Assignment: Principle of Recency,”Assignment: Principle of RecencyAssignment: Principle of RecencyAssignment: Principle of RecencyDeveloping Your Speech Step By StepOrganize Your Speech As she begins to organize her speech on tire safety, Karen finds that she has both reasons expired tires pose a problem and solutions for the problem. She decides to combine two organizational patterns: cause and effect, and problem and solution.Determining that she wants to emphasize the causes of the safety problem posed by outdated tires, Karen applies the recency principle. She establishes first that we are indeed driving on expired tires, then turns to the causes: that tire com- panies are ignoring research about tire stability, and that neither the public nor our mechanics are well informed about the problem.Karen places her solutions to the problem next. They include checking our tires, questioning our mechanics, keeping tire sales receipts, and sharing informa- tion with family and friends.It is evident that Seffrin applied the principle of recency to his examples, as he identifies the final one as “my favorite” and “one of the most disturbing.” The princi- ple of primacy or recency can also be applied to groups of statistics, opinions, or any combination of supporting material.Specificity Sometimes your supporting material will range from very specific ex- amples to more general overviews of a situation. You may either offer your specific information first and end with your general statement, or make the general statement first and support it with specific evidence.Another application of specificity might be to compact or explode statistics, as discussed in Chapter 6. In her speech on unnecessary prescription drugs, Kristin be- gins with a sweeping statistic and then compacts it:Thirty percent of Americans have asked their doctor about a medicine they saw ad- vertised on TV. And of those, . . . 44 percent received the prescription. That trans- lates into one in eight Americans seeing a drug on TV and later picking it up at their local pharmacy.14Complexity We have discussed organizing subtopics by moving from the simple to the complex. The same method of organization may also determine how you order your supporting material. In many situations, it makes sense to start with the simplest ideas that are easy to understand and work up to the more complex ones. In her speech on solar radiation, Nichole first explains the most obvious effects of solar peaks—electrical blackouts and disruptions in radio broadcasts—and then goes on to the more complex effect, cosmic radiation:The sun produces storms on its surface in eleven-year cycles. During solar maxi- mum, these storms will make their presence known to the land-bound public through electrical blackouts and disruptions in radio broadcasts. These storms cause the sun to throw off electrically charged ions that, combined with charged particles, enter the Earth’s atmosphere from outer space. This is known collectively as cosmic radiation.15From Soft to Hard Evidence Supporting material can also be arranged along a continuum from “soft” to “hard.” Soft evidence rests on opinion or inference. Hypo- thetical illustrations, descriptions, explanations, definitions, analogies, and opinions are usually considered soft. Hard evidence includes factual examples and statistics.Developing Signposts 173Soft-to-hard organization of supporting material relies chiefly on the principle of recency—that the last statement is remembered best. Note how Beth moves from an illustration to expert testimony (both soft evidence) to a statistic(hard evidence) in her speech on the danger of sand holes: Illustration An article in the Corpus Christi Caller Times of June 21, 2007, describes (soft evidence) how a hidden sand hole on a beach proved fatal to 17-year-oldYou must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker

failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

• The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

  Discussion Questions (DQ)

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