What About You? Assessing Your Outlining Skills

what about you?

image Assessing Your Outlining Skills

An important element of speech preparation is the ability to establish your speech topic, thesis, main points, supporting points, and transitions. You can assess your ability to recognize these elements in the following preparation outline for an informative speech on Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD).

Instructions: Place the numbers of the elements listed here into the following organizational outline.

Topic: _____ Thesis: _____

  1. (main point) _______
    1. (subpoint) ______
    2. (subpoint) ______
    3. (subpoint) ______
    4. (subpoint) ______
    5. (subpoint) ______

    (transition) _____

  2. (main point)________
    1. (subpoint) ______
    2. (subpoint) ______
    3. (subpoint) ______
    4. (subpoint) ______
  1. I’ve presented the five signature symptoms of OCPD and will now examine the condition’s suspected causes.
  2. Adopting a miserly spending style toward both self and others.
  3. Perfectionism that interferes with task completion.
  4. There are five primary symptoms of OCPD.
  5. OCPD.
  6. Faulty parenting.
  7. Heredity.
  8. OCPD is a treatable mental illness that often goes unrecognized due to lack of information or confusion about the symptoms and causes.
  9. Harsh punishment/meager rewards.
  10. Preoccupation with details, rules, lists, order, organization, or schedules to the extent that the major point of the activity is lost.
  11. Recognize the symptoms and causes of OCPD to identify proper help.
  12. Medical professionals generally agree on four major causes for OPCD.
  13. Stubbornness and inflexibility about matters of morality, ethics, or values.
  14. Significant event/circumstance that triggers OCPD.
  15. Inability to discard worn-out objects even when they have no sentimental value.

Answers: Topic: 5; Thesis: 8, Main Point I: 4, Subpoints I-A-E: 2, 3, 10, 13, and 15; Transition: 1: Main Point II: 12; Subpoints II-A-D: 6, 7, 9, 14.