Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

Page 350

In chapter 12, we gave you a brief introduction to Alan Monroe’s motivated sequence pattern for organizing your speech. It is a time-tested variant of the problem-solution pattern and has proved quite effective for persuasive speaking, particularly when you want your audience to do something—buy a product or donate time or money to a cause, for example. We’ll elaborate on Monroe’s five-step sequence here:

Step 1: Attention. The attention step gets the audience interested in listening to your speech. It often highlights how the speech will be relevant to them.

It’s two in the morning and you’re staring at a blank screen on your computer. You’ve got a term paper for your history class and a lab report to finish, but these aren’t what have you worried right now. It’s figuring out your résumé—how to take your work, personal, and educational experiences and cram them all onto one page.

Step 2: Need. This step allows you to identify a need or problem that matters to your audience. You want to show that this issue should be addressed.

Each person in this room will be applying for internships and jobs; such positions are highly competitive. Your résumé, for better or worse, will make the first impression on your potential employer.

Step 3: Satisfaction. The satisfaction step allows you to show your audience the solution that you have identified to meet the problem or need addressed in step 2. This step is crucial as you are offering the audience members a proposal to reinforce or change their attitudes, beliefs, or behavior regarding the problem or need at hand.

Visiting our college’s Office of Career Services is a great way to get help and direction for your résumé. The professionals employed there will be able to help make your job application materials stand out while also making the process seem less overwhelming.

Step 4: Visualization. As its name implies, the visualization step helps your audience see how your proposed solution might play out and how they might benefit.

Instead of sitting at your computer at 2 A.M., you could be sitting with Tamela, a career counselor, at 2 P.M. as she makes suggestions for formatting your résumé or asks you questions about your past work experiences in order to highlight achievements that you had never even thought to mention.

Step 5: Action. This final step clarifies what you want your audience members to do. This may involve reconsidering their attitudes, beliefs, or behavior.

Make an appointment with a career counselor today. Don’t wait—you need those early morning hours for that history term paper, not for your résumé!

Now that you’ve considered organizational patterns and you have a solid grasp on how to handle persuasive speaking, let’s take a look at a sample speech by Una Chua from Tufts University (see p. 352). In this speech, Una is persuading her audience to recognize the problem of cyberbullying and explaining how listeners can address and prevent it. Organizationally, the speech is arranged along the lines of the problem-cause-solution pattern. Note that Una uses a variety of sources to support her arguments. Be sure to check out Una’s reference list as well as her speaking outline, both of which follow the speech sample.