You might choose to provide a demonstration of a topic if your goal is to teach your audience how a process or a set of guidelines works. Demonstrations often call for both physical modeling and verbal elements as you lead the audience through the parts or steps of whatever you are demonstrating. Your audience learns by watching your modeling and listening to your words. Because physical modeling often requires the use of props and visual aids, be sure to practice with the aids before giving your speech. And because you’ll be teaching your audience, you need to be confident that you know your topic thoroughly.

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Demonstrations could be helpful for a wide range of informative speeches. For example, you might use a demonstration to show your listeners how to do one of the following:

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For some of these demonstrations, you could take the needed props to your speech forum. For instance, to demonstrate how to fold an American flag, you could easily bring in a large flag and—with an assistant—show the proper way to fold it for storage according to military custom.2 You also could improvise by asking members of your audience about the flags that they’ve seen in advertising, used as decoration in dorm rooms, or printed on T-shirts and other clothing—before noting that such seemingly patriotic displays are actually violations of the U.S. Flag Code.3

Demonstration coupled with repetition of the speech message has proven especially effective as a learning and memory-enhancement tool. A good example of this can be seen in the practices of an organization called Per Scholas, which provides job training to low-income individuals. This program has been spectacularly effective with helping to train computer-repair technicians who have little or no previous formal education. The practice of demonstrating the repair process and repeating the message has been key to the program’s success.4