen the description approach instead of the demonstration. Write a two-minute opening for that version, using the Kirkwood Avenue street clock as her anchor image. Then write a one-paragraph analysis of what that version would gain (compared to the demonstration she actually chose) and what it would lose.

13.3 Adapting Your Presentation to Teach

Learning Objectives

  1. Articulate and demonstrate an audience-centered perspective.
  2. Provide and demonstrate examples of ways to facilitate active listening.
  3. Identify the seven silent questions audience members ask when deciding whether to listen.
  4. Define framing, gatekeeping, and agenda setting, and explain how each shapes an informative message.
  5. Apply at least four of Andrews, Andrews, and Williams’s techniques to an informative speech of your own.

Successfully delivering an informative speech requires adopting an audience-centered perspective. Imagine that you’re in the audience. What would it take for the speaker to capture and maintain your attention? What would encourage you to listen? In this section, we present several techniques for achieving this, including motivating your audience to listen, framing your information in meaningful ways, and designing your presentation to appeal to diverse learning styles.

Motivating the Listener

In an ideal world, every audience member would be interested in your topic. Unfortunately, however, not everyone will be equally interested in your informative speech. The range of interest might extend from not at all interested to very curious, with individual audience members all across this continuum. So, what’s a speaker to do to motivate the listener?

The perception process involves selection or choice, and you want your audience to choose to listen to you. You can have all the “bells and whistles” of a dramatic, entertaining, or engaging speech and still not capture everyone’s attention. You can, however, use what you know to increase their chances of paying attention to you. Begin with your attention statement at the beginning of your speech and make sure it’s dynamic and arresting. Remember what active listening involves, and look for opportunities throughout your speech to encourage active listening.

Let’s highlight seven strategies by posing questions that audience members may think, but not actually say out loud, when deciding whether to listen to your speech. By considering each question, you’ll take a more audience-centered approach to developing your speech, increasing your effectiveness.

How Is Your Topic Relevant to Me?

A natural question audience members will ask themselves is, What does the topic have to do with me? Why should I care about it? Your first response might be because it’s your turn to speak, so the least they can do is be respectful. Instead, consider the idea that you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her drink. If you’re in a class, the audience is part of the class, and they may be present in body, but they may arrive wishing they were somewhere else. You can put a stop to that wish by making your topic relevant to your audience. Relevance means that the information applies, relates, or has significance to the listener. Find areas of common ground and build on them.

If you were to give an informative speech about the dangers of impaired driving, you could make the topic relevant by discussing the availability of ride-sharing services and the financial and personal consequences of a DUI conviction. You can tie it to a universal need for safety, as identified by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Everyone needs to feel safe.[1] You may also consider that some of your listeners have had experiences with people who have consumed too much alcohol or people who have driven under the influence; they may have even had a loved one injured by an intoxicated driver. You may use the issue of safety to underscore relevance. You might consider briefly alluding to the effects of alcohol, asking rhetorically if audience members have ever seen someone try to walk, talk, or even drive after a drinking binge. All these strategies will reinforce the relevance of your topic and highlight connections across common ground.

What Will I Learn from You?

This question involves several issues. How much does the audience already know about your subject? What areas do you think they might not know? If you know that many people are aware of the laws in your state that pertain to intoxicated driving, you may consider informing them about proposed changes to these laws in your state legislature. Another approach might be to describe the impact of the laws on families and individuals. The consequences can be discussed in terms of annual statistics of motor vehicle accidents involving alcohol, the age and gender distribution of those involved, and the individual consequences in terms of financial penalties, impact on employment, and a criminal record. By building on the information the audience knows, briefly reviewing it, and then extending it, illustrating it, and demonstrating the impact, you inform them of things they didn’t already know.

Why Are You Interested in This Topic?

Your interest in your topic is an excellent way to encourage your audience to listen. Interest involves qualities that arouse attention, stimulate curiosity, or move an individual to a more excited state of mind. You probably selected your topic with your audience in mind, but also considered your interest in the subject. Why did you choose it over other issues? What about your topic aroused your attention? Did it stimulate your curiosity? Did it make you excited about researching and preparing a speech on it? These questions will help you clarify your interest, and by sharing the answers with your listeners, you’ll generate excitement in them.

How Can I Use the Knowledge or Skills You Present to Me?

In an informative speech, you’re not asking your listeners to go out and vote, or to quit smoking tomorrow, as you would in a persuasive speech. Nevertheless, you need to consider how they’ll apply their new understanding. Application involves the individual’s capacity for practical use of the information, skill, or knowledge. As a result of your speech, will your listeners be able to do something new, like set up an auction on eBay? Will they better understand the importance of saving money and know three new ways to save for retirement?

For example, as a result of your informative speech on drunk driving laws, they may reflect on what a conviction would mean to them financially, think about how they’d get to work if their driver’s license was suspended, or imagine the grief of a family when an innocent person is killed in a drunk driving accident. Although your goal isn’t to persuade but to inform, the new knowledge gained by your audience may motivate them to make new decisions about their lives.

When you prepare your presentation, consider ways you can actively demonstrate your understanding of the material. Incorporate messages into your speech to highlight the practical use of the knowledge or skill. A couple of helpful comments about how the audience will actually use the information will go a long way toward encouraging listening and gaining attention.

What Is New about What You Propose to Present?

Sometimes humans seem like a mass of contradictions. We’re naturally attracted to novelty, yet we appreciate predictability. We like clear organization, yet there are times when we enjoy a little controlled chaos. Novelty involves something new, unusual, or unfamiliar. As a speaker, how do you meet the two contrasting needs for familiarity and novelty?

Address both. You may want to start by forming a clear foundation on what you have in common with the audience. Present the known elements of your topic and then extend into areas where less is known, increasing the novelty or new information as you progress. People will feel comfortable with the familiar and be intrigued by the unfamiliar.

You might also invert this process, starting from a relatively unfamiliar stance and working your way back to the familiar. This is a technique often used in cinema, where the opening shot is an extreme close-up of something and you can’t guess what it is for lack of perspective. As the camera pulls back or pans left or right, you get more clues and eventually are able to see what it is. It’s intriguing, yet familiar. Consider ways to reinforce the novelty of your material to your audience to encourage listening.

Are You Going to Bore Me?

You’ve probably sat through your fair share of boring lectures where the speaker, teacher, or professor talks at length in a relatively monotone voice, fails to alternate their pace, incorporates few visual aids, or reads from a PowerPoint show for an hour in a dimly lit room. Recall how you felt. Trapped? Tired? Did you wonder why you had to be there? Then you know what you need to avoid.

Being bored means the speaker failed to stimulate you as the listener, probably increased your resistance to listening or participating, and became tiresome. To avoid boring your audience, speak with enthusiasm, and consider ways to gain and keep gaining their attention. You don’t have to be a stand-up comedian, however, to avoid being a boring speaker. Consider the rhetorical situation, and let the audience’s needs guide you as you prepare. Adjust and adapt as they give you feedback, whether verbal or nonverbal. Consider the question, “What’s in it for me?” from the audience’s perspective and plan to answer it specifically with vivid examples. If your presentation meets their expectations and needs, listeners are more likely to give you their attention.

You may also consider the organizational principle and choose a strategy that promises success. By organizing the information in interesting ways within the time frame, you can increase your effectiveness. The opposite of boring isn’t necessarily entertaining. Variety in your speech, from your voice to your visual aids, will help stimulate interest.

Is This Topic Really as Important as You Say It Is?

No one wants to feel like their time is being wasted. That trapped, tired, or bored feeling is often related to a perception that the topic isn’t relevant or essential. What’s important to you and what’s important to your audience may be two different things. Take time and plan to reinforce in your speech how the topic is vital to your audience. Importance involves perceptions of worth, value, and usefulness.

How can you express that the topic is worthy of their attention? We’ve discussed the importance of considering why you chose the topic in the first place as a strategy to engage your audience. They’ll want to know why the topic was worthy of your time, and by extension, their time.

Consider how to express through images, examples, or statistics the depth, breadth, and impact of your topic. Tell the audience how many drivers under the age of twenty-one lose their lives each year in alcohol-related accidents, or what percentage of all under-twenty-one deaths in your state are related to a combination of drinking and driving. Remember, too, that because statistics may sound impersonal or overwhelming, focusing on a specific case may provide more depth. As a final tip, be careful not to exaggerate the importance of your topic, as you may run the risk of having the audience mentally call your bluff. If this happens, you’ll lose some credibility and attention.

Case Connection: Roderick’s “ROI” Question Is a Relevance Question in Disguise

When Roderick’s aide texts Anastasia at 1:47 to say the commissioner will ask about public ROI within the first four minutes, it is tempting to read this as a hostile ambush. It is not. It is the first of the seven silent questions this section names — “How is your topic relevant to me?” — being asked out loud. Roderick is a commercial real estate developer. His measuring stick for relevance is dollars deployed against public benefit returned. If Anastasia treats the ROI question as an attack, she will fight it and lose. If she treats it as the audience-relevance question it actually is, she will answer it in the language Roderick understands (apprentice placement rates, dollars leveraged against grant dollars, the number of community-owned clocks restored per program year) within the first four minutes — and then return to the demonstration she came to deliver. The silent questions are almost never asked out loud. When they are, treat it as a gift. The audience is telling you which question they need answered before they can listen.

Reflection Write: Which of the Seven Questions Would You Forget?

Take two minutes and write down the seven silent questions from memory, without looking back. (Relevance, what will I learn, why are you interested, how can I use it, what is new, will you bore me, is it important.) For each question you missed, write one sentence about why you think that question slipped your memory. Most speakers consistently forget the same one or two questions — typically the ones they personally do not worry about when they are in the audience. A speaker who never gets bored often forgets to worry about boring the audience. A speaker who loves new information often forgets that the audience needs the familiar foundation first. Knowing which question you forget is as useful as remembering the seven.

Framing

The presentation of information shapes attitudes and behavior. This is done through framing and content. Framing involves placing an imaginary set of boundaries, much like a frame around a picture or a window, around a story, of what’s included and omitted, influencing the story itself. What lies within the frame that we can see? What lies outside the frame that we can’t see? Which way does the window face? All these variables impact our perspective, and by the acts of gatekeeping and agenda setting, the media frames the stories we see and the information we learn.

Suppose you’re presenting an informative speech about media effects on viewers. You might cite the case of the 1993 movie The Program about college football players.[2] In one scene, to demonstrate their “courage,” the football players lie on the divider line of a busy highway at night as cars rush past. After viewing the film, several teenagers imitated the scene; some were seriously injured and one died as a result.[3] How will you frame this incident in the context of your speech? You might mention that the production studio subsequently deleted the highway sequence from the film, that the sequence clearly indicated the actors were stunt men, or that The Program ultimately argues that such behavior is destructive and unwarranted. Or you might cite additional incidents where people have been injured or killed by trying a stunt they saw in the media.

One form of framing is gatekeeping. Gatekeeping, according to Pearson and Nelson, is “a process of determining what news, information, or entertainment will reach a mass audience.”[4] The term “gatekeeping” was originally used by psychologist Kurt Lewin as a metaphor, featuring a series of gates that information must pass through before ever reaching the audience.[5] In the context of journalism and mass media, gates and gatekeepers may include media owners, editors, or even the individual reporter in the context of mass communication. In the context of public speaking, you, as the speaker, are the gatekeeper to the information.

Another function of gatekeeping is agenda setting. Setting the agenda, just like the agenda of a meeting, means selecting what the audience will see and hear and in what order. Who decides what the number one story on the evening news is? Throughout the twentieth century, professional communicators working in the media industry set the agenda for readers, listeners, and viewers; today, widespread internet access has greatly broadened the number of people who can become agenda setters. In giving a speech, you select the information and set the agenda. You may choose to inform the audience on a topic that gets little press coverage, or use a popular story widely covered in a new way, with a case example and local statistics.

Another aspect of framing your message is culture. According to Pearson and Nelson, culture within the context of communication is “a set of beliefs and understandings a society has about the world, its place in it, and the various activities used to celebrate and reinforce those beliefs.”[6] Themes of independence, overcoming challenging circumstances, and hard-fought victory are seen repeatedly in American programming and national speeches. They reflect an aspect of American culture. In the case of football, it’s sometimes viewed as the quintessentially male American sport, and its importance on Thanksgiving Day is nothing short of a ritual for many Americans. If you went to a country in Latin America, you’d probably find the television set tuned to a soccer game, where soccer is the revered sport. What do these sports say about culture?

One might argue that American football is aggressive and that, while the team is essential, the individual’s effort and record are celebrated at all times between plays. Significant attention is given to the salary each player makes. In South American football, or soccer, the announcer’s emphasis is on the team, and at breaks, some discussion of key players is present, but not to the same degree, though this is changing.

What do these differences tell us? Our interpretation of these differences may point toward ways in which the media reinforces national culture and its values. However, since you’re speaking to inform, take care not to overgeneralize. To state that American football is a male-viewer-dominated sport may be an accurate observation, but to exclude women when discussing the sport would lead to a generalization that isn’t accurate and may even perpetuate a stereotype.

In the past, media portrayals often presented a limited view of the world, with certain groups underrepresented or confined to stereotypical roles. Today, while progress has been made in diversity, it’s still essential to critically analyze the media’s representation of age, race, gender, and other identities. This can help you, as a speaker, recognize how media influences our perceptions and avoid perpetuating stereotypes in your presentations.

This limited view, itself a product of gatekeeping, agenda setting, and the profit motive, has little connection to the “real world.” Most people in the world aren’t white, and the majority of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese. There are more women than men in the adult populations of most countries. Women don’t tend to die off at age thirty-five; in fact, women on average live longer than men. Many people, particularly in a diverse country that’s undergoing dramatic demographic changes, aren’t members of just one racial, ethnic, or cultural group but rather members of many groups. Consider culture when selecting content, and note that diversity of information and sources will strengthen your speech and resonate with a broader range of your audience.

Additional Tips

Andrews, Andrews, and Williams offer eight ways to help listeners learn that are adapted and augmented here.[7]

Limit the Number of Details

While it may be tempting to include many of the facts you’ve found in your research, choose only those that clearly inform your audience. Try to group the information and then select the best example to reduce your list of details. You don’t want the audience focusing on a long list of facts and details while overlooking your main points.

Focus on Clear Main Points

Your audience should be able to discern your main points clearly the first time. You’ll outline them in your introduction, and they’ll listen for them as you proceed. Connect supporting information to your clear main points to reinforce them, and provide verbal cues of points covered and points to come.

Use internal summaries, where you state, “Now that we’ve discussed X point, let’s examine its relationship to Y point.” This will help your audience follow your logic and organization and differentiate between supporting material and main points. You may also want to foreshadow points by stating, “We’ll examine Z point in a moment, but first let’s consider Y point.”

Pace Yourself Carefully

Talking too fast is a common expression of speech anxiety. One way to reduce your anxiety level is to practice and know your information well. As you practice, note where you are in terms of time at the completion of each point. After a few practice rounds, you should begin to see some consistency in your speed. Use these benchmarks of time to pace yourself. When you deliver your speech, knowing you have time, are well prepared, and are familiar with your speech patterns will help you pace yourself more effectively.

Speak with Concern for Clarity

Not everyone speaks English as their first language, and even among English speakers, there’s a wide discrepancy in speaking style and language use. When you choose your language, consider challenging terms and jargon, and define them accordingly. You may assume that everyone knows “NIH” stands for “National Institutes of Health,” but make sure you explain the acronym the first time you use it, just as you would if you were writing a formal article. Also, pay attention to enunciation and articulation. As your rate of speech picks up, you may tend to slur words together and drop or de-emphasize consonants, especially at the ends of words. Doing this will make it harder to understand, discouraging listening.

Use Restatement and Repetition

There’s nothing wrong with restating main points or repeating key phrases. The landmark speech titled “I Have a Dream,” which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, used that phrase multiple times to reinforce the main message effectively.

Provide Visual Reinforcement

We’ve discussed the importance of visual aids to support and illustrate your content. As a speaker giving a prepared presentation, you have the luxury of preparing your visual aids with your audience in mind. In an impromptu speech or a media interview, you may lack this luxury and find it challenging to effectively reinforce your content. Take advantage of the known time frame before your speech to prepare effective visual aids and your speech will be more effective.

Include Time for Questions

You can’t possibly cover all the information about a topic that every audience member would want to know in the normal five to seven minutes of a speech. You may do an excellent job of supporting and reinforcing your points, but many listeners may have questions. Take this as a compliment—after all, if you hadn’t piqued their interest, they wouldn’t have any questions to ask. Answering questions is an opportunity to elaborate on a point, reinforcing what you presented and relying on your thorough preparation to illustrate the point with more depth.

In some situations, the speaker will accept and answer questions during the body of the presentation, but it’s more typical to ask listeners to hold their questions until the end. Depending on your instructor’s guidelines, you may advise the class at the beginning of your presentation which of these formats you’ll follow.

Look for Ways to Involve Listeners Actively

Instead of letting your audience sit passively, motivate them to get involved in your presentation. You might ask for a show of hands as you raise a question like, “How many of you have wondered about…?” You might point out the window, encouraging your audience to notice a weather pattern or an example of air pollution. Even stepping away from the podium for a moment can provide variety and increase active listening.

Assess Learning, If Possible

Questions during a speech can help assess understanding, but also run the risk of derailing your speech as the audience pursues one point while you have two more to present. Make time for dialogue after your speech and encourage your audience to write down their questions and ask them then. Perhaps asking your audience to reflect on a point and then to write a few sentences at the conclusion of your speech might reinforce your central message.

Pro Tip: Write Your Internal Summaries Before You Write Your Body

Most speakers write the body of their speech first and then, as an afterthought, bolt on a transition sentence between each major point. This almost always produces weak transitions that sound like stage directions. Flip the sequence. Before you draft a single sentence of main-point content, write the three or four internal summaries that will live between your points — “Now that we’ve seen what an escapement is, let’s look at why that matters for restoration,” “Having shown you the restoration process, let’s turn to the apprenticeship that passes it forward.” Draft those sentences first. They will tell you what each main point needs to do in order to earn the next one. When you then write the main points themselves, you will write them to fit the transitions rather than the other way around, and your structure will hold.

Key Takeaways

To present a successful informative speech, motivate your audience by making your material relevant and useful, finding interesting ways to frame your topic, and emphasizing new aspects if the topic is a familiar one.

Exercises

  1. Visit an online news website such as CNN, MSNBC, or PBS NewsHour. Select a news video on a topic that interests you and watch it a few times. Identify the ways in which the speaker(s) adapt the presentation to be informative and frame the topic. Discuss your results with your classmates.
  2. Watch a news program and write down the words that could be considered to communicate values, bias, or opinion. Share and compare with the class.
  3. Watch a news program and find an example that you consider to be objective, “just the facts,” and share it with the class.
  4. Note how television programs (or other media) use novelty to get your attention. Find at least three headlines, teaser advertisements for television programs, or similar attempts to get attention and share with the class.
  5. How can an audience’s prior knowledge affect a speech? What percentage of an informative presentation do you expect an audience to remember? Why?
  6. Case application: Draft the first ninety seconds of Anastasia’s demonstration, written specifically to answer Roderick’s “What’s the public ROI?” question without ever naming the grant or the commission’s decision. The ninety seconds should land at least three of the seven silent questions (relevance, what I’ll learn, what’s new) and should frame the topic in a way a commercial real estate developer would recognize as relevant.
  7. Case application: Pick one of the eight Andrews, Andrews, and Williams techniques. Write a short paragraph explaining how Anastasia can use that specific technique in the body of her demonstration, and what the demonstration would lose if she skipped it.

13.4 Diverse Types of Intelligence and Learning Styles

Learning Objectives

  1. Define the concepts of multiple intelligences and learning styles.
  2. Identify the seven learning styles drawn from Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences.
  3. Match each learning style to at least one strategy a speaker can use to reach audience members who learn that way.
  4. Design an informative speech that reaches more than one learning style at once.

Psychologist Howard Gardner is known for developing the theory of multiple intelligences, in which he proposes that different people are intelligent in different domains.[8] For example, some people may excel in interpersonal intelligence, or the ability to form and maintain relationships. Other people may excel in bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, or physical coordination and control. Still others have a high degree of musical intelligence or logico-mathematical intelligence. While some psychologists argue that these are actually talents or aptitudes rather than forms of intelligence, the point remains that individual audience members will receive information differently, depending on the types of intelligence (or talent) they possess.

An outgrowth of the theory of multiple intelligences is the theory of learning styles, the idea that people learn better if the message is presented in a way that aligns with their strongest types of intelligence. Consider each style when preparing your speech. What styles might work best with your particular audience?

For example, suppose you work for a technology company, and part of your job is to give an informative seminar once a month on how to use a new project management software. You never know who will attend or what their interests and level of prior knowledge are, so you have to be prepared to appeal to different learning styles.

Begin by going around the room and asking each person to describe the wallpaper situation they plan to work on. This will help you determine what kinds of questions your audience hopes to have answered, but it won’t tell you anything about their learning styles. Suppose instead that you ask them to state why they decided to attend and what their career or occupation is. Now you can gauge your presentation according to the likely learning styles of your audience. For example, suppose you have ten attendees and five of them work in the banking or information technology field. In that case, it’s probably safe to assume they’re fairly strong in the logical or mathematical area. This will help you decide how to talk about measuring the wall, calculating product quantities, and estimating cost. If another attendee is a psychologist, they may be able to relate on the intrapersonal and interpersonal level. You may decide to strengthen your remarks about the importance of being comfortable with one’s choices for renovating the room, seeking consensus from family members, and considering how the finished room will be suitable for guests. If some attendees work in the arts, they may be especially attentive to your advice about the aesthetic qualities of a well-executed wall surface renovation.

Table 13.1 “Diverse Learning Styles and Strategies” provides a summary of the seven styles and some suggested strategies to help you design your speech to align with each learning style.

Table 13.1 Diverse Learning Styles and Strategies
Learning Style Examples Strategies
Linguistic Language, reading, verbal expression, speaking, writing, memorizing words (names, places, and dates) Reading, oral presentations such as debates, reports, or storytelling
Logical/Mathematical Use of numbers, perceiving relationships, reasoning (sequential, deductive, inductive), computation Problem solving, graphic organizers, categorizing, classifying, working with patterns and relationships
Spatial Think in three dimensions, mental imagery, design color, form and line within space Maps, charts, graphic organizers, painting or drawing, visual aids, working with pictures or colors
Musical Discern rhythm, pitch and tone, interpret music, identify tonal patterns, compose music Rhythmic patterns and exercises, singing, music performance
Bodily/Kinesthetic Sense of timing and balance, athletics, dance, work that takes physical skill Drama, role playing, touching and manipulating objects, demonstrating
Interpersonal Organizing, leading others, communicating, collaboration, negotiating, mediating Group projects, interaction, debates, discussions, cooperative learning, sharing ideas
Intrapersonal Reflection, thinking strategies, focusing/concentration Individual projects, self-paced instruction, note-taking, reflection

Case Connection: Why Anastasia Brought a Pocket Watch

Anastasia does not know, when she walks into Board Room C, which learning styles the seven commissioners favor. She only knows what each of them does for a living. Roderick is a commercial real estate developer (logical/mathematical, spatial). Delphine is a retired high school principal (linguistic, interpersonal). Isadora is a cellist with the Bloomington Symphony (musical, bodily/kinesthetic). The other four are mixed — an attorney, a nonprofit director, an agronomist, and an economist. A single-modality presentation would reach some of them and leave the others looking at their phones. The demonstration reaches all seven at once: the pocket watch coming apart on the table is spatial and bodily/kinesthetic (Isadora and Roderick); the apprentice placement numbers Anastasia mentions at minute four are logical/mathematical (Roderick and the economist); the story of the Kirkwood clock is linguistic and interpersonal (Delphine); the offer to hand the watch around the table is bodily/kinesthetic and interpersonal (everyone). A demonstration is not the only multi-modal format, but it is one of the few that comes with the audience already physically engaged before a single slide appears.

Try It: Map Your Next Audience to the Seven Learning Styles

Pick an upcoming presentation you will give in the next month — in a class, at work, or in a community setting. List every person you expect in the room by name or by role. For each person, guess at their top two learning styles based on what you know about their profession, hobbies, and background. Now tally the styles across your audience. Which two or three styles show up most often? Those are the ones your presentation needs to reach first. Which one shows up least? That is the one you can safely treat as a secondary channel. You will not be right about every individual, but the tally is usually right about the room.

Key Takeaways

An informative speech can be more effective when the learning styles of the audience members are addressed.

Exercises

  1. Make a list of several people you know well, including family members, lifelong friends, or current roommates. Opposite each person’s name, write the types of intelligence or the learning styles in which you believe that person is especially strong. Consider making this a reciprocal exercise by listing your strongest learning styles and asking family and friends to guess what’s on your list.
  2. How do you learn best? What works for you? Write a short paragraph and share with the class.
  3. Write a review of your best teacher, noting why you think they were effective. Share with the class.
  4. Write a review of your worst teacher, noting why you think they were ineffective. Share with the class.
  5. Case application: Anastasia has ten minutes before she speaks and no time to redesign her presentation. But she can still make two or three micro-adjustments on the fly to reach more learning styles. List three such adjustments she could make in those ten minutes — adjustments to what she says, what she shows, or what she does with the pocket watch — and explain which learning style each one picks up.

13.5 Preparing Your Speech to Inform

Learning Objectives

  1. Discuss and provide examples of ways to incorporate ethics in a speech.
  2. Construct an effective speech to inform.
  3. Define and explain the seven ethical principles central to informative speaking: reciprocity, mutuality, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, respect, trust, and the avoidance of exploitation.
  4. Recognize the moments when an informative speech is most at risk of sliding into persuasion, and apply ethical strategies to stay within the informative frame.

Now that we’ve covered issues central to the success of your informative speech, there’s no doubt you want to get down to work. Here are five final suggestions to help you succeed.

Start with What You Know

Are you taking other classes right now that are fresh in your memory? Are you working on a challenging chemistry problem that might lend itself to your informative speech? Are you reading a novel by Gabriel García Márquez that might inspire you to present a biographical speech, informing your audience about the author? Perhaps you have a hobby or outside interest that you’re excited about that would serve you well. Regardless of where you draw the inspiration, it’s a good strategy to start with what you know and work from there. You’ll be more enthusiastic, helping your audience to listen intently, and you’ll save yourself time. Consider the audience’s needs, not just your need to cross a speech off your “to-do” list. This speech will be an opportunity for you to take prepared material and present it, gaining experience and essential feedback. In the “real world,” you often lack time, and the consequences of a less-than-effective speech can be serious. Look forward to the opportunity and use what you know to perform an effective, engaging speech.

Consider Your Audience’s Prior Knowledge

You don’t want to present a speech on the harmful effects of smoking when no one in the audience smokes. You may be more effective addressing the issue of secondhand smoke, underscoring its relevance and importance to your audience. The audience will want to learn something from you, not hear everything they’ve heard before. It’s a challenge to assess what they’ve heard before, and often a class activity is conducted to allow audience members to come to know each other. You can also use their speeches and topic selection as points to consider. Think about age, gender, and socioeconomic status, as well as your listeners’ culture or language. Survey the audience if possible, or ask a couple of classmates what they think of the topics you’re considering.

In the same way, when you prepare a speech in a business situation, do your homework. Access the company website, visit the location, get to know people, and even call members of the company to discuss your topic. The more information you can gather about your audience, the better you’ll be able to adapt and present an effective speech.

Adapting Jargon and Technical Terms

You may have a topic in mind from another class or an outside activity, but chances are that there are terms specific to the area or activity. From wakeboarding to rugby to a chemical process that contributes to global warming, there will be jargon and technical terms. Define and describe the key terms for your audience as part of your speech and substitute common terms where appropriate. Your audience will enjoy learning more about the topic and appreciate your consideration as you present your speech.

Using Outside Information

Even if you think you know everything there is to know about your topic, using outside sources will contribute depth to your speech, provide support for your main points, and even enhance your credibility as a speaker. “According to ____________” is a normal way of attributing information to a source, and you should give credit where credit is due. There’s nothing wrong with using outside information as long as you clearly cite your sources and don’t present someone else’s information as your own.

Presenting Information Ethically

A central but often unspoken expectation of the speaker is that we’ll be ethical. This means, fundamentally, that we perceive one another as human beings with common interests and needs, and that we attend to the needs of others as well as our own. An ethical informative speaker expresses respect for listeners by avoiding prejudiced comments against any group, and by being honest about the information presented, including information that may contradict the speaker’s personal biases. The ethical speaker also admits it when they don’t know something. The best salespersons recognize that ethical communication is the key to success, as it builds a healthy relationship where the customer’s needs are met, thereby meeting the salesperson’s own needs.

Reciprocity

Tyler discusses ethical communication and specifically indicates reciprocity as a key principle.[9] Reciprocity, or a relationship of mutual exchange and interdependence, is an important characteristic of a relationship, particularly between a speaker and the audience. We’ve previously examined the transactional nature of communication, and it’s important to reinforce this aspect here. We exchange meaning with one another in conversation, and much like a game, it takes more than one person to play. This leads to interdependence, or the dependence of the conversational partners on one another. Inequality in the levels of dependence can negatively impact the communication and, as a result, the relationship. You, as the speaker, will have certain expectations and roles, but dominating your audience won’t encourage them to fulfill their roles in terms of participation and active listening. Communication involves give and take, and in a public speaking setting, where the communication may be perceived as “all to one,” don’t forget that the audience is also communicating with you through feedback. You have a responsibility to attend to that feedback and develop reciprocity with your audience. Without them, you don’t have a speech.

Mutuality

Mutuality means that you search for common ground and understanding with the audience, establishing this space and building on it throughout the speech. This involves examining viewpoints other than your own, and taking steps to ensure the speech integrates an inclusive, accessible format rather than an ethnocentric one.

Nonjudgmentalism

Nonjudgmentalism underlines the need to be open-minded, an expression of one’s willingness to examine diverse perspectives. Your audience expects you to state the truth as you perceive it, with supporting and clarifying information to support your position, and to speak honestly. They also expect you to be open to their point of view and be able to negotiate meaning and understanding constructively. Nonjudgmentalism may include taking the perspective that being different isn’t inherently evil and that there’s common ground to be found with others.

While this characteristic should be understood, we can see evidence of breakdowns in communication when audiences perceive they aren’t being told the whole truth. This doesn’t mean that the relationship with the audience requires honesty and excessive self-disclosure. The use of euphemisms and displays of sensitivity are key components of effective communication, and your emphasis on the content of your speech and not yourself will be appreciated. Nonjudgmentalism does underscore the importance of approaching communication from an honest perspective where you value and respect your audience.

Honesty

Honesty, or truthfulness, directly relates to trust, a cornerstone in the foundation of a relationship with your audience. Without it, the building (the relationship) would fall. Without trust, a relationship won’t open and develop the possibility of mutual understanding. You want to share information, and the audience hopefully intends to learn from you. Suppose you “cherry-pick” your data, only choosing the best information to support your point and ignoring contrary or related issues. In that case, you may turn your informative speech into a persuasive one with bias as a central feature.

Consider a debate over a new business policy, such as remote work. In preparing your presentation, you may be tempted to highlight only the data that supports your viewpoint (e.g., increased productivity) and ignore data that doesn’t (e.g., challenges with team collaboration). The audience, however, will expect a balanced view. Your credibility depends on presenting a complete and honest picture, even if it includes information that complicates your argument.

Respect

Respect should be present throughout a speech, demonstrating the speaker’s high esteem for the audience. Respect can be defined as an act of giving and displaying particular attention to the value you associate with someone or a group. This definition involves two key components. You need to give respect to earn it from others, and you need to show it. Displays of respect include making time for conversation, not interrupting, and even giving appropriate eye contact during conversations.

Trust

Communication involves sharing, and that requires trust. Trust means the ability to rely on the character or truth of someone, that what you say you mean, and your audience knows it. Trust is a process, not a thing. It builds over time, through increased interaction and the reduction of uncertainty. It can be lost, but it can also be regained. It should be noted that it takes a long time to build trust in a relationship and can be lost in a much shorter amount of time. If your audience suspects you misled them this time, how will they approach your next presentation? Acknowledging trust and its importance in your relationship with the audience is the first step in focusing on this key characteristic.

Avoid Exploitation

Finally, when we speak ethically, we don’t intentionally exploit one another. Exploitation means taking advantage of someone else for one’s own purposes. Perceiving a relationship with an audience as a means to an end and only focusing on what you get out of it will lead you to treat people as objects. The temptation to exploit others can be great in business situations, where a promotion, a bonus, or even one’s livelihood is at stake.

Suppose you’re a bank loan officer. Whenever a customer contacts the bank to inquire about applying for a loan, your job is to provide an informative presentation about the types of loans available, their rates and terms. If you’re paid a commission based on the number of loans you make and their amounts and rates, wouldn’t you be tempted to encourage them to borrow the maximum amount they can qualify for? Or perhaps to take a loan with confusing terms that will end up costing much more in fees and interest than the customer realizes? After all, these practices are within the law; aren’t they just part of the way business is done? If you’re an ethical loan officer, you realize you’d be exploiting customers if you treated them this way. You know it’s more valuable to uphold your long-term relationships with customers than to exploit them so that you can earn a bigger commission.

Consider these ethical principles when preparing and presenting your speech, and you’ll help address many of these natural expectations of others and develop healthier, more effective speeches.

Ethical Consideration: When an Informative Speech Has Something to Win or Lose

The cleanest informative speeches are the ones the speaker has nothing at stake in. A chemistry teacher explaining a titration has no grant riding on whether the class believes her. An astronomer giving a public lecture on Jupiter’s moons does not lose her salary if the audience is bored. The moment you put something on the line — a grant, a promotion, a contract, a job, an apprenticeship for someone you love — the ethical pressure to slide from exposition into interpretation increases, because every sentence now has a consequence beyond the sentence itself. Anastasia is inside that pressure for the whole opening case. Her predecessor was inside it last year and failed the test. The way out is not to pretend the stakes do not exist. The way out is to name the stakes to yourself before you speak, decide in advance what you will and will not say to move them, and then hold that line. Ethical informative speaking is not the absence of self-interest. It is the discipline of not letting self-interest rewrite the facts.

Case Connection: Anastasia’s Trust Deposit

Willa founded the Tempus Atelier in 1962. For sixty-four years, the atelier has told the Indiana Regional Arts Commission the truth about itself — good years, bad years, programs that worked, programs that failed. That accumulated truth-telling is what this section calls a trust account, and Anastasia did not open it. Willa did. Last year, her predecessor withdrew from the account by presenting a grant request dressed up as an informative briefing, and the commissioners noticed. The balance is lower this year than it was in 2022. When Anastasia walks into Board Room C at 2:15 p.m., every sentence she speaks is either a deposit or a withdrawal. Naming the three restorations the atelier had to turn down last year is a deposit. Acknowledging that a foundation-funded rival program in Hartford does some things better is a deposit. Saying “I don’t know” when Delphine asks about the 2024 audit finding is a deposit. The grant is not what is actually at stake in the room. What is at stake is whether the account stays open for 2027 and 2030.

Sample Informative Presentation

Here’s a generic sample speech in outline form with notes and suggestions.

Attention Statement

Show a picture of a regular mushroom next to a non-browning mushroom. Ask the audience, “What’s the difference between these two seemingly identical foods?”

Introduction

  1. Briefly introduce the topic of genetic modification and gene-editing technologies.
  2. State your topic and specific purpose: “My speech today will inform you about CRISPR, a new gene-editing technology that’s changing our food supply.”
  3. Introduce your credibility and the topic: “My research on this topic has shown me that our food supply is evolving with new, precise tools, and it’s important for us all to understand what they are.”
  4. State your main points: “Today, I’ll define CRISPR and explain how it differs from traditional genetic modification, discuss how this technology is applied to food science, and provide some common, real-world examples.”

Body

  1. Main Point 1: What is CRISPR and how is it different?
    • Provide a simple explanation of genes and DNA.
    • Define CRISPR as a precise “cut and paste” tool for a plant’s DNA.
    • Explain the key difference from older GM methods: CRISPR makes small, targeted changes to a plant’s existing DNA, rather than inserting foreign DNA from another species.
    • Use an analogy: Traditional GM is like adding a new, foreign paragraph to a book; CRISPR is like fixing a single typo in a sentence.
  2. Main Point 2: How is CRISPR applied to food science?
    • Discuss the goals of gene editing, such as making crops more resilient to disease or environmental stress.
    • Explain how the technology can be used to improve nutritional value or shelf-life.
  3. Main Point 3: Common examples of CRISPR in food.
    • Case Study: Describe the non-browning mushroom as a real-world example. Explain that scientists used CRISPR to turn off the gene responsible for browning, which reduces food waste.
    • Highlight other examples: Mention a project to create drought-resistant corn or a variety of bananas that can resist a devastating fungus.

Conclusion

  • Reiterate your main points: “Today, we’ve learned what CRISPR is and how its precision differs from older methods, how this technology is being used to improve our food, and we’ve seen real-world examples that are already on the market.”
  • Provide synthesis: This technology is changing the landscape of food science, focusing on resilience, sustainability, and nutrition.

Residual Message

“Gene-editing technology like CRISPR is already shaping the future of our food supply, making it more robust and sustainable.”

Key Takeaways

In preparing an informative speech, use your knowledge and consider the audience’s knowledge, avoid unnecessary jargon, give credit to your sources, and present the information ethically.

Exercises

  1. Identify an event or issue in the news that interests you. On at least three different news networks or websites, find and watch video reports about this issue. Compare and contrast the coverage of the issue. Do the networks or websites differ in their assumptions about viewers’ prior knowledge? Do they give credit to any sources of information? To what extent do they each measure up to the ethical principles described in this section? Discuss your findings with your classmates.
  2. Find an example of reciprocity in a television program and write two to three paragraphs describing it. Share and compare with your classmates.
  3. Find an example of honesty in a television program and write two to three paragraphs describing it. Share and compare with your classmates.
  4. Find an example of exploitation depicted in the media. Describe how the exploitation is communicated with words and images and share with the class.
  5. Compose a general purpose statement and thesis statement for a speech to inform. Now, create a sample outline. Share with a classmate and see if they offer additional points to consider.
  6. Case application: Anastasia could, in principle, cherry-pick her data the way the honesty section warns against — mentioning only the Kirkwood clock triumph, only the year’s successful apprentice placements, only the restorations that came in under budget. Write a paragraph on why cherry-picking would be a short-term win and a long-term loss in her particular rhetorical situation, using the concept of the trust account.
  7. Case application: Pick one of the seven ethical principles (reciprocity, mutuality, nonjudgmentalism, honesty, respect, trust, avoid exploitation) and describe how Anastasia can demonstrate it concretely in the first three minutes of her demonstration. Your answer should name the action she takes, not the principle she has in mind.

13.6 Creating an Informative Presentation

Learning Objectives

  1. Discuss the parts of an informational presentation.
  2. Understand the five parts of any presentation.
  3. Apply the eight-step sample speech guideline to an informative speech of your own.

An informational presentation is a common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Information sharing is part of any business or organization. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for particular goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are usually analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they “report the facts” without analysis, but still need to communicate the information in a clear and concise format. While a presentation may have conclusions, propositions, or even a call to action, the demonstration of the analysis is the primary function.

A sales report presentation, for example, isn’t designed to make a sale. It is, however, supposed to report sales to date and may forecast future sales based on previous trends.

An informative presentation doesn’t have to be a formal event, though it can be. It can be generic and nonspecific to the audience or listener, but the more you know about your audience, the better. When you tailor your message to that audience, you zero in on your target and increase your effectiveness. The emphasis is on clear and concise communication, but it may address several key questions:

  • Topic: Product or Service?
  • Who are you?
  • Who is the target market?
  • What is the revenue model?
  • What are the specifications?
  • How was the information gathered?
  • How does the unit work?
  • How does current information compare to previous details?

Table 13.2 “Presentation Components and Their Functions” lists the five main parts or components of any presentation.[10]

Table 13.2 Presentation Components and Their Functions
Component Function
Attention Statement Raise interest and motivate the listener
Introduction Communicate a point and common ground
Body Address key points
Conclusion Summarize key points
Residual Message Communicate central theme, moral of story, or main point

You’ll need to address the questions to establish relevance and meet the audience’s needs. The five parts of any speech will serve to help you get organized.

Sample Speech Guidelines

Imagine that you’ve been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in Table 13.3 “Sample Speech Guidelines” and apply them to your presentation.

Table 13.3 Sample Speech Guidelines
1. Topic Choose a product or service that interests you, research it, and report your findings in your speech.
2. Purpose Your general purpose, of course, is to inform. But you need to formulate a more specific purpose statement that expresses a point you have to make about your topic—what you hope to accomplish in your speech.
3. Audience Think about what your audience might already know about your topic and what they may not know, and perhaps any attitudes toward or concerns about it. Consider how this may affect the way that you’ll present your information.
4. Supporting Materials Using the information gathered in your search for information, determine what’s most worthwhile, interesting, and important to include in your speech. Time limits will require that you be selective about what you use. Use visual aids!
5. Organization
  1. Write a central idea statement that expresses the message, or point, that you hope to get across to your listeners in the speech.
  2. Determine the two to three main points that will be needed to support your central idea.
  3. Finally, prepare a complete sentence outline of the body of the speech.
6. Introduction Develop an opening that will

  1. get the attention and interest of your listeners,
  2. express your central idea or message,
  3. lead into the body of your speech.
7. Conclusion The conclusion should review and/or summarize the important ideas in your speech and bring it to a smooth close.
8. Delivery The speech should be delivered extemporaneously (not reading but speaking), using speaking notes and not reading from the manuscript. Work on maximum eye contact with your listeners. Use any visual aids or handouts that may be helpful.

Common Mistake: Treating the Five Components as a Checklist Instead of a Sequence

Novice speakers look at Table 13.2 and see five boxes to check. They draft an attention statement, draft an introduction, draft a body, draft a conclusion, draft a residual message, and declare the work done. The result is a speech that has all five parts and somehow still falls flat. The components are not a checklist. They are a dependency chain. The residual message determines what the conclusion must summarize. The conclusion determines what the body must cover. The body determines what the introduction must preview. The introduction determines what the attention statement must earn. Write in reverse. Start with the one sentence you want the audience to remember tomorrow morning, then build backward. Anastasia does exactly this when she writes “teach them clocks” at the bottom of her legal pad — that is the residual message, and it dictates everything else. If you cannot state your residual message in a single sentence before you outline, you are not ready to outline.

Key Takeaways

Informative presentations illustrate, explain, describe, and instruct the audience on topics and processes.

Exercises

  1. Write a summary of a class or presentation you observed recently; include what you learned. Compare with classmates.
  2. Search online for an informative speech or presentation that applies to business or industry. Indicate one part or aspect of the presentation that you thought was effective and one you’d improve. Provide the link to the presentation in your post or assignment.
  3. Pick a product or service and come up with a list of five points that you could address in a two-minute informative speech. Place them in rank order and indicate why.
  4. With the points discussed in this chapter in mind, observe someone presenting a speech. What elements of their speech could you use in your speech? What elements would you not want to use? Why? Compare with a classmate.
  5. Case application: Write the residual message for Anastasia’s demonstration as a single sentence. Then write the five components of her presentation in the dependency-chain order described in the call-out above (residual message → conclusion → body → introduction → attention statement). What did you have to change about your earlier thinking when you forced yourself to draft the residual message first?

Closing Case Analysis: The Eighteen-Minute Escapement, Resolved

Board Room C at the Indiana Regional Arts Commission smelled like the inside of a new binder and the coffee someone had been re-brewing since ten that morning. The commissioners sat in a horseshoe around a long oak table. Delphine Rosenblum-Kimathi was at the head, with Roderick Hoffmann-Chibuzo on her right and Isadora Penhalurick-Azikwe on her left. The agenda had been running behind since the 1:00 p.m. slot, and Anastasia’s 2:30 briefing was finally called at 2:47.

She had eighteen minutes instead of twenty-five.

She set the demonstration tray on the table without opening it. The 1919 Elgin pocket watch was visible under its glass lid. She did not go to the podium. She stood at the side of the table closest to Roderick.

“Good afternoon. I’m Anastasia Kapoor-Wojciechowski, and I’m the director of the Tempus Atelier. I know you’re running late, so I’ve cut my prepared remarks by seven minutes. What you’re going to get today is one demonstration of one thing we do, followed by three pieces of information you’ll need to know about how we do it and who it reaches. I expect Commissioner Hoffmann-Chibuzo will want me to talk about public return on investment, and I will — but I’d like to earn the right to that conversation by first showing you what you’re investing in. May I?”

Delphine nodded. Roderick did not object. Isadora leaned forward.

Anastasia opened the demonstration tray. She lifted the pocket watch out of its velvet indent and placed it in the center of the table, flat.

“This is a 1919 Elgin railroad grade pocket watch. Seventeen jewels, lever-set, running on a balance staff that is four millimeters long and that my apprentice Thiago Moura-Abernathy polished yesterday afternoon by hand, because the original was cracked. It is currently accurate to within three seconds per day, which is within the tolerance the Chicago and North Western Railway required of a conductor’s watch in 1919. I’m going to open the caseback now. I’d like whoever is closest to Commissioner Rosenblum-Kimathi to help me pass it around the table after that. Please don’t drop it.”

The attention statement had landed. She could see it in the way Roderick’s shoulders changed. He had come in expecting a funding pitch and was now being handed a watch.

Her introduction took ninety seconds. She stated her topic (“what the Tempus Atelier does and how it does it”), named her three main points — what restoration is, how we teach it, and who it reaches — and told the commissioners the residual message she wanted them to leave with, which was that restoring a clock is not a craft that lives in a single pair of hands; it is a craft that has to be taught forward every generation or it dies. She did not mention the grant. She did not ask for the grant. She framed the three main points as things the commissioners would need to understand in order to evaluate any request they were going to receive from the atelier, now or in the future.

The body took eleven minutes.

Main point one — what restoration is — was the demonstration. She took the caseback off the watch with the correct tool (a Bergeon crown tool, which she named and showed), identified the escapement, named the three functional parts the commissioners needed to be able to see in order to follow the rest of the speech (balance wheel, hairspring, escape wheel), and explained in plain language what each one did, using Bart’s bicycle-chain analogy for the escape wheel and Willa’s heartbeat analogy for the balance wheel. She then passed the watch to Delphine. Delphine passed it to Isadora, who held it the way a cellist holds a bow. Isadora passed it to the commissioner on her left. By the time it reached Roderick, four minutes had passed and every person in the room had touched the object of discussion.

At minute four and a half, Roderick cleared his throat. “Dr. Kapoor-Wojciechowski, I need to ask about public ROI.”

“Yes. Thank you, Commissioner. That’s main point three, but I’d like to answer it now if you’ll let me skip the transition.” Roderick nodded. “Last year the atelier placed four certified journeyman clockmakers — meaning people who completed the three-year apprenticeship, passed the practical examination, and are now working in paid restoration positions. Three of them are in Indiana. One is in Ohio. The atelier spent, on direct apprentice stipend and supervised workshop time, approximately thirty-seven thousand dollars per certified graduate. The median starting salary for a certified restoration clockmaker in the Midwest is sixty-one thousand dollars. Those numbers are in your packet under Tab C, along with the 2024 audit finding, which I’ll come back to if you want me to. That’s the answer to your question. I have two more minutes on restoration and then I want to spend four minutes on how we teach, which is where the investment actually goes. Is that all right?”

Roderick wrote something down.

She came back to main point one for ninety seconds, finished the escapement walkthrough, and then pivoted to main point two — how the atelier teaches. This was the part Willa had told her to protect at all costs. She described the three-year structure of the apprenticeship without any adjectives. She named the three current apprentices by their first names and their specializations. She described one decision Thiago had made the week before when he chose to re-polish the balance staff rather than replace it, and she explained why that decision was the right one and why a less-trained person would have made the wrong one and lost the watch’s original character. She did not say “this is a teaching moment.” She let the moment be the teaching.

At minute fifteen she arrived at main point three — who it reaches. She said that in the previous year the atelier had served clients in seventeen Indiana counties, that thirty-one of the restorations had been for public or civic objects (courthouse clocks, church bells, park clocks, the Kirkwood Avenue street clock), that sixty-two had been for private clients of whom twenty-three had paid nothing because the atelier operated a sliding-scale program for clocks inherited from deceased family members. She also said, without varnish, that the atelier had turned away nine other requests last year because it did not have the staff capacity to take them, and that two of those nine had subsequently been lost to disrepair because there was no one else in a two-hundred-mile radius qualified to take them on. She did not editorialize about this. She did not say “and that’s why we need more funding.” She just said it, and she let the silence after it do its own work.

Her conclusion took forty-five seconds. She restated her three main points — what restoration is, how we teach it, who it reaches — and then she gave her residual message as a single sentence:

When we preserve a clock, we are also preserving the knowledge of how to teach someone else to preserve it — and that second preservation is the one that matters more.

She thanked the commissioners, sat down, and checked the clock on the wall. Eighteen minutes, exactly.

Questions ran for twenty-three minutes. Roderick asked four of them. Two were about the audit finding; Anastasia answered the first directly and, on the second, said “I don’t know the answer to that, but Thiago’s supervisor does, and I can get it to your office by tomorrow morning.” He nodded and moved on. Delphine asked about the sliding-scale program and Anastasia described it without defending it. Isadora asked about the musical intelligence connection, which had not been in the prepared remarks, and Anastasia let herself be pulled into a two-minute digression about how pendulum-regulated clocks and metronomes were engineered on the same underlying principle, which Isadora visibly enjoyed.

The commission went into executive session at 3:35 p.m. Anastasia went back to the streetcar barn and sat on the workbench next to the half-disassembled Seth Thomas and waited. Bart made her a cup of tea. Thiago did not pretend to be working.

At 4:48 p.m. Delphine called her.

The commission had voted 7–2 to renew the grant for three years and to increase it by 12 percent. The two no votes had been on procedural grounds (neither commissioner was opposed to the atelier). Roderick had voted yes. Isadora had asked Delphine if she could include a sentence in the written decision, and Delphine had agreed. The sentence, which Delphine read to Anastasia over the phone, was this:

The applicant was asked to inform us, not to persuade us. She did exactly that — and yet somehow, at the end of eighteen minutes, all of us had been persuaded.

Anastasia hung up the phone. She did not cry. She walked over to the 1919 Elgin pocket watch, which Thiago had already returned to the tray and closed, and put her hand flat on the glass lid for a long moment. Then she walked to the other end of the nave, where the clerestory light had gone the color of honey, and she said, to no one in particular, “Okay. We need to start thinking about what the 2027 briefing looks like.”

Closing Case Analysis Questions

  1. Anastasia opens with a line that explicitly names Roderick’s anticipated question and says she wants to “earn the right to that conversation” by showing the commissioners something first. Which of the seven silent questions from 13.3 is she answering in that opening move, and why does handling it openly work better than dodging it?
  2. Anastasia’s attention statement is not a joke, a statistic, or a quotation. It is the physical act of putting the pocket watch on the table. What does this tell you about the range of options available for an attention statement in an informative speech, and why does it work for this particular audience?
  3. At minute four and a half, Anastasia abandons her planned sequence and answers Roderick’s ROI question out of order. This is a violation of the structural dependency chain described in 13.6. Why does it still work? What would have gone wrong if she had insisted on sticking to the original order?
  4. When Anastasia tells the commission that the atelier turned away nine requests last year and two of those clocks were subsequently lost, she does not editorialize. Why does this section of the chapter treat that restraint as the more ethical choice — and what would she have lost if she had added “and that’s why we need more funding”?
  5. Anastasia answers one of Roderick’s audit questions by saying “I don’t know the answer to that, but Thiago’s supervisor does, and I can get it to your office by tomorrow morning.” Which ethical principle from 13.5 is operating in that sentence, and what would have happened to her trust account if she had guessed instead?
  6. Isadora’s sentence in the written decision — She did exactly that — and yet somehow, at the end of eighteen minutes, all of us had been persuaded — seems to undercut the “informative, not persuasive” distinction this chapter has been building. Does it? Or does it describe a specific way that good informative speech can move an audience that persuasive speech cannot?
  7. The demonstration works in part because every commissioner touches the pocket watch within the first four minutes. Map this moment onto at least three of the seven learning styles from Table 13.1 and explain why a demonstration that puts a physical object in the audience’s hands is one of the fastest ways to reach a mixed-style room.
  8. Anastasia’s residual message — when we preserve a clock, we are also preserving the knowledge of how to teach someone else to preserve it — and that second preservation is the one that matters more — is not about the grant at all. Why is that the right residual message for an informative speech in which the grant is actually on the line?

End-of-Chapter Review Questions

  1. Name the four core functions of a speech to inform and give a one-sentence example of each drawn from a workplace context.
  2. Explain the difference between exposition and interpretation in an informative speech. What is at risk when interpretation slides into the frame uninvited?
  3. Distinguish between a speaker’s point of view and a speaker’s bias. Why is the first unavoidable and the second avoidable?
  4. List the four main types of informative speech and describe the audience need that each type is best suited to meet.
  5. Name the seven silent questions an audience member asks when deciding whether to listen. Which two do you personally find easiest to forget as a speaker?
  6. Define framing, gatekeeping, and agenda setting. How are all three at work in any informative speech, even when the speaker does not intend them?
  7. Summarize the theory of multiple intelligences and list the seven learning styles drawn from it in Table 13.1.
  8. List the seven ethical principles of informative speaking and briefly define each.
  9. Describe the five components of any presentation in the order they appear in delivery, and then describe them in the order they should be drafted.
  10. Explain what is meant by “ethical informative speaking is the discipline of not letting self-interest rewrite the facts.”

Matching Exercise

Match each term on the left with its definition on the right.

Term Definition
1. Exposition A. The act of giving particular attention to the value associated with another person
2. Bias B. Selecting what the audience will see and hear, and in what order
3. Respect C. A speech type in which the speaker shows a process step by step so the audience can imitate it
4. Gatekeeping D. An unreasoned or poorly thought-out judgment
5. Reciprocity E. The sentence the audience should remember hours after the speech has ended
6. Agenda Setting F. A public exhibition or display that makes the relationships and content of a topic clear
7. Residual Message G. Determining what news, information, or entertainment reaches a mass audience
8. Demonstration H. A relationship of mutual exchange and interdependence between speaker and audience
9. Framing I. Placing an imaginary set of boundaries around a story to influence the story itself
10. Objectivity J. Expressions and perceptions of facts that are free from distortion by prejudice, bias, or interpretation

Answer key: 1-F, 2-D, 3-A, 4-G, 5-H, 6-B, 7-E, 8-C, 9-I, 10-J

Application Exercises

  1. The Four-Functions Audit. Take an informative speech you have given in the last six months (or one you are planning). Map it against the four functions from 13.1 — share, increase understanding, change perceptions, gain skills. Which functions did it hit? Which did it skip? Write a one-paragraph revision plan that would add at least one function it missed.
  2. Type Matching. Pick a topic from your field of study. Write one-sentence treatments for all four informative types (explanation, report, description, demonstration). Then rank them in order of which would best reach an audience that knows nothing about the topic. Justify the ranking.
  3. The Seven Questions Rehearsal. Write a one-page draft of any informative speech. Before revising, read it aloud and pause at each paragraph to mark which of the seven silent questions (relevance, what I’ll learn, why you’re interested, how I’ll use it, what’s new, will you bore me, is it important) that paragraph answers. Any paragraph that does not clearly answer at least one is a candidate for cutting.
  4. Framing Diagnostic. Pick a news story from the past week and read three different outlets’ coverage of it. For each outlet, write one sentence describing what is inside the frame, one sentence describing what you can tell has been left outside the frame, and one sentence describing the gatekeeping choice that put it there. Compare with a classmate.
  5. Learning-Style Redesign. Take the outline of an informative presentation you have already drafted. Identify which two learning styles from Table 13.1 it currently serves best. Then redesign one section — no more, no less — to reach a third style you had not addressed. Describe the change in writing.
  6. Trust Account Reflection. Think of a speaker or teacher whose trust account with you is currently high. What have they specifically done to earn it? Now think of a speaker or teacher whose trust account is currently low. What did they do — or fail to do — to withdraw from it? Write a short paragraph comparing the two.
  7. Residual Message First. For an informative speech you are planning, write the one-sentence residual message before you write anything else. Then draft the conclusion, then the body, then the introduction, then the attention statement, in reverse order. Compare the result to a draft you have written in the conventional order and note any differences in clarity or focus.

Discussion Questions

  1. Roderick required that all grant briefings be “informative, not persuasive” after a bad experience the year before. Is this distinction actually stable, or does every informative speech eventually persuade its audience of something simply by being a good informative speech? Defend your position.
  2. Willa tells Anastasia that a perfectly good report should be sent to the commission in writing, not delivered in person. When should an informative speech be replaced by a written document instead? What does speaking offer that writing does not?
  3. Anastasia does not mention Thiago’s apprenticeship funding in her briefing, even though the entire apprentice program is the thing the grant actually pays for. Was this the right ethical choice, or should she have named the personal stake plainly? Make a case for both sides.
  4. The chapter treats point of view as unavoidable and bias as avoidable. Is this distinction realistic, or does every strong point of view eventually become a bias to someone on the other side of it?
  5. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences has been criticized by some psychologists as describing talents rather than forms of intelligence. Does that criticism weaken its usefulness for speakers who are trying to reach a mixed audience? Why or why not?
  6. The trust account metaphor implies that every sentence a speaker delivers is either a deposit or a withdrawal. Are there neutral sentences — ones that do neither? If so, when?
  7. Isadora’s written sentence — She did exactly that — and yet somehow, at the end of eighteen minutes, all of us had been persuaded — could be read two ways. It could mean that the commission’s requirement was flawed from the start (all good informing persuades). Or it could mean Anastasia broke the requirement in a way the commission respected. Which reading is more useful for a speaker planning their own informative briefing, and why?

Extended Project: The Eighteen-Minute Briefing

This extended project runs over approximately two weeks and asks you to plan, rehearse, and deliver an eighteen-minute informative briefing in the Anastasia mode — a high-stakes briefing in which something meaningful is on the line for you or the organization you are representing, and in which the explicit requirement is informative, not persuasive.

Week 1 — Preparation.

  1. Choose a stake. Pick a real or plausible situation where an informative briefing is needed and where something tangible is at stake for the speaker (a grant, a project continuation, a promotion decision, an accreditation review). Write one paragraph describing the stake honestly.
  2. Rhetorical situation audit. Write a one-page audit of the context, audience, and purpose of your briefing, naming at least three members of your audience by role and identifying their likely top two learning styles from Table 13.1.
  3. Residual message. Write the one sentence you want the audience to remember tomorrow morning. This sentence must be about the topic, not about the stake.
  4. Type decision. Choose one of the four informative types (explanation, report, description, demonstration) as your primary mode. Write a one-paragraph justification that rules out the other three on audience-need grounds, not comfort grounds.
  5. Seven-question check. Draft an outline of your briefing and annotate each main point with which of the seven silent questions it answers. Any main point that does not clearly answer at least one is a candidate for cutting.
  6. Ethics memo. Write a one-page memo to yourself naming the moments in your briefing where the slide from exposition into interpretation is most likely, what specifically you will say (or not say) at each of those moments, and what your trust account with this audience currently looks like.

Week 2 — Rehearsal and Delivery.

  1. First rehearsal. Deliver the briefing once, against a clock, to an empty room. Note where you ran over, where you rushed, and where you lost confidence in what you were saying.
  2. Cut and tighten. Revise the briefing specifically to withstand losing seven minutes to a delayed agenda (the Anastasia condition). What goes, what stays, what moves earlier?
  3. Second rehearsal. Deliver the revised version to at least one other person and collect their feedback on which of the seven silent questions they felt you answered.
  4. Live delivery. Deliver the final version to your class or assigned audience, in eighteen minutes or less.
  5. Reflective report. Write a five-page reflective report that (a) states your residual message and evaluates whether the audience received it, (b) describes the single biggest ethical pressure you faced in the briefing and how you handled it, (c) identifies the one silent question you served best and the one you served worst, (d) explains what you would change if you had to give this briefing again tomorrow, and (e) connects your experience back to at least three specific passages from this chapter.

Self-Assessment

Rate each statement again from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), then compare to your Before You Read scores.

  1. I can clearly state the difference between an informative speech and a persuasive speech.
  2. I know the difference between my point of view on a topic and my bias on it.
  3. I can name at least three of the four types of speeches to inform.
  4. I know how to frame a complex topic for an audience that does not share my background.
  5. I can identify at least three of the seven questions audience members silently ask themselves when deciding whether to listen.
  6. I know what gatekeeping and agenda setting are and how they shape an informative message.
  7. I can name at least four of the seven learning styles associated with multiple intelligences theory.
  8. I can describe three ethical principles that govern an informative speaker’s relationship with the audience.

Reflection:

  1. Which item showed the largest improvement from before to after? What specifically in the chapter moved it?
  2. Which item improved the least? What would you still need to work on to move it further?
  3. Anastasia closes the chapter by saying, “We need to start thinking about what the 2027 briefing looks like.” What is the first informative briefing you are going to have to give, and what is one concrete thing from this chapter you will do differently when you give it?

13.7 Additional Resources

To listen to speeches from great figures in history, visit the History Channel’s audio speech archive. https://www.history.com/articles/presidential-convention-speeches-memorable

What were the greatest speeches of the twentieth century? Find out here. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html

The Merriam-Webster dictionary site provides a wealth of resources on words, their meanings, their origins, and audio files of how to pronounce them. http://www.merriam-webster.com

Dr. Richard Felder of North Carolina State University presents this questionnaire to assess your learning styles. http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offers an array of Web resources on ethics. http://www.asha.org/practice/ethics

Visit this site for a list of more than 300 speech and debate topics. https://empowerly.com/applications/extracurriculars/good-persuasive-speech-topics-for-students-who-dont-lose/

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