A CASE STUDY: MIA

Let’s check Mia’s plan for outlining her speech.

Countdown: There were two weeks to go before Mia’s speech. With all her preparation work done, she was ready to move on to the detailed working outline. Mia checked out her class notes on outlining and the sample outline her class had been given. She didn’t want to waste her time working on an outline in the wrong format.

Mia started with her main points, subpoints, and sub-subpoints, using the required alphanumeric format and indentation. Where Mia was using evidence, she provided a full citation for the source and idea. Mia was careful to use quotation marks each time she directly quoted an author because she didn’t want to risk plagiarizing. She ended up combining a point and a subpoint together after she realized that they were very similar. Mia typed her introduction and conclusion, indicating each with a roman numeral. She inserted transitions, making sure that they made it clear when she was moving from one main point to the next. She included several signposts such as “One important use of smartphones” and “Another helpful app” to help the audience follow her development of main ideas.

Mia finished by creating her works cited section. She included only references that she actually used in her outline. Because she saved the citations during her research phase, it was easy to copy and paste them and then reformat them as needed. Whew! Now that her working outline was finished, Mia had two weeks to practice her delivery and consolidate her notes into a short speaking outline after she became familiar with the material. She was still nervous about actually giving the speech, but at least she’d be prepared.

Look for the and throughout the chapter for adaptive quizzing and online video activities.

A CASE STUDY: JACOB

Let’s consider how Jacob got his outline together.

Jacob was due to give his speech the next day. During the previous class, the instructor had collected an outline from each student who spoke, so Jacob figured he needed one for the big day. Unfortunately, the notes on outlining that he had taken in class were sketchy, and he’d lost the sample outline that his instructor had passed out.

Jacob figured that he knew what an outline was and would be able to come up with one on his own. He liked to use bullet points on writing assignments, so he inserted these in a couple of places where he was presenting a series of examples. He decided not to write down each main point or structure them in a certain way (he distantly remembered roman numerals). Rather than be hyperstructured and boring, he’d go for something more free-flowing and spontaneous. (Hadn’t his teacher mentioned she liked jazz?) Jacob remembered something about transitions, so he wrote the word transition in a couple key places where he would move on to a new point.

Jacob noted some of his research sources in the introduction, and he put down his sources in a bibliography. He hadn’t kept track of all the full source citations, but he was able to remember most of the information. He cut and pasted some quotes for his speech so that he’d be able to read them at the right times. Done. True, there wasn’t a lot of time to practice. But now Jacob felt even more confident—because he had a speech to read.

Look for the and throughout the chapter for adaptive quizzing and online video activities.