Assignment: Verbal Transi- tions,”Assignment: Verbal Transi- tionsAssignment: Verbal Transi- tionsAssignment: Verbal Transi- tionsrepetition of key words or ideas, transitional words or phrases, enumeration, and internal previews and summaries all provide verbal transi- tions from one idea to the next. You may need to experiment with several alternatives before you find the smooth transition you seek in a given instance. If none of these al- ternatives seems to work well, consider a nonverbal transition.Nonverbal Transitions Nonverbal transitions can occur in several ways, some- times alone and sometimes in combination with verbal transitions. A change in facial expression, a pause, an altered vocal pitch or speaking rate, or a movement all may indicate a transition.For example, a speaker talking about the value of cardiopulmonary resuscitation began his speech with a powerful anecdote about a man suffering a heart attack at a party. No one knew how to help, and the man died. The speaker then looked up from his notes and paused, while maintaining eye contact with his audience. His next words were “The real tragedy of Bill Jorgen’s death was that it should not have hap- pened.” His pause, as well as the words that followed, indicated a transition into the body of the speech.Like this speaker, most good speakers use a combination of verbal and nonverbal transitions to move from one point to another through their speeches. You will find more about nonverbal communication in Chapter 11.Previews In Chapter 10, we discuss the differences between writing and speaking styles. One significant difference is that public speaking is more repetitive. Audience-centered speakers need to remember that the members of their audience, unlike readers, can- not go back to review a missed point. As its name indicates, a preview is a statementTABLE 7.2 Verbal TransitionsStrategy ExampleRepeating a key word, or using a synonym ”These problems cannot be allowed to continue.” or pronoun that refers to a key wordUsing a transitional word or phrase ”In addition to the facts that I’ve mentioned, we need to consider one more problem.”Enumerating ”Second, there has been a rapid increase in the number of acci- dents reported.”Using internal summaries and previews ”Now that we have discussed the problems caused by illiteracy, let’s look at possible solutions.”CONSIDER THEAUDIENCE176 CHAPTER 7 Organizing Your Speechof what is to come. Previews help to ensure that audience members will first antici- pate and later remember the important points of a speech. Like transitions, previews also help to provide coherence.Two types of previews are usually used in speeches: the preview statement or initial preview, and the internal preview. We discussed the preview statement in Chapter 5. It is a statement of what the main ideas of the speech will be, and it is usually presented in conjunction with the central idea as a blueprint for the speech at or near the end of the introduction. Speaking on illiteracy among athletes, Melody offers the following blueprint at the end of her introduction:You 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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