Section 9.1 Structuring Spoken Arguments
Spoken arguments are conveyed in real time; as a student, you know this difference all too well. Consider which of the following scenarios is scarier: (1) You zone out for a couple of paragraphs before you have to respond to a couple of comprehension questions; (2) you’re in lecture and zone out for a few slides, but your professor calls on you to answer a question in class. Of course, the second scenario is scarier! That’s because, whereas you can reread a passage that you missed, it’s difficult to re-consult a lecture occurring in real time. As you prepare oral presentations, keep this difference in mind. Because your audience will not be able to review if they get lost or distracted, it is important to give your listeners some comprehension wiggle room.
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Use simple vocabulary and sentence structure.Since your audience won’t be able to re-hear the sentences you speak or look up the words you use in a dictionary, make everyone’s life easier by speaking in accessible language and adopting a conversational tone.
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Give your presentation a clear introduction, body, and conclusion.This structure will not only help to keep your listeners engaged, but it will also give your presentation an audience-friendly, narrative quality.
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Use pauses and transitions to explain relationships between ideas.Pauses act like paragraph breaks—they signal to your audience that you are shifting ideas or advancing in your argument. Transitional statements (such as “The second point to consider is ” and “While is important to consider, even more important is ”) guide your audience through your spoken argument (see Subsection 4.2.3).
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Use clean, clear, and high-quality visuals.Think about how hard it is to follow along in class when a professor lectures without visuals. Help your audience by providing them with interesting visuals that will help them follow as you speak. Just make sure your visuals don’t distract from your message. Also, keep in mind that your visuals are of no use to your audience if they can’t see them. Use images that are large and of sufficient resolution to be seen from any distance.
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Repeat!Since your audience won’t be able to pause and go back over previous material as they would be able to while reading a written argument, it’s important that you provide them this opportunity by reminding your audience of the main parts of your argument and—especially—of parts that may be too complex to grasp at first glance.
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Be explicit!(No, not that kind of explicit!) Explicitly state the connections between the parts of your argument and your thesis. Here, visual cues referring the reader back to relevant parts of your presentation can be helpful.
