Home » Education & Career » Teaching English Lit » Speech Building Kit for Beginners

Speech Building Kit for Beginners

© Rebecca Kojetin

Whether your students are required to take a speech course in order to graduate, or you include speech projects in the standard English course, there are numerous ways to approach the researched speech. Several years ago I began to compare putting together a speech to building a model or opening any other kit to put together an end product. I have a box that I covered and entitled speech building kit. The students have a research folder into which they put example and sample components of the end product; and, as I work them through Herbert’s (my chalk board stick figure) speech building process, I have them list the steps that must be completed in order to create an acceptable end product. Below are the directions that I have my students copy into their notes and follow. This allows them to work at their own speed and ask themselves, “What’s next?”

SPEECH BUILDING KIT DIRECTIONS STEP 1 - Choose and narrow a topic +Topic should interest you +You should attempt to choose that could interest your audience (With this step, I give them a personal interest inventory worksheet* to fill out, a possible topic list*, and a sheet of guidelines* to use when choosing a topic.) STEP 2 - Determine why you are speaking +Inform +Persuade +Entertain +Inspire (I let them know that for this course I will be telling them what purpose to use, but outside of this course they would need to make this decision based on when and who they were speaking to.) STEP 3 - Analyze your audience (To do this, you need to determine all or part of the following.) +Basic data (age, gender, occupation, education level, income level) +Beliefs and opinions +Knowledge of the topic +Expectations STEP 4 - Write an audience goal (This is the sentence that guides the research process.) +Begin your audience goal with “After my speech is over, I want my audience to ...” +Include what you want your audience to do, your topic, and the areas you will be covering in your speech. (Keep it to 3 - 5 areas) (At this point I give the students a practice assignment in analyzing the audience and writing an audience goal.) STEP 5 - Research +Determine what you already know. +Look to others (interviews and surveys) (For this step, I break the students into research partners, and give them a subject. They need to determine a topic under that subject, determine who they could interview, and create 5 well-worded interview questions. Next they take a second subject, determine a topic, and develop a 5-question survey. Separately, they survey 10 students outside of our class. When we meet the next day, they can compare the percentages for each question, since they were to ask 10 entirely different people.)

The copyright of the article Speech Building Kit for Beginners in Teaching English Lit is owned by . Permission to republish Speech Building Kit for Beginners in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.