Speech

Speech Study Guide

Relevance refers to how pertinent the information is for a specific topic or audience. It should be directly related to the topic and support a speaker’s main points, making it easier for the speech to be followed and understood. Irrelevant information only serves to confuse listeners, and should be avoided at all costs. 6.4 Primary Research If there is little or unsatisfactory secondary research available, a speaker should conduct primary research. Primary research is much more labor intensive and time-consuming than secondary research. It may consist of fieldwork observations, surveys, interviews, original artifacts, document examinations, or experiments. Fieldwork observations, otherwise known as ethnography , involve the observation of a group of people and their practices while being immersed in the community of observation. By focusing on specific behaviors and taking notes on observations and interpretations, a speaker will have a record of specific information to use. Surveys consist of canvassing people to get information about their ideas and opinions; they may be conducted in person, over the phone, via the internet, or in paper-and-pencil documents. Sometimes secondary research calls for the summarization of surveys and at other times a speaker has to conduct their own survey. Interviews are highly structured conversations where one person asks questions and another person answers them. They may be conducted in person, over the phone, or online. There are certain ethical guidelines to adhere to when conducting and processing an actual interview. • Select the best person: Some research will lead an individual to the right person to talk to. Before the interview, the interviewer should ensure they have conducted the proper research to converse with the interviewee to understand the interviewee’s credentials, and to appear to be more informed. • Prepare the interview protocol: The heart of an effective interview is the interview protocol , which is a list of good questions the speaker plans to ask. The amount of questions that can be asked depends on the timeframe for the interview. It is essential to prepare a list of topics for the interview and then prepare rapport-building questions , which are nonthreatening questions designed to put the interviewee at ease and demonstrate an interviewer’s respect for the interviewee. Interviewers may also utilize different types of questions: o Primary questions: Introductory questions about each major interview topic o Secondary questions: Follow up questions designed to probe the answers given to the primary questions; some follow-up questions are to simply encourage the interviewee to continue, others are to get more specific details o Open questions: Broad-based queries that allow freedom regarding what specific information or opinions to talk about o Close questions: Narrowly focused and require brief answers; some require simple, one

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