“It is not a fact until you prove it to the audience.”
From the story about Katie, Mandeep, and Sherri’s activism against police officers shooting crows on their local courthouse building, it’s clear that providing evidence for the claims in your speech can help make your presentation more convincing and make you more credible as a speaker. To create your research plan, take the following steps: inventory your research needs, find the sources you need, and be sure to keep track of your sources. To evaluate a source’s credibility, consider the author’s expertise, objectivity, and observational capacity, as well as the source’s recency. When conducting library research, vary your focus among books, periodicals, newspapers, reference works, and government documents. Although many students use the Internet for research, there are both advantages and disadvantages to this, and you need to carefully evaluate the credibility of online sources. You also can research your topic by interviewing experts. When you’ve gathered your research, be sure to present evidence in claim-
LaunchPad for Speak Up offers videos and encourages self-
Key Terms
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participatory (or social) media 210
Review Questions
What are two key benefits of doing research for your speech?
Explain the three main steps involved in creating a research plan.
Why is it important to copy down complete citation information for a source at the time you obtain it?
What four key characteristics determine a source’s credibility?
What advantages do libraries offer over the Internet?
Describe the advantages and disadvantages of Internet research.
Explain the steps involved in conducting a useful interview.
What is the proper way to present evidence in a speech?
Critical Thinking Questions
How do peer review, vetting, and editing affect the quality of information presented in a book or journal? How can you determine whether information you find online has been through these processes?
How can you determine the credibility of information presented on a Web site? Are there any red flags that immediately make you question a site’s integrity? What characteristics are likely to make you trust an Internet source?
Imagine you have been assigned to speak on a controversial topic. How would you go about choosing potential interviewees? What kinds of questions would you ask your interviewees? How would you use the information gleaned in interviews to bolster your thesis ethically?
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Go to the Wikipedia entry for a subject you might like to discuss in a speech. Identify claims that are made without any supporting footnote or citation. How can you determine whether the author of these comments is credible? Next, identify claims that are supported by a footnote or citation. What would you need to do to determine whether the sources for these claims are credible?
Activities
Divide into groups. Working individually, select a topic of interest, and jot down the steps you would follow in a research plan. Then share your research plan with the group. After each plan is presented, have the other group members provide additional suggestions for how the topic might be researched effectively.
Working in groups, make a list of several potential speech topics. Then create a composite character for a person who would be a credible source on that topic. What is this source’s educational background? Occupation? Reputation in the field? Observational capacity?
Working in groups, brainstorm potential speech topics. Then, discuss search terms you might use when researching each topic. In your discussion, be sure to consider synonyms, broader terms, and narrower terms that could be used on each topic.
Suppose you are considering whether to purchase the next-
Video Activity 7.4: “Kruckenberg, John Kanzius and the Quest to Cure Cancer.” Watch David Kruckenberg’s speech. Identify the evidence sources he uses. Evaluate the credibility of each source based on the criteria of expertise, objectivity, observational capacity, and recency.
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Go to the campus library and locate a book on a topic you are considering for a speech. Then try the process discussed on pages 199 to 200 to find other books on your topic. Did you find additional useful information in these books?
Use an index for scholarly sources, such as Academic Search Premier or JSTOR, to find three articles on a topic you are considering for a speech. Then find three Web sites that cover that topic. Compare the credibility of the authors of the scholarly sources with that of the online sources. Also compare the content of the information at the three sources.
Review the chapter-opening illustration, which depicts how Katie, Mandeep, and Sherri used research to strengthen their presentation to local officials. Then consider a problem in your community that you might discuss at a public meeting, and decide how you could use evidence to strengthen your case. Create or describe your own illustration of that scenario using the chapter-