Week 3 — Plan the Message: Topic, Purpose, Central Idea — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 3 of the term — narrow a topic, write a goal and a message for a speech you will really give, and explain to a friend why a topic is not yet a speech.

This week you learned the three general purposes, how to find a topic and narrow it through the four filters, how to write a specific purpose that passes the four tests, and how to write a central idea that is said aloud. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's models, explain each one, write a specific purpose and a central idea for a speech you will really give, narrow your own topic, repair a flawed draft, and explain the difference to someone who has never taken a speaking course. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Speech Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles.

The task

This week's shared example is the running speech's first plan, and it is illustrative and attributed to no one. A student prepares an informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall for a first-year seminar of about 30 students who all eat there, in a 5-minute slot. The plan has four parts:

• topic: "food", narrowed through the four filters (purpose, audience, context, time) to "food waste in our campus dining hall"
• general purpose: to inform
• specific purpose: "To inform my audience about how our campus dining hall handles its plate waste." It passes the four tests: one idea; an infinitive phrase; audience-centered; achievable in the time.
• central idea: "A dining hall's plate waste is measured by weighing what comes back on plates, targeted by changing how food is served, and diverted through donation and composting." It passes the three checks: declarative; states the message; plain language.

Chapter 3 walks through the plan, the outline-error item "Food waste in the dining hall." and its fix, and an illustrative flawed draft printed in the chapter: "To inform and persuade people about the global food waste crisis and how recycling can solve it."

Work these four problems, and show how you reached each one:

1. The running speech's specific purpose is checked against 4 tests, and its central idea is checked against 3 checks. How many checks is that in all?
2. There are 3 general purposes, and the running speech chooses 1 of them. How many general purposes does the running speech set aside?
3. An illustrative printed draft of a specific purpose passes only 1 of the 4 tests. How many of the tests does it fail?
4. The fix for the outline-error item "Food waste in the dining hall." adds 2 missing features and keeps the 1 it already had. How many features does the fixed specific purpose show?

Beside each answer, add one brief explanation, and use your own speech for the parts that ask for it:

• Problem 1: write your own specific purpose and central idea for a speech you will give this term, then mark each of the four tests and the three checks beside them, saying yes or no with a reason for each.
• Problem 2: name the general purpose of your own speech and explain, with a detail from your plan, why each of the other two does not fit.
• Problem 3: name the tests that the printed draft "To inform and persuade people about the global food waste crisis and how recycling can solve it." fails, with a reason for each, then rewrite it by hand as a specific purpose for an audience you will speak to.
• Problem 4: narrow your own topic through the four filters (purpose, audience, context, time), one sentence per filter, from a broad starting word to the topic you will use.

Explain it to a non-expert

A friend has to give a three-minute talk at their community garden's season meeting and tells you, "My speech is about gardening, so I'm all set." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, the difference between a topic, a specific purpose, and a central idea, offers one example that fits the garden meeting, and names one limit, such as that a central idea is a draft until research shows it holds up. Explain any course term in everyday words. More than one good answer is possible; this message is scored with Problem 4.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a coworker preparing a two-minute talk for a team meeting who says, "I'm talking about the new schedule." Model answer: "That's your subject, but it doesn't say yet what you want the team to get from it. Decide your goal first, something like helping everyone understand how shift swaps work now, and keep that note for yourself. Then write the one sentence you'll actually say, such as 'Shift swaps now go through one form, need a manager's okay, and post by the end of the day.' Treat that sentence as a draft until you check the details with the people who set the schedule."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own wording and examples.

Show how you got each answer. A reader should be able to check every count and every label without guessing which numbers you used.

Deliverables

Submit a single piece of work containing:

• the four answers, each with the arithmetic shown and the brief explanation the task names for that problem;
• your specific purpose and central idea with the tests and checks marked, your four-filter narrowing, and your rewrite of the flawed draft; and
• your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words a topic, a specific purpose, and a central idea, with one example and one limit.

Keep it to roughly one to two pages. Clear and specific beats long. Describe speeches and audiences by what they are and do, never by naming a real person.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, or as a spoken explanation recorded as audio or video of about three minutes with a transcript. Every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

This version is designed to be completed without AI: do the counting, the planning, the narrowing, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Problem 3 asks you to critique a printed draft; you do not need to open any tool to do it. Submitting AI-generated work as your own, or copying another student's work, is an integrity violation under the course policy.

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