Week 7 · Assignment: Traditional alternative (no AI)

Week 7 — Write It for the Ear: Plain, Vivid, and Fitted Words — 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Traditional alternative (no AI), unpublished. In the course this is a separate assignment that ships unpublished beside the adaptive assignment: same objective, no AI.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 7 of the term — revise a passage of your next speech for the ear, fix its unclear words, add one device, and explain to a friend why a speech is written for listeners rather than readers.

This week you learned oral style and the read-aloud test, the four killers of clarity, the six devices of vividness, appropriateness, and how a word's connotation can carry a judgment. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's examples, explain each one, revise 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 6's preparation outline: the full sentences you wrote last week are the sentences you now rewrite for the ear.

The task

This week's shared example is the flat-to-oral pair, which is illustrative and attributed to no one. Chapter 7 measures it. The flat sentence, in written style, is "There are many challenges faced by first-year college students when it comes to the management of their time and academic responsibilities." The oral version begins:

"First-year students are often overwhelmed — not because they are unprepared, but because college time works differently."
"No one tells you the assignments stack."
"No one tells you the due dates do not care about each other."

Chapter 7 also names the six devices of vividness on verified fragments of Kennedy's inaugural address (1961), Roosevelt's address to Congress (1941), and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (1863). It then walks through an illustrative chatbot that, asked to rewrite the flat sentence "for speech," returns "Numerous challenges are encountered by first-year college students in the effective management of their time and the fulfillment of their academic obligations."

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

The oral version's first three sentences hold 16, 7, and 13 words. How many words do the three sentences hold together?
Those 36 words fall into 3 sentences. On average, how many words does each oral sentence hold?
The flat sentence holds 21 words, and the oral sentences average 12 words. How many words shorter is each oral sentence on average?
An illustrative chatbot's rewrite for speech holds 22 words, and the flat sentence it was asked to fix holds 21 words. How many words longer is the rewrite?

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

Problem 1: choose a passage of three or more sentences from your own speech draft and revise it into oral style. Give the words in each sentence before and after. Then name the oral-style features your revision added (such as shorter sentences, "you" or "we," concrete words, or a repetition) and what the read-aloud test showed you.
Problem 2: find two different killers of clarity in your own draft (an abstract word, jargon, a long sentence, or a vague quantifier). Quote each one and rewrite it in plain, concrete words. Then replace one vague quantifier with a sourced figure in a complete oral citation (who, what, and when, from a real source you checked) or with a plain count, or say why your draft has none.
Problem 3: name the device in two of the verified speech fragments Chapter 7 quotes, and give the clue in the words that identifies each one. Then write one device of your own into your own speech, label it, and say in one sentence why it fits that audience and occasion.
Problem 4: in the illustrative chatbot rewrite described above (you do not need to open any tool), name its length problem, its missing second person, and its abstract words, and explain why formal wording for a reader is not clarity for a listener.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend will give a two-minute welcome at a community garden's opening day and plans to read aloud the paragraph they wrote for the neighborhood newsletter. Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, why to rewrite the paragraph for listeners (short sentences, "you," things people can picture); one device to try once, such as a repeated opening; and one limit, such as reading it aloud first or keeping their own voice. 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 say a few words at a retirement lunch and plans to read aloud the farewell email they sent the whole office. Model answer: "An email is written for people who can scroll back, but at lunch everyone hears each line once. Say it the way you would tell it across the table: short sentences, say "you" to the person retiring, and name one real moment people can picture. If you want a line people remember, repeat one opening, like "Thank you for…" three times, and stop there. Read it out loud once before lunch, and if a sentence trips you up, cut it in half."

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 total 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 before-and-after passage, your two clarity fixes, your device labels and your own device, and your critique of the chatbot rewrite; and
your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words why to rewrite the paragraph for listeners, one device to try once, 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 revising, the labelling, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Problem 4 asks you to critique a described, illustrative rewrite; 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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