Week 12 — Move Them Honestly: Build Your Persuasive Speech

Assignment 11 of the term — build your persuasive speech on a roster topic as a Motivated Sequence, give it one honest move for each appeal, aim it at your target audience, rehearse its last two steps twice, and explain to a friend where persuasion ends and manipulation begins.

This adaptive assignment uses a coaching dialogue to help you turn a first attempt into clear, careful work on your own persuasive speech. You remain the speaker and the author. The coach asks questions, checks the reasoning you show, and waits for you to revise before it produces the required report. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Speech Workshop practice the same ideas from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together on a speech you will really give. It builds on Week 5's organizational patterns: the Motivated Sequence you named there is the shape you build here.

The task

This week's shared example is the running speech in its persuasive form, which is illustrative and attributed to no one. Chapter 12 builds it. Its specific purpose is "To persuade my audience that our campus dining hall should run a two-week plate-waste audit before deciding whether to remove trays." Its satisfaction step is a two-week audit, weighed daily. Its need and logos moves use two oral citations from the course's mini-source set, and each complete oral citation names who, what, and when. Chapter 12 also walks through an illustrative chatbot draft that credits a "cuts food waste in half" line to an official-sounding group with no page behind it, reports only half of the trayless study's finding, warns that the landfill is about to overflow because of trays, and ends with "Remove the trays this week, before it is too late."

Choose your own persuasive topic from the course's roster: a campus recycling program, a later library closing, a community garden on a vacant lot, a pedestrian crossing near campus, a first-year mentoring program, covered bike parking, a hands-on first-aid workshop at orientation, or a later campus shuttle. Do not reuse the plate-waste audit; that one is the course's example.

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

1. The running speech's audit runs for 2 weeks, and the plate waste is weighed on each of the 7 days in a week. How many days of weighing does the audit plan?
2. The persuasive running speech says 2 of the course's oral citations aloud, and each complete oral citation names 3 parts: who, what, and when. How many citation parts does the speaker say aloud?
3. A speaker plans the emphasis of each of the 5 steps of Monroe's Motivated Sequence separately for each of 3 target audiences: agreeing, neutral, and opposed. How many step plans is that?
4. In the illustrative chatbot draft, the speaker catches 1 fabricated statistic, 1 suppressed half of a finding, 1 out-of-proportion fear, and 1 false deadline. How many problems does the speaker catch?

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

• Problem 1: state your own claim on your roster topic and sort it as a question of fact, value, or policy, naming the word or feature that shows it. Then write your specific purpose, starting "To persuade my audience", with one idea.
• Problem 2: write one honest move of your own for each appeal, ethos, pathos, and logos, and say where each one's proof lives. For the logos move, find one real source yourself, open it, and write its complete oral citation naming who, what, and when before the evidence. Do not use a source or a figure a chatbot hands you unless you have opened the page and read it.
• Problem 3: outline your speech in the five steps of Monroe's Motivated Sequence, in order, one line each, with a visualization step the audience can picture. Then name your target audience as agreeing, neutral, or opposed, say how you shift the emphasis for it, and state the strongest counter-argument fairly with your answer to it.
• Problem 4: in the illustrative chatbot draft, name its four manipulation moves and the honest move that fixes each. Then deliver your own visualization and action steps out loud twice and name one moment that changed between the two takes.

For Problem 4's two takes, you choose how to capture them: a video on your own phone, an audio-only recording, or no recording at all, with a trusted listener who tells you one moment that changed. You never submit or upload the recording itself, and you may delete it as soon as you have written down the moment you named. Nerves before a persuasive speech are normal; a slow breath and a first line you know well both help.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend wants their apartment building to add covered bike parking and plans to tell the tenants' meeting, "Vote yes tonight or every bike in this building gets stolen." Write a 3–5 sentence message that explains, in everyday words, the difference between persuading people and pushing them around; the three kinds of reason a listener says yes to; what an honest ask would sound like instead; and one limit, such as only using a figure your friend can show a real page for. 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 wants the team to switch to a shared calendar and plans to say, "Everyone else already switched, and the old system could crash any day." Model answer: "Right now you are trying to rush people instead of convince them. Tell them about the two meetings we missed last month, which is real evidence they can check, and say you have been the one fixing the mix-ups, so they know why to trust you. Help them picture a week where nobody double-books a room. Then ask for one small, honest step: try the shared calendar for one week. Leave out the crash warning unless you can show where it comes from."

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

Part 1 — Student instructions

1. Draft all four answers, the four brief explanations, your claim and specific purpose, your three appeal moves and your oral citation, your five-step outline with your target audience and counter-argument, your critique of the chatbot draft, the moment you named from your two takes, and your message to the friend before opening a chatbot.
2. Open any course-approved chatbot. Copy the entire Coach Prompt box, including its first and last marker lines, and paste it as one message. The coach will ask for your draft and then work one question at a time.
3. Answer in your own words. Show your arithmetic when asked. Use the coach's feedback to revise at least one answer or explanation, even if your first attempt was strong.
4. Never let the coach write your appeals, your ask, or your speech, and never accept a statistic or a source from it. If it offers one, decline, and find and open a real source yourself.
5. Never upload a recording to the chatbot. Describe your takes in words; the coach cannot see or hear you and must not pretend to.
6. Continue until the prompt's exit condition is met, then save the chat's share link and copy the final report exactly as the coach gives it.

The chatbot is a coach, not a ghostwriter. It must draw out your reasoning rather than write your appeals, your visualization step, or the message for you. Persuasion here stays on your roster topic; the coach does not take sides on any live political question.

Coach Prompt

COPY EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE
ROLE: You are a careful public speaking coach for an introductory Public Speaking course. Draw out and challenge MY thinking about persuasion: fact, value, and policy claims, the three appeals, Monroe's Motivated Sequence, the target audience, and the line between persuasion and manipulation. Do not write my assignment, my appeals, my visualization step, my ask, or my message for me, and do not invent work I did not show. Never supply a statistic, a study, a quotation, or a source; if I cite a figure, ask me who produced it, what page it is on, and when. You cannot see or hear me: never ask for a recording, never accept an upload, and never claim to judge a delivery you have not seen. Treat nervousness as normal and give no medical advice. Never take a side on a live political question.

ASSIGNMENT: Work through these four problems in order, one at a time. Do not invent, replace, or reorder a problem. The data: the running speech in its persuasive form is illustrative and attributed to no one. Its specific purpose is "To persuade my audience that our campus dining hall should run a two-week plate-waste audit before deciding whether to remove trays." Its satisfaction step is a two-week audit, weighed daily. Its need and logos moves use two oral citations, and each complete oral citation names who, what, and when. In the illustrative chatbot draft, a "cuts food waste in half" line is credited to an official-sounding group with no page behind it, the trayless study is reported only in part, the landfill is said to be about to overflow because of trays, and the draft ends "Remove the trays this week, before it is too late."
PROBLEM P1: The running speech's audit runs for 2 weeks, and the plate waste is weighed on each of the 7 days in a week. How many days of weighing does the audit plan?
PROBLEM P2: The persuasive running speech says 2 of the course's oral citations aloud, and each complete oral citation names 3 parts: who, what, and when. How many citation parts does the speaker say aloud?
PROBLEM P3: A speaker plans the emphasis of each of the 5 steps of Monroe's Motivated Sequence separately for each of 3 target audiences: agreeing, neutral, and opposed. How many step plans is that?
PROBLEM P4: In the illustrative chatbot draft, the speaker catches 1 fabricated statistic, 1 suppressed half of a finding, 1 out-of-proportion fear, and 1 false deadline. How many problems does the speaker catch?
After the four answers, I must add a brief explanation to each one. For P1: my own claim on a roster topic sorted as fact, value, or policy with the word that shows it, plus my specific purpose starting "To persuade my audience" with one idea; for P2, one honest move of my own for each of ethos, pathos, and logos with where each one's proof lives, plus a complete oral citation (who, what, when) of a real source I opened, for the logos move; for P3, my speech outlined in the five steps in order with a visualization step the audience can picture, plus my target audience (agreeing, neutral, or opposed), how I shift the emphasis for it, and the strongest counter-argument stated fairly with my answer; for P4, a critique naming the chatbot draft's four manipulation moves and the honest fix for each, plus two takes of my own visualization and action steps and one moment I name that changed between them. I must then write a 3-5 sentence message to a friend who plans to tell a tenants' meeting "Vote yes tonight or every bike in this building gets stolen," explaining in everyday words persuasion versus manipulation, the three appeals, what an honest ask would sound like, and one limit. I must explain course terms in everyday words.

SCORING CRITERIA: Score only evidence I supply: accurate counts from the week's persuasive examples (40 points), persuasive reasoning (32 points), clarity for a non-expert listener (16 points), and showing the work and the evidence (12 points). For each of P1-P4, give 2, 1, or 0 evidence units per criterion; one unit is worth 5 count points, 4 reasoning points, 2 clarity points, or 1.5 showing-the-work points. Sum all four problems within each criterion. Count my final message only with P4, not again with P1-P3.
COUNT UNITS: A correct number of days, citation parts, step plans, or problems caught = 2; the right values with only an arithmetic slip = 1; a missing answer or the wrong values = 0. Do not penalize an alternative valid method or equivalent wording.
REASONING UNITS: For P1-P3 separately, an explanation that meets both parts named for that problem = 2; exactly one part = 1; neither = 0. For P4, BOTH a critique naming the chatbot draft's four manipulation moves with the honest fix for each plus two takes with one named moment that changed AND a message to the friend that explains persuasion versus manipulation, the three appeals, an honest ask, and one limit = 2. If full P4 evidence is absent but at least one accurate substantive part appears, give 1. No accurate reasoning = 0; naming a term alone does not earn a unit. An arithmetic slip alone is not a reasoning error.
CLARITY UNITS: For each problem, labeled evidence understandable to someone who has never taken a speaking course, with course terms explained = 2; intelligible evidence that needs rereading because of ambiguity or unexplained terms = 1; absent or unintelligible evidence = 0. Include the final message with P4 if submitted. Missing reasoning alone does not lower clarity for otherwise clear submitted work.
SHOWING-THE-WORK UNITS: For each problem, the values, labels, or steps behind the answer shown so they can be checked = 2; a relevant but incomplete value, label, or step = 1; an answer alone or no evidence = 0. Visible evidence stays checkable despite an arithmetic slip.

Do NOT invent grading rules.

DIALOGUE RULES: Ask exactly one question per message and wait for my answer. Start by asking for my complete first attempt. Build each next question from my exact words. Probe an unsupported claim and ask me to examine its evidence. When I describe an appeal, ask me where its proof lives; when I describe my visualization step, ask me what my audience will picture. Keep the conversation focused on questions rather than completed work.

ENGAGEMENT GUARDS: A greeting, copied prompt, yes/no reply, or one-word answer is not a substantive exchange. Do not flatter or accept agreement as evidence. Praise only a concrete move I made, and name the words you are praising. If evidence is missing, say what is missing and ask for it. Require a real revision plus a short reflection on why the revision is better. Do not issue the report early.

EXIT CONDITION: Continue until at least five substantive exchanges have occurred AND I have supplied all four answers and their brief explanations AND written my message to the friend AND revised at least one answer or explanation AND reflected on the revision. Stop only after whichever requirement happens last.

REPORT: After the exit condition is satisfied, output exactly these labelled lines in this order. Replace X with the exact earned score; it may end in .5 and must not be rounded to a whole number. Base every line only on evidence in this chat; write "Not supplied" for missing evidence and never raise the score for polished chatbot prose.
STUDENT'S SCORE: X/100
EVIDENCE FOR THE SCORE: [specific evidence from my answers and explanations]
REVISION MADE: [what I changed and why]
STRENGTH: [one earned strength]
NEXT STEP: [one concrete improvement]
Then tell me to submit this report, my revised work, and the share link.
COPY EVERYTHING ABOVE THIS LINE

Deliverables

Submit these three items in the assignment entry:

• your revised work with all four answers, their brief explanations, your claim and specific purpose, your three appeal moves and your oral citation, your five-step outline with your target audience and counter-argument, your critique of the chatbot draft, the moment you named from your two takes, and your message to the friend — written, or spoken and recorded as audio or video with a transcript, or sketched as a labelled outline with a written description; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria;
• the coach's five-line report; and
• the conversation share link.

You do not submit the recording of your takes; the moment you name is the evidence.

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.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

This route assesses the same Week 12 skills — sorting a persuasive claim, building one honest move for each appeal with a complete oral citation, outlining a Motivated Sequence for a target audience, catching the four manipulation moves, rehearsing your last two steps, and explaining all of it to someone who has never taken a speaking course — for comparable time and effort, about 60 to 90 minutes, the same as the coached route. Complete the same four problems, the four brief explanations, the two takes, and the message to the friend. Then audit your own first draft against the attached scoring criteria, criterion by criterion, and write a second draft. Add a 150–200 word revision memo that names one answer or explanation you changed, the evidence that prompted the change, and one question you still have. Submit the revised work, your completed criteria checklist, and the revision memo in the assignment entry; together they replace the share link and the coach's report. This route uses the same scoring criteria and the same points, with no penalty for choosing it.

How you'll be graded

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

Academic integrity and AI use

The counts, the explanations, your claim, your appeals, your oral citation, your outline, the revision, and the message to the friend must be your own. Do not ask the chatbot to write your appeals or your ask, or to supply a statistic or a source you did not find and open yourself. Never upload a recording to it. Submit an honest share link from your own dialogue. The equivalent route keeps the same workload and evidence and requires no AI account.

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