Informative Speeches

In our information society, managing and communicating information are keys to success (Berrisford, 2006). Informative speeches aim to increase your audience’s understanding or knowledge by presenting new, relevant, and useful information. Such speeches can take a variety of forms. They might explain a process or plan, describe particular objects or places, or characterize a particular state of affairs. You can expect to give informative speeches in a variety of professional situations, such as presenting reports to supervisors or stakeholders, running training sessions for a company, and teaching in formal education classes.

Consider the TED Talk given by Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a cognitive neuroscientist, in June 2012 regarding the social and cognitive development of the adolescent brain, in which she also highlights the newest brain imaging technology that tracks how the brain develops in this critical life phase. Through her direct, informative, and engaging style, Sarah connects with her audience and introduces a potentially confusing and challenging topic clearly, complete with attention-grabbing anecdotes, statistics, and humor. A brief excerpt from her presentation is offered in Sample Speech 12.1.

SAMPLE SPEECH 12.1

The Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain

SARAH-JAYNE BLAKEMORE

Fifteen years ago, it was widely assumed that the vast majority of brain development takes place in the first few years of life. Back then, 15 years ago, we didn’t have the ability to look inside the living human brain and track development across the life span. In the past decade or so, mainly due to advances in brain imaging technology such as magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, neuroscientists have started to look inside the living human brain of all ages, and to track changes in brain structure and brain function. So we use structural MRI if you’d like to take a snapshot, a photograph, at really high resolution of the inside of the living human brain, and we can ask questions like, how much gray matter does the brain contain, and how does that change with age? And we also use functional MRI, called fMRI, to take a video, a movie, of brain activity when participants are taking part in some kind of task like thinking or feeling or perceiving something.

Blakemore defines structural MRI and functional MRI by relating them to a photograph and a movie—two things her audience members are familiar with.

Many labs around the world are involved in this kind of research, and we now have a really rich and detailed picture of how the living human brain develops. This picture has radically changed the way we think about human brain development by revealing that it’s not all over in early childhood, and instead, the brain continues to develop right throughout adolescence and into the 20s and 30s.

Adolescence is defined as the period of life that starts with the biological, hormonal, and physical changes of puberty and ends at the age at which an individual attains a stable, independent role in society. (Laughter) It can go on a long time. (Laughter) One of the brain regions that changes most dramatically during adolescence is called prefrontal cortex. So this is a model of the human brain, and this is prefrontal cortex, right at the front. Prefrontal cortex is an interesting brain area. It’s proportionally much bigger in humans than in any other species, and it’s involved in a whole range of high-level cognitive functions, things like decision making, planning, planning what you’re going to do tomorrow or next week or next year, inhibiting inappropriate behavior—so, stopping yourself from saying something really rude or doing something really stupid. It’s also involved in social interaction, understanding other people, and self-awareness. MRI studies looking at the development of this region have shown that it really undergoes dramatic development during the period of adolescence.

Blakemore uses humor to connect with her audience.

Here Blakemore uses a visual aid, a model of the human brain, to explain a difficult concept and to help orient her listeners.

Source: From TED Talk by Sarah Jayne Blakemore, “The Mysterious Workings of the Adolescent Brain,” June 2012.Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain