Week 14 — Fit the Moment: Build Your Special-Occasion Speech — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Assignment 13 of the term — choose a real occasion, build a 60- to 90-second toast, tribute, or speech of introduction on one true detail, rehearse it twice from one keyword card, sort the roles in a group you know, and explain to a friend why a chatbot's "heartfelt" toast is not enough.

This week you learned the special-occasion speech and its three criteria, the specific-detail principle, the speech each occasion calls for, the four-beat toast, and how a small group works through the reflective-thinking agenda and its three families of roles. In this assignment you work four short problems on the week's examples, explain each one, build the occasion 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 7's work on language and delivery: the appropriate words and the extemporaneous delivery you practiced there are what carry a short speech here.

The task

This week's shared example is the library toast and the planning committee, which are illustrative and attributed to no one. Chapter 14 builds them. The toast is a retirement toast for a fictional colleague, built as a keyword skeleton in four beats: a specific detail, what it reveals, a wish, and the raise. It has a 60- to 90-second limit, and the delivery self-assessment table's illustrative take-2 rate is 120 words per minute. The planning committee walks the reflective-thinking agenda and sorts five member lines into task, maintenance, and self-centered roles. Chapter 14 also walks through an illustrative chatbot toast whose lines fit any coworker anywhere and which adds an invented story about the day the colleague saved the holiday party.

Choose your own occasion for this week's graded speech: a toast, a tribute, or a speech of introduction for a real occasion in your life, such as a friend's birthday, a teammate's award, a coworker's farewell, or a guest at a club meeting, or for an illustrative occasion you describe. Do not reuse the library retirement party; that one is the course's example. If you speak about a real person, use only details you saw yourself or checked with someone who did, and leave out anything that person would not want said in front of a room.

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

1. The library toast has a 90-second limit, and the delivery table's illustrative take-2 rate is 120 words per minute. At that rate, about how many words fit in 90 seconds?
2. The speaker self-assesses each of 2 recorded takes of the toast against the 3 criteria: occasion fit, brevity, and mood or tone match. How many criterion checks is that?
3. In the planning committee's meeting, 2 member lines are task roles, 2 are maintenance roles, and 1 is a self-centered role. How many member lines are sorted?
4. The toast has 4 beats, and the speaker delivers the whole toast in each of 2 recorded takes. How many beats does the speaker deliver across both takes?

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

• Problem 1: name your occasion and the speech it calls for, a toast, a tribute, or a speech of introduction, by what you are there to do. Then plan your speech against the three criteria: occasion fit, brevity (your own time limit between 60 and 90 seconds, with an estimated word budget at a rate you choose), and mood or tone match.
• Problem 2: deliver your own speech out loud twice, extemporaneously from one keyword card. Self-assess each take against the three criteria and name one moment that changed between the two takes. Then name one delivery choice, such as a strategic pause, where your eyes go, or your rate and tone, and say how it matches the occasion's mood.
• Problem 3: describe a real group you have been part of, or an illustrative one, and write down three things members said. Sort each into task, maintenance, or self-centered roles and name its move. Then name one leadership move you could make in that group and the step of the reflective-thinking agenda it would help.
• Problem 4: write your own keyword card, keywords only, built on one true, specific detail you witnessed. For a toast or a tribute, use the four beats: a specific detail, what it reveals, a wish, and the raise. For a speech of introduction, use the guest, the topic, why this audience should listen, and the welcome. Then, in the illustrative chatbot toast described above (you do not need to open any tool), name its two problems and the fix for each.

For Problem 2'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 an occasion speech are normal; a slow breath and a first line you know well both help.

Explain it to a non-expert

Your friend has to give a toast at a cousin's wedding and plans to read, word for word, a chatbot's "heartfelt" toast that includes a funny story about the couple's first date, a story your friend has never heard. Write a message of three to five sentences that explains, in everyday words, why one true detail beats a page of warm lines; the three things a good occasion speech does (fits the event, stays short, and matches the mood); why the invented story has to go; and one limit, such as only telling a story your friend saw or checked with the couple. 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 introduce a guest speaker at a team meeting and plans to spend most of the time on how long the two of them have known each other. Model answer: "Your job up there is to hand the room to the guest, not to tell your own story. Say what the guest does, what the talk is about, and why this team should care, and then welcome them by name, said the way they say it. Keep it to about a minute so the guest gets the time. If you mention something about them, make it something you know is true and that they would be glad to hear."

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 occasion and criteria plan, the moment you named from your two takes with your delivery choice, your three sorted group lines with your leadership move, and your keyword card with your critique of the chatbot toast; and
• your message to the friend, explaining in everyday words why one true detail matters, the three criteria, why the invented story has to go, and one limit.

Keep it to roughly one to two pages. Clear and specific beats long. You do not submit the recording of your takes; the moment you name is the evidence.

Choose how you show it. Present your work as written text, as a spoken explanation recorded as audio or video of about three minutes with a transcript, or as a labelled outline with a written description. 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 planning, the explanations, and the writing yourself, without any AI tool. Problem 4 asks you to critique a described, illustrative toast; you do not need to open any tool to do it. Every detail you use about a real person must be one you saw yourself or checked with someone who did. 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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