Week 6 — Put It on Paper: The Full Plan and the Cards — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 6 of the term — write one main point of your next speech as a full-sentence plan and as a card, label its connectives, and explain to a friend why a talk is built in sentences but given from keywords.

This week you learned the preparation outline and the speaking outline, the four outlining rules and the symbol system, the four connectives, and how oral citations travel from the page to the card. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's outlines, explain each one, outline part of 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 5's main points: the body you organized last week is the body you outline now.

The task

This week's shared example is the running speech's two outlines. The running speech, an informative speech on food waste in a campus dining hall, and its speaker are illustrative and attributed to no one. Chapter 6 writes it as a full-sentence preparation outline: the introduction's four functions, three main points with two subpoints each, three oral citations written in where their evidence appears, three transitions written out, and the conclusion's three jobs. Main point II, for example, reads:

• II. Plate waste is targeted by changing how food is served.
  • A. Trayless serving cuts how much food diners take.
  • B. Portion-controlled serving lowers plate waste further.

Chapter 6 then shrinks the plan to a speaking outline of keyword cards, with a citation cue on each main-point card and the central idea and the clincher written word for word. It also walks through an illustrative chatbot that outlines main point III as "III. Diverted food goes to donation and composting. A. Composting." with the line "About 35 percent of food went unsold or uneaten." beneath it, and then calls the result a great outline.

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

1. The running speech's preparation outline has 3 main points, and each main point has 2 subpoints. How many subpoints does the body hold?
2. In the symbol system, each of the body's 3 main points and each of its 6 subpoints takes one line. How many lines does the body have?
3. The preparation outline writes the introduction's 4 functions and the conclusion's 3 jobs as one full sentence each. How many full sentences surround the body?
4. The speaking outline uses 1 card for the introduction, 1 card for each of the 3 main points, and 1 card for the conclusion. How many cards does the speaker hold?

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 main points, each with an A and a B. Check each one for division (no lone subpoint) and run each subpoint through the "because" test. Name one lone subpoint you repaired, or say why none needed repair.
• Problem 2: write one main point of your own speech as a preparation-outline excerpt in complete sentences, with one oral citation written in where its evidence appears (who, what, and when, from a real source you checked). Then write one transition that names the point you leave and the point you enter.
• Problem 3: label your own outline's four connectives: one transition, one signpost, one internal preview, and one internal summary. Then write one sentence on how your transition differs from your signpost.
• Problem 4: in the illustrative chatbot outline described above (you do not need to open any tool), name the lone subpoint and the uncited statistic, and explain why the chatbot's praise is not a check on either one.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend coaches a youth soccer team and will give a short talk to parents before the season starts. They plan to type every word and read it from the page. Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, why to build the talk in full sentences first; why to speak from a few keywords on cards instead of the typed page; and one limit, such as that a card still needs practice before it works. 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 who will give a short safety briefing at a warehouse and plans to memorize a typed script word for word. Model answer: "Write the whole briefing out first, so you know exactly what each part says and where your facts came from. Then put three or four words per part on a card, and talk from that while you look at the crew. If you lose your place, the card gets you back in a glance, which a full page cannot do. Practice with the card a few times first, because a cue only works once you know what it stands for."

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 their subpoints and the rule checks, your preparation-outline excerpt with its oral citation and transition, your four labelled connectives, and your critique of the chatbot outline; and
• your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words why to build the talk in full sentences, why to speak from keywords on cards, 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 outlining, the labelling, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Problem 4 asks you to critique a described, illustrative outline; 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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