Week 4 · Chapter

Chapter 4 — Research & Supporting Materials

Public Speaking Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 3 (choose and narrow a topic, write a general purpose, a well-formed specific purpose, and a central idea, and support the speech with credible examples, statistics, and testimony that are evaluated for credibility and cited aloud in a complete oral citation naming who, what, and when — never fabricated, never plagiarized), Objective 1 (explain how communication works using the course's six-element process model (source, message, channel, receiver, noise, feedback) traced to the linear, interactional, and transactional models, speak ethically — honestly, prepared, crediting sources aloud, never fabricating — and manage communication apprehension with evidence-based strategies) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slide deck, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Speech Workshop all build on it.

In plain language

This week your speech gets its proof. You learn the three kinds of supporting material (the evidence that backs up a point): examples, statistics, and testimony. You learn how to tell whether a source deserves your trust, using a five-question credibility checklist (a short list of questions you ask before you use a source). You learn to read a number in plain words and ask who counted it. Then you learn the oral citation (saying out loud who made your source, what it is, and when it appeared), and why a chatbot's citations must be checked before you say a word of them.

Why you already care about this

Picture a group-project presentation in a classroom of 25 people. Your teammate clicks to slide 3 and says, "Studies show most students waste food." A hand goes up in the second row. "Which study?" Your teammate looks at you. You look at the slide. Nobody knows.

The claim did not fail because it was wrong. It might even be right. It failed because nobody in the room could tell where it came from, so nobody had a reason to believe it. One question took it apart in 4 seconds.

You have been on the other side of that moment, too. A relative at dinner says, "I read somewhere that…" and you think, read where? Evidence only works when listeners can see where it came from. This chapter shows you how to find evidence worth using and how to say its source out loud.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

sort a piece of evidence as an example, a statistic, or testimony, and tell expert testimony from lay testimony;
run a source through the five-question credibility checklist and check it against independent sources;
describe a statistic in plain words and ask who counted, when, and how many;
build a complete oral citation that names who, what, and when before the evidence;
tell an uncredited quotation from a fabricated one, and check a chatbot's citations at the original.

Carry this line with you: a claim without a source is an opinion — say who, what, and when.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 taught ethical speaking, plagiarism, and fabrication; Week 2 taught audience analysis; Week 3 turned a topic into a specific purpose and a central idea.
This week: the three kinds of supporting material, credible sources and the credibility checklist, statistics read in words, the oral citation, and checking a chatbot's citations.
How they connect: the central idea from Week 3 makes a promise, and this week's evidence keeps it, cited the way Week 1's ethics asked.
Where we're going next: Week 5, Organizing the Speech, arranges this evidence into main points and a pattern that fits the purpose.

Here is what each week gave you. Week 1 said an ethical speaker credits sources out loud and never fabricates; it promised the full oral citation for this week. Week 2 taught you to read an audience, which matters here because evidence has to be credible to that audience. Week 3 built the running speech's plan: a student's informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall, given to a first-year seminar of about 30 students. Its central idea is "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." That sentence makes three promises. This week you find the proof for them.

1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point

Think about how you convince a friend to try a restaurant. You might tell one quick story about the best meal you had there. You might mention that the place has a long line every night. You might say, "My cousin is a chef, and she loves it." Those are three different kinds of proof, and you already use all three.

Supporting material is the evidence a speaker uses to back up a point; this course sorts it into three kinds: examples, statistics, and testimony.

Examples

An example makes an idea concrete. It comes in three forms.

A brief example is a real case told in a sentence or two to make a point concrete, such as one named event or one person's situation.
An extended example is a real case told as a short story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, so listeners can picture it and remember it.
A hypothetical example is an invented case that asks listeners to imagine a situation; an honest speaker always flags it as invented, with a cue such as "picture this".

The flag on a hypothetical example is not a nicety. If you tell an invented story as if it happened, you have presented fiction as fact. "Picture the conveyor at closing time" tells your listeners they are imagining; "Last night the conveyor was full" claims it happened.

Statistics

A statistic is a number that summarizes facts about a group or an event, used as evidence only when it comes from a credible source, is used accurately, is dated, and is made meaningful to listeners.

Each part of that definition does a job. A credible source means someone qualified did the counting. Used accurately means you report what the source said, not a rounder or scarier version. Dated means your listeners know when the count was taken. Meaningful means you connect the number to something they can picture.

Testimony

Testimony is another person's words, opinions, or findings used as evidence, either quoted exactly or paraphrased, and always credited to that person aloud. Testimony comes in two kinds, and they are not interchangeable.

Expert testimony is testimony from a person qualified in the field the claim belongs to, such as a researcher reporting a study's findings.
Lay testimony is testimony from an ordinary witness speaking from firsthand experience of an event or a place, valuable for what it was like but not for expert judgment.

Worked example — three kinds of proof in the running speech. Here is how the running speech uses each kind. The speech and its speaker are illustrative; the sources are real.

An example: the speech opens with a hypothetical example. "Picture the dish-return conveyor at closing time." The speaker flags it as invented, because it describes no particular night.
A statistic: the speech cites the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Waste FAQ page, which says that between 30 and 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste.
Testimony: the speech cites researchers Wenhao Zhang and Junehee Kwon, who studied a university dining hall and found that a week without trays reduced how much food diners took but did not show a significant reduction in food waste. That is expert testimony: researchers reporting their own study's findings, paraphrased and credited.

In words: one point gets a picture, one gets a number, and one gets the word of people qualified to judge, so each claim in the speech rests on the kind of proof that suits it.

Worked example — expert versus lay at a neighborhood meeting. Here is a scene from a different setting, illustrative and attributed to no one. A neighborhood association is discussing a pedestrian crossing near campus. Two speakers bring testimony.

A crossing guard says, "I have worked that corner every school morning for years, and I wave cars down at least once a week." That is lay testimony. The guard is a firsthand witness to what happens at the corner.
A speaker cites a traffic engineer's written review of the corner. That is expert testimony. The engineer is qualified to judge whether a crossing would make the corner safer.

In words: the guard can tell you what it is like at the corner, and the engineer can tell you what would fix it, so a strong speech uses each for the job it can do.

Misconception check. Students often think any quotation from a person counts as the same kind of evidence, so a classmate's opinion and a researcher's finding carry equal weight. That is tempting, because both are "someone said so." But lay testimony tells you what an experience was like, and expert testimony tells you what a qualified person concluded. A first-year student's view on why trays matter is lay testimony about eating there; it is not evidence about food-waste research.

A second wrong turn is "more statistics make a speech more persuasive." A wall of numbers is information overload, the Week 2 barrier. One well-sourced number, explained, beats five unverified ones.

Memory hook: a picture, a number, a witness: pick the proof that fits the point.

2. Credible sources: judge a source before you trust it

You would not take directions from a stranger who will not say where the road goes. Sources work the same way. Before a source earns a place in your speech, it has to answer some questions.

Credible sources tend to live in a few places: library databases, government and institutional pages, quality news outlets with editorial standards (they check facts and correct mistakes in public), and interviews with experts. Two things to avoid: anonymous posts, where you cannot tell who is speaking, and a chatbot's output cited as if it were a source. A chatbot is a tool that writes text; it is not a person or an organization that stands behind a claim.

The credibility checklist

The credibility checklist is five questions asked of a source before a speaker uses it: currency (is it recent enough), relevance (does it fit the point), authority (who made it and are they qualified), accuracy (is it sourced and checkable), and purpose (why does it exist).

Academic librarians built this checklist, and Blakeslee (2004) described it under the name "The CRAAP Test" in LOEX Quarterly; the name is an acronym of the five questions. This course teaches it as one common checklist among several. Other checklists ask similar questions in a different order, and that is fine. The habit matters more than the name.

Worked example — an official-looking wellness site. Here is a source a student might find while researching healthy eating. The site is illustrative and invented; it stands for no real organization. It has a medical-blue logo and a clean layout. It has no author's name and no date. It makes a bold claim, in large type, that most people are low in key nutrients, and it names no source for it. Halfway down the page is a "buy now" button for a supplement. Run the checklist.

Currency: no date anywhere, so you cannot tell if it is recent. Fails.
Relevance: it is about nutrition, which fits a speech on healthy eating. Passes.
Authority: no author and no organization you can look up. Fails.
Accuracy: the claim names no source, so you cannot check it. Fails.
Purpose: the page exists to sell a supplement. Fails.

The site passes 1 of 5 questions, so 5 − 1 = 4 fail. Drop it.

In words: the site looked official, but looking official is not a credential, and four failed questions mean its claim never goes into your speech.

Worked example — the mini-source set through the checklist. The running speech uses three real sources, which this course calls the mini-source set. Here they are, run through the same five questions.

The mini-source set run through the five-question credibility checklist, with the verdict for each source
Question	U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Food Waste FAQs"	Zhang and Kwon, Sustainability (December 2022)	Durbin for PBS News (December 2022)
Currency	The weak spot: no dated stamp, and it cites a 2010 estimate	December 2022	December 2022
Relevance	National food waste	Trays in a university dining hall	Food waste in the United States
Authority	A federal department drawing on its Economic Research Service	Researchers publishing in a peer-reviewed journal	A named Associated Press reporter at an outlet with editorial standards
Accuracy	It names its source	Peer-reviewed, with a DOI anyone can follow	The figure is attributed to ReFED, the group that counted it
Purpose	To inform the public	To report research	To inform news readers
Verdict	Keep	Keep	Keep

Count the checks: 3 sources × 5 questions = 15 checks, and all three sources are kept.

Two terms in that table need a gloss. A peer-reviewed article is a research article that other experts in the field examined and approved before a journal published it. A DOI is a digital object identifier: a permanent code assigned to a published article so that anyone can find that exact article later.

Notice what the checklist did for the government page. Currency was weak, so the speaker does not invent a year. The citation names the department and its research service instead. The checklist does not only say keep or drop; it tells you how to cite honestly.

Check it against independent sources

The checklist looks at one source by itself. The next habit looks outward. An independent source is a source produced by someone other than the original source's author or organization, used to check whether a claim holds up before it goes into a speech.

Here is the move. Before you trust a page, open new tabs and search for what other credible sources say about it and about its claim. Does a library, a news outlet, or a government page confirm the figure? Do other writers describe the organization as reliable? If the claim shows up only on the page that is selling something, that is your answer.

For the running speech, the check is close at hand. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's page and the PBS News article come from different organizations, and both describe a large share of the U.S. food supply going to waste. Section 3 looks at how closely their numbers agree.

Misconception check. Students often think a website that looks professional is credible. That is tempting, because design takes money and effort. But anyone can buy a clean template and a medical-blue logo. Credibility comes from the five answers and from what independent sources say, never from the look of the page.

Honesty note: no checklist makes a source perfect. A government page can be out of date, and a peer-reviewed study can be small. The checklist tells you what a source can carry, so you claim no more than it supports.

Memory hook: five questions, then new tabs.

3. Statistics in words: ask who counted, when, and how many

Your roommate says the average shift at the campus café is short. Most shifts are short, but one ran past midnight. The average hides that story. Numbers in a speech work the same way: one number can stand for many, and the listener deserves to know what it is standing for.

This course reads statistics in words, with no formula. You need three words and three questions.

Three words

An average is a single number that stands for the typical value in a set of numbers.
Spread is how far the values in a set of numbers scatter from one another; a set with a large spread has values far apart.
A range is the distance from the lowest value in a set of numbers to the highest, often reported as the two end values, such as between 30 and 40 percent.

Worked example — same average, different spread. Here is an illustrative case, invented for this chapter. Two food pantries each hand out bags of groceries on four distribution days.

Pantry A hands out 40, 42, 38, and 40 bags. The four days add to 160 bags, so the average is 40 bags a day. The range runs from 38 to 42.
Pantry B hands out 10, 70, 20, and 60 bags. The four days also add to 160 bags, so the average is also 40 bags a day. The range runs from 10 to 70.

In words: both pantries average 40 bags a day, but Pantry A is steady and Pantry B swings wildly, so a speaker who reports only "an average of 40" hides the difference a volunteer coordinator most needs to plan staffing.

Three questions

Ask these of any number before you say it:

Who counted? An organization you can name and check, or nobody you can find?
When? A count from a recent year, or an old estimate still circulating?
How many, and of what? What exactly was counted, and how big was the group?

Worked example — the running speech's two figures. The running speech's sources carry two figures. Read them in words.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's page: between 30 and 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste. Who counted? The department's Economic Research Service. When? The page cites a 2010 estimate. How many, and of what? The national food supply. Notice that it is a range, not one number; the range itself tells you the estimate is uncertain.
The PBS News article: about 35 percent of the food available in the United States in 2019 went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFED, a group that studies food waste. Who counted? ReFED. When? 2019. How many, and of what? Food available in the United States, counted as unsold or uneaten.

Put them side by side. They come from different counters, for different years, with slightly different definitions. The second figure sits inside the first range, so the two broadly agree. They do not prove that waste rose or fell; they were not counted the same way.

In words: the speaker can honestly say that two independent counts put U.S. food waste at roughly a third of the supply, and cannot honestly say the problem got better or worse.

Caveat: these two figures are the sources' numbers, reported in words to show the reading habit. They are not targets, and the speech never claims more precision than its sources give.

Misconception check. Students often think a number is a fact in itself, so any statistic is strong evidence. That is tempting, because numbers sound exact. But a number is only as good as its counter, its year, and its definition. A percentage after "studies show," with no who, when, or what, is not evidence; it is a number without a home.

Pause and reflect. Choose one option and jot two or three sentences.

(a) Think of a statistic you have heard repeated, in a class, an ad, or a conversation. Could you answer who counted, when, and how many? What would you need to find out before you said it in a speech?

(b) Think of a time an average misled you, such as an average rating, a class average, or an average commute. What did the spread or the range hide?

Memory hook: every number needs a who, a when, and a what.

4. The oral citation: say who, what, and when before the evidence

When you write a paper, your reader can flip to the end and read your sources. Your listeners cannot. They hear your speech once, in order, and the only source they will ever know is the one you say out loud.

An oral citation is a spoken credit, placed in the sentence before the evidence, that names who produced the source (with one clause on why they are credible), what the source is (its title or venue), and when it appeared.

Who, what, when. Three parts, said before the evidence, so that by the time the number or the finding arrives, your listeners already know whose it is.

Worked example — building oral citation 3, one part at a time. Start with the evidence you want to use, from the PBS News article.

The evidence: about 35 percent of the food available in the United States in 2019 went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFED.
Who: Associated Press reporter Dee-Ann Durbin. Add the clause that makes the counter credible, too: ReFED is "a group that studies food waste."
What: the venue, PBS News.
When: 2022.
Put the credit first: "As Associated Press reporter Dee-Ann Durbin wrote for PBS News in 2022, about 35 percent of the food available in the United States in 2019 went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFED, a group that studies food waste."

In words: your listeners hear the reporter, the outlet, and the date before the number arrives, so the number lands with its credentials already attached.

Oral citation versus written bibliography

The oral citation is not the only record of your sources. A written bibliography is the list of sources written at the end of a preparation outline in one consistent style the instructor sets, which listeners never hear. Your instructor will choose the style, and APA and MLA are the common choices. A written entry carries the author or organization, the title, the container or publisher, the date, and the address.

The two do different jobs. The written bibliography lets your instructor check every source. The oral citation lets your listeners trust the evidence while you speak. A speech needs both, and one never replaces the other.

Paraphrase still needs its source

When you put a source's idea in your own words, the idea is still theirs. Oral citation 2 is a paraphrase: the speaker does not quote Zhang and Kwon's sentence, but the finding is theirs, so the citation names them.

Week 1 drew the line between plagiarism and fabrication. Here it is, applied to evidence.

An uncredited quotation or paraphrase is plagiarism. The words or the idea are real, but you presented them as yours.
An invented quotation, statistic, or study is fabrication. The words or the numbers never existed, including ones a chatbot hands you.

Worked example — three speakers at a parents' meeting. Here is an illustrative scene, attributed to no one. Three parents speak at a youth soccer league's meeting about adding a water station at the field.

Parent A reads two sentences from a news article about heat and youth sports, word for word, and never names the article. That is an uncredited quotation: plagiarism.
Parent B says, "Kids lose focus when they are thirsty," which is the finding of a study Parent B read, put in Parent B's own words, with no source named. That is an uncredited paraphrase: still plagiarism.
Parent C cites "a recent study from a sports-medicine journal" that a chatbot described. Nobody can find the study, in any database. If it does not exist, that is fabrication, and it is the most serious of the three.

In words: A and B used real material without credit, while C put material into the room that may never have existed, so the cure for A and B is a citation and the cure for C is to find the study or drop it.

A quotation is only as good as its transcript

One real case shows why the source of a quotation matters as much as the quotation. Sojourner Truth spoke at the Woman's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851. Two published versions of her speech survive. Marius Robinson, one of the convention's secretaries, printed his report in the Anti-Slavery Bugle that same year. Frances Gage published a different version in 1863, 12 years later.

The two versions differ so much that the famous refrain the speech is now named for appears in Gage's version and not in Robinson's earlier report. Gage's version also gives a Southern dialect to a speaker who grew up in New York speaking Dutch. So a speaker who says "Sojourner Truth said…" owes the audience an answer to a further question: which version? The Readings & Resources page links the Library of Congress account of the two versions, so you can see the problem for yourself.

Misconception check. Students often think an oral citation is the same thing as a bibliography, so the list at the end of the outline is enough. That is tempting, because both name sources. But your listeners never see the outline. If the who, what, and when are not in the sentence you speak, your audience has no source at all. A second wrong turn: "paraphrasing means I do not have to cite." The words are yours; the idea is not.

Memory hook: who, what, when, then the evidence.

5. The mini-source set and the chatbot: build the citations, then check every one

Now put the week together. The running speech has three points, three real sources, and a chatbot that is eager to help. Two of those things you can trust after checking. One you can never trust without checking.

Worked example — the running speech's three oral citations. Each source from Section 2 becomes one oral citation. Each names who, what, and when before its evidence.

Oral citation 1 (a statistic): "According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Waste FAQ page, which draws on the department's Economic Research Service, between 30 and 40 percent of the food supply in the United States goes to waste." Who: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, drawing on its research service. What: its Food Waste FAQ page. When: the page carries no date, so the speaker names the department and the research service instead of inventing a year.
Oral citation 2 (expert testimony): "In a study published in the journal Sustainability in December 2022, researchers Wenhao Zhang and Junehee Kwon found that a week without trays in a university dining hall, compared with a week with trays, reduced how much food diners took but did not show a significant reduction in food waste." Who: researchers Wenhao Zhang and Junehee Kwon. What: a study in the journal Sustainability. When: December 2022.
Oral citation 3 (a statistic): "As Associated Press reporter Dee-Ann Durbin wrote for PBS News in 2022, about 35 percent of the food available in the United States in 2019 went unsold or uneaten, according to ReFED, a group that studies food waste." Who: Associated Press reporter Dee-Ann Durbin, and ReFED as the counter. What: PBS News. When: 2022.

Count the parts: 3 citations × 3 parts (who, what, when) = 9 parts named, each one said before its evidence.

In words: every piece of evidence in the running speech arrives with its credentials, and the part that most often goes missing in student speeches, the when, is present or honestly explained in all three.

Compare these with "studies show." That phrase names no who, no what, and no when. It is the sentence your teammate said in the opening of this chapter, and now you know why one question from the second row took it apart.

The AI-critique: three tidy citations, some of which do not exist

You will use a chatbot as a rehearsal coach this term, and it can help you brainstorm search terms. Here is what happens when you ask it for evidence. The exchange is illustrative and names no product.

A student asks for "three statistics about dining-hall food waste with sources." The chatbot returns three citations, each with authors, a title, a journal, and a year. They look complete. They look exactly like oral citation 2.

The student checks each one at the original: the journal's own site, a library database, and a search for the title.

The first citation is found, and the article says what the chatbot claimed. It can be used, cited from the article itself.
The second names a real journal, but no article with that title appears in it.
The third names authors and a title that turn up nowhere.

One is found and 3 − 1 = 2 are dropped.

In words: the chatbot produced citations that looked complete, and only the check at the original could tell the real one from the invented ones, so the student cites the article, never the chatbot.

This is the sharpest AI-critique of the term. A chatbot asked for sources can return citations with authors, titles, and years, and some of them do not exist. It is not lying in the human sense; it produces text that looks like a citation. But if you say an invented citation out loud, you have put fabrication into the room, and your name is the one attached to it.

Misconception check. Students often think, "the chatbot gave me the citation, so I can use it." That is tempting, because the citation looks complete, with an author, a title, and a year. But a chatbot is not a source. Find every citation at the original, read what it actually says, and cite that. If you cannot find it, it does not get said.

Limitation: even a real source can be cited wrongly. A chatbot can attach a real article to a claim the article never makes. The check is not only "does it exist?" but "does it say this?"

Memory hook: a chatbot is not a source; the original is.

Key terms

Supporting material — The evidence a speaker uses to back up a point; this course sorts it into three kinds: examples, statistics, and testimony. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Brief example — A real case told in a sentence or two to make a point concrete, such as one named event or one person's situation. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Extended example — A real case told as a short story with a beginning, a middle, and an end, so listeners can picture it and remember it. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Hypothetical example — An invented case that asks listeners to imagine a situation; an honest speaker always flags it as invented, with a cue such as "picture this". (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Statistic — A number that summarizes facts about a group or an event, used as evidence only when it comes from a credible source, is used accurately, is dated, and is made meaningful to listeners. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Testimony — Another person's words, opinions, or findings used as evidence, either quoted exactly or paraphrased, and always credited to that person aloud. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Expert testimony — Testimony from a person qualified in the field the claim belongs to, such as a researcher reporting a study's findings. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Lay testimony — Testimony from an ordinary witness speaking from firsthand experience of an event or a place, valuable for what it was like but not for expert judgment. (first used: 1. Supporting material: pick the right kind of proof for each point)
Credibility checklist — Five questions asked of a source before a speaker uses it: currency (is it recent enough), relevance (does it fit the point), authority (who made it and are they qualified), accuracy (is it sourced and checkable), and purpose (why does it exist). (first used: 2. Credible sources: judge a source before you trust it)
Peer-reviewed article — A research article that other experts in the field examined and approved before a journal published it. (first used: 2. Credible sources: judge a source before you trust it)
DOI — A digital object identifier: a permanent code assigned to a published article so that anyone can find that exact article later. (first used: 2. Credible sources: judge a source before you trust it)
Independent source — A source produced by someone other than the original source's author or organization, used to check whether a claim holds up before it goes into a speech. (first used: 2. Credible sources: judge a source before you trust it)
Average — A single number that stands for the typical value in a set of numbers. (first used: 3. Statistics in words: ask who counted, when, and how many)
Spread — How far the values in a set of numbers scatter from one another; a set with a large spread has values far apart. (first used: 3. Statistics in words: ask who counted, when, and how many)
Range — The distance from the lowest value in a set of numbers to the highest, often reported as the two end values, such as between 30 and 40 percent. (first used: 3. Statistics in words: ask who counted, when, and how many)
Oral citation — A spoken credit, placed in the sentence before the evidence, that names who produced the source (with one clause on why they are credible), what the source is (its title or venue), and when it appeared. (first used: 4. The oral citation: say who, what, and when before the evidence)
Written bibliography — The list of sources written at the end of a preparation outline in one consistent style the instructor sets, which listeners never hear. (first used: 4. The oral citation: say who, what, and when before the evidence)

Summary

Supporting material comes in three kinds: examples, statistics, and testimony.
Flag every hypothetical example as invented.
Expert testimony judges; lay testimony describes what it was like.
Run every source through currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, and purpose.
Looking official is not a credential; check independent sources.
Read a statistic in words: average, spread, range.
Ask every number who counted, when, and how many.
An oral citation says who, what, and when before the evidence.
The written bibliography never replaces the spoken citation.
A paraphrase still needs its source.
Uncredited material is plagiarism; invented material is fabrication.
A chatbot is not a source; find every citation at the original or drop it.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

A student's speech on adopting shelter pets uses three pieces of evidence: (i) "Picture a dog waiting by the kennel door every time it opens"; (ii) a shelter volunteer's account of the first week she fostered a cat; (iii) a veterinarian's published advice on how long a newly adopted cat needs to settle in. Name the kind of supporting material in each, and say whether any testimony is expert or lay.
A speaker researching car maintenance finds a page titled "The Truth About Oil Changes." It has no author, a copyright line from many years ago, a claim that "most drivers waste money" with no source, and a coupon for the site's own oil-change shop. Run the five questions and give a verdict.
Two bike-share reports describe one city's weekly rides. Report A says 300, 310, 290, and 300 rides over four weeks. Report B says 100, 500, 200, and 400 rides over four weeks. Give each report's average and range, and say what a speaker would hide by reporting only the average.
Fix this sentence so it becomes a complete oral citation: "Studies show that sleeping less than six hours hurts test performance." Assume the real source is a news article by a named health reporter in a national newspaper, published in a given year, describing one study.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

(i) is a hypothetical example: it asks listeners to picture a scene, and "picture" flags it as invented. (ii) is lay testimony: a volunteer's firsthand account of what fostering was like, valuable for the experience, not for expert judgment. (iii) is expert testimony: a veterinarian is qualified in the field the claim belongs to. None of the three is a statistic. A strong speech would use (iii) for the claim about settling in and (ii) to make it feel real.
Currency fails: an old copyright line and no update date. Relevance passes: it is about oil changes. Authority fails: no author or organization you can check. Accuracy fails: "most drivers waste money" names no source. Purpose fails: the page sells the site's own oil changes. That is 1 of 5 passing and 4 failing, so drop it and look for a source with a named author and a checkable claim.
Report A adds to 1,200 rides over four weeks, so its average is 300 rides a week, and its range runs from 290 to 310. Report B also adds to 1,200 rides, so its average is also 300 rides a week, but its range runs from 100 to 500. Reporting "an average of 300 rides a week" for both would hide that Report B swings widely from week to week, which matters to anyone planning how many bikes to stock.
A complete version opens with who: the reporter's name, plus the clause that the reporter covers health for the newspaper. Then it names what: the newspaper itself. Then it names when: the year the article ran. Only after those three parts does the evidence arrive: "one study found that students who slept less than six hours did worse on tests." The fix also changes "studies show" to "one study," because the source describes one study. Before saying it, the speaker would also find the study itself and check that it says this.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week the evidence you gathered here gets arranged into main points and an organizational pattern that fits the purpose.

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