Assignment: Overarching Goals

Assignment: Overarching Goals
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Assignment: Overarching Goals
Assignment: Overarching Goals

Assignment: Overarching Goals

Determine Your Purpose You might think that once you have your topic, you are ready to start the research process. Before you do that, however, you need to decide on both a general and a spe- cific purpose.

Determine Your General Purpose Your general purpose is the overarching goal of your speech. There are three types of general purposes for speeches: to inform, to persuade, and to entertain.

Speaking to Inform When you inform, you teach, define, illustrate, clarify, or elaborate on a topic. The primary objective of class lectures, seminars, and workshops is to inform. Chapter 15 will show you how to construct an effective speech with an informative purpose.Assignment: Overarching Goals

Speaking to Persuade A speech to persuade seeks to change or reinforce listen- ers’ attitudes, beliefs, values, or behavior. Ads on TV, radio, and the Internet; sermons; political speeches; and sales presentations are examples of messages designed to per- suade. To be a skilled persuader, you need to be sensitive to your audience’s attitudes toward you and your topic. Chapters 14 and 15 will discuss principles and strategies for preparing persuasive speeches.

Speaking to Entertain To entertain listeners is the third general purpose of a speech. After-dinner speeches and comic monologues are mainly intended as enter- tainment. Often the key to an effective entertaining speech lies in your choice of sto- ries, examples, and illustrations, as well as in your delivery. Appendix B includes examples of speeches designed to inform, persuade, and entertain.

Determine Your Specific Purpose Your specific purpose is a concise statement indicating what you want your listeners to be able to do, remember, or feel when your finish your speech. A specific purpose statement identifies the precise audience response you desire. Table 1.3 compares general and specific purposes.Assignment: Overarching Goals

Deciding on a specific purpose is not difficult once you have narrowed your topic: “At the end of my speech, the class will be able to identify three counseling fa- cilities on campus and describe the best way to get help at each one.” Notice that this purpose is phrased in terms of what you would like the audience to be able to do by

general purpose The overarching goal of a speech—to inform, persuade, or entertain

specific purpose A concise statement of the desired audience response, indicating what you want your listeners to remember, feel, or do when you finish speaking

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.Assignment: Overarching Goals

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.