Full Persuasive Speech: "Emergency in the Emergency Room" by Lisa Roth

Audience Analysis

Lisa addresses a persuasive topic well suited for her college audience as many of them may be underinsured or rely on emergency rooms for medical care. She acknowledges this later in her speech when she says she is not blaming patients who cannot afford health care or health insurance. She also understands her audience will respond better if she puts a personal face on the problem; therefore, her opening story about Beatrice Vance serves to highlight what Lisa terms a crisis that could affect everyone in the audience.

Content and Supporting Ideas

Lisa uses ethos, pathos, and logos to persuade her audience, following a problem-cause-solution organizational pattern. Her opening story is designed to have emotional impact and words like "alarming," "suffers," "jeopardize," and "catastrophic" underscore that effect. Lisa's statistical data supports her claim that emergency rooms nationwide are at "a breaking point," building on logos and her ethos as a credible speaker. Again, as she describes the problem she uses strong language and repetition to drive home her points. "Notorious money losers," "understaffed" and "unprepared" are successfully worded. She consistently cites her sources throughout the speech.

Although the topic her is very serious Lisa breaks the mood lightly with an ironic statement that neatly closes her first main point. "Don't you feel secure?" is well timed and keeps the audience attentive and engaged.

Lisa leads listeners through compelling reasons for the emergency room crisis, supporting her points with source citations. She paraphrases and uses internal summaries to clarify and reiterate her key points very effectively.

The last segment of her speech offers solutions for the problem. In her first solution she appeals to logos as she points to the need for establishing a coordinated system to handle the current chaos. Her second solution is a personal appeal to her audience. She ends the solution portion by comparing current practices with the way Columbus, Ohio handles health care for the uninsured. The three solutions would be stronger if she organized them to begin with the national standards, followed by the regional example, and closing with the personal appeal.

Introduction/Transitions/Conclusion

Lisa crafts a highly effective opening. She captures her audience's attention immediately with a wrenching story pointing to the problems in emergency care that she will develop later in the speech. Beatrice's death disturbs and alarms. Lisa then points out that Beatrice's experience could happen to anyone listening or their loved ones. The narrative opener is a compelling anecdote that highlights what Lisa calls the "catastrophic conditions existing in America's emergency rooms." Lisa ends her introduction with a clear statement of her intent to explore the problem and its causes, and to address them.

The transitions are deft. Lisa signposts through what she announces are the three major problems of the emergency care system with words like "first," and "the third problem is not surprising."

She uses paraphrase to clarify complicated points. As she comes to the end of her second main point she offers a well-worded summary and immediately moves to cue the three solutions to come.

In the conclusion, Lisa offers a concise summary and returns to the story of Beatrice, stressing the words "safety and stability" to again arouse emotional reaction.

Delivery

Lisa's vocal skills are expert. She emphasizes words like "alarming," "briefly," "two hours later" for full effect. She builds volume to add a sense of urgency, lowers volume and slows her pace for emotional resonance; she understands how to crescendo volume and rate to build impact.

Twice, loud applause from a neighboring room threatens to interrupt Lisa but she very competently ignores the distraction.

Lisa is dressed professionally and moves with assurance. She times her physical moves to punctuate moments of transition in her speech. Because she is fully memorized her hands are free to gesture and she can maintain eye contact with her audience at all times. Her gestures are varied, expressive, and natural. Lisa is facially animated. The memorization of her speech does not diminish her conviction ‰ÛÒ she conveys genuine concern.