Week 5 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 5 — Shape the Message: Main Points, Patterns, and the Doors In and Out — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Public Speaking Free sample edition

Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI. An instructor who prefers it publishes it and unpublishes or deletes the adaptive one, as the note at its top says.

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

Assignment 5 of the term — shape your next speech into main points and a pattern that fit its purpose, plan the doors in and out, and explain to a friend why a talk needs a plan before it needs a first sentence.

This week you learned the three-part frame, main points and subpoints, the six organizational patterns and the decision logic, Monroe's Motivated Sequence, and the jobs of the introduction and the conclusion. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's outlines, explain each one, organize a speech you will really give, and explain the idea 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. It builds on Week 3's central idea: the parts of your central idea become the main points of your body.

The task

This week's shared example is the running speech's body. The running speech, an informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall, and its speaker are illustrative and attributed to no one. 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." Chapter 5 runs the three decision steps on it and lands on a topical pattern with three main points:

I. Plate waste is measured by weighing what comes back on plates.
II. Plate waste is targeted by changing how food is served.
III. Diverted food goes to donation and composting.

Chapter 5 also fixes two illustrative outline errors. In item 1, the draft "I. Plate waste is measured by weighing. II. The scale sits at the dish-return window. III. Serving changes reduce plate waste." moves the scale under point I as subpoint A and adds subpoint B, "Each day's weighed total is logged at closing." In item 2, the overlapping pair "Trayless serving reduces plate waste" and "Removing trays cuts how much food diners take" becomes one main point, "Serving changes reduce plate waste," with two subpoints. The chapter also sets Monroe's Motivated Sequence (attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, action) beside the two parts of problem–solution, and walks through an illustrative chatbot that calls both Monroe's sequence and the topical pattern "perfect" for the informative running speech.

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

The outline-error item 1 draft lists 3 main points, and 1 of them is really a subpoint. After the fix moves it down, how many main points remain?
The fixed item 1 outline keeps the draft's 3 lines and adds 1 new subpoint. How many lines does the fixed outline have?
Monroe's Motivated Sequence has 5 steps, and 2 of them match the 2 parts of problem–solution. How many steps belong only to the sequence?
The fixed item 2 outline has 1 main point holding 2 subpoints. How many lines does it have?

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

Problem 1: list your own speech's two to five main points and check each one for distinct, balanced, and parallel. Name one item you moved down to a subpoint, or say why none needed moving.
Problem 2: plan your own introduction, one line for each of its four functions (gain attention, reveal the topic with the central idea near the end, establish credibility, preview the main points). Then plan your conclusion, one line for each of its three jobs (signal, summary, clincher), with the clincher last.
Problem 3: run the three decision steps for your own speech: name its purpose, the question your audience brings, and the pattern you choose. Then explain why one plausible alternative pattern fits less well.
Problem 4: in the illustrative chatbot exchange described above (you do not need to open any tool), explain why its praise for Monroe's Motivated Sequence fails the first decision step for an informative speech, and what its praise for every pattern tells you about its advice.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend coaches a youth robotics team and will give a three-minute talk to parents at the end-of-season party. They plan to "start talking and see where it goes." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, why to choose two or three main points before the party; how to put them in an order that answers what the parents most want to know; and one limit, such as that a plan is a guide to speak from, not a script to read. 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 neighbor running a block association's first meeting who plans to read every complaint in the order it arrived. Model answer: "Before the meeting, sort the complaints into a few groups, like parking, noise, and trash, because people mostly want to know when their own issue comes up. Say the groups out loud at the start so everyone knows the route. Then take one group at a time, and close by saying what happens next. Some complaints will not fit any group neatly, so save a few minutes at the end for those."

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 own main points with the three checks, your introduction and conclusion plan, your decision steps with the alternative you set aside, and your critique of the chatbot exchange; and
your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words why to choose a few main points first, how to order them by the parents' question, and one limit.

Keep it to roughly one to two pages. Clear and specific beats long.

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 organizing, the planning, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Problem 4 asks you to critique a described, illustrative exchange; 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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