Interviews

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 535.

An interview is similar to a survey except that it is usually more detailed and assumes that the person being interviewed is in some way an expert on the topic under consideration. On your campus or in your community you will probably find knowledgeable people to interview about current issues and many other topics. Political, business, and religious leaders, for instance, can often be persuaded to talk to student speakers. And of course the faculty mem­bers of a college are often eager to cooperate.

Be sure to record accurately the information gathered during an interview. Take careful notes and repeat or verify any direct quotations you intend to use in your presentation. Also be certain during the speech to credit the inter­viewee as your source, unless he or she has asked not to be mentioned by name.

Interviews conducted by professionals on radio or television can also pro­vide you with useful expert information. Remember to check local listings for potentially interesting programs.

5. Depending on the nature of your topic, you can make your research inter­esting and understandable to your audience by using various kinds of verbal support: definitions, statistics, examples and illustrations, testimonials (quota­tions), and comparisons and contrasts. You can often increase the impact andmemorability of your speech by using repetition and restatement. You can use either factual or hypothetical examples when developing ideas.

Many speeches can be enhanced with visual and audio support. Objects, models, graphs, photographs, drawings, slides, videotapes, and audiotapes can be incorporated into the presentation to reinforce, clarify, and dramatize con­cepts. Computer graphics programs are now making professional-looking graphics available even to student speakers.