Hey all!
One of the problems I had last semester was students giving lame informative speeches. I thought about the problems with those speeches, and narrowed it down to a few trends:
- The topic was something they didn't really care about much.
- The topic could not be researched; it relied too exclusively on their personal expertise.
- The topic was something with no relevance whatsoever to the class (and no effort made to make it relevant)
- The topic was too persuasive, and not informative.
So, I put together this quick assignment for an ELMS upload where students justify their topics. I invite you to copy+paste and steal this wholesale, or modify it however you like--but I definitely HIGHLY recommend having them turn in a topic in advance and taking the hour or so to give them good feedback. I just graded several student submissions, and can already tell they will have much better topics this time than in the past for having been through this process.
You can remove the three points dedicated to topic+purpose in the informative briefing and allocate those three points to this assignment.
Without further ado, the assignment:
Selecting an Informative Topic
This will be a short (one page or less) description of what you would like to deliver your briefing about. You will need to address in this page how your topic meets the four criteria listed below. If you want, you can provide a short explanation of the topic, then just number: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Your topic could be:
- A hobby or activity you are passionate about.
- A cool scientific discovery you want to convey to your classmates.
- An event in the life of a famous person or organization.
- A process or concept you want to break down for people.
-- Just about anything: See 430-431 in your textbook for examples.
The topic has to meet the following criteria:
1) It must be uniquely important to you. You must have a personal connection to the topic. Don't just talk about anything; I want your personal expertise to play a role in this!
2) It must be researchable. That is: You need to be able to find research out there that supplements or advances what you already know. So, no "How to make a peanut butter and jelly" speeches.
3) It must be something that you can make interesting or relevant to your classmates. It doesn't have to be intrinsically interesting to them--you need to *make* it interesting.
4) It must be informative, not persuasive. A informative briefing teaches us about something you think we should learn more about. A persuasive speech advocates for a position, and tries to convince us we should change our minds about something.
