38.3: Persuasive Speaking- Assignment

Persuasive Speech Assignment- For the next class, have your topic and one source identified.

Third graded speech: Social Justice in your community

For this speech assignment you will identify a social justice topic that interests you and persuade your audience to take some action.  According to the Oxford reference website, social justice is defined as, “The objective of creating a fair and equal society in which each individual matters, their rights are recognized and protected, and decisions are made in ways that are fair and honest.”

Some broad categories of social justice include reducing economic inequality and injustices relating to race, gender, and environment. In Chicago we can look at the criminal justice system, housing or redlining, pollution in poorer communities, the impact of gentrification, food deserts, gun violence and many more issues. From your own experience, you may have experienced social injustice. This may be the starting place for a speech that matters to you and will allow you to create a persuasive message. You are trying to change the world with your words and you will graded on your persuasiveness. 

Speech Requirements:

 

• The speech will be 6-9 minutes

• The speech will have a clear introduction, body and conclusion. 

• The body will be organized using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence- appropriate for a question of policy persuasive speech

• The speech will include five sources, two specific to Chicago which will be cited out loud during the speech and clearly identified in the body of the outline and in the corresponding works cited page.

 

You need to identify a problem and a solution in your speech. If you want to use the same topic as  your informative speech, that is OK but this speech is much different. Some education is important but you will mostly create an argument and a path forward for us to become advocates for your cause. You will use all you have learned thus far to create a powerful message. You are also required to conduct a survey attitudes held by your classmates. You will provide the link to the survey for your classmates. Other important information to consider might be demographic information about the audience. Additionally, identify and address any problems with, or deficiencies in, your audience’s understanding (and/or inclination towards) your topic. In other words, convince your audience of your Persuasive Speech topic.

 

Use of Artificial Intelligence in creating this speech. AI continues to evolve and is a tool that can be used in some aspects of your speech creation. While you should not use AI to “create” sources or personal examples for your use, you can use it to help you identify topics, main points and help you with phrasing of some sentences. You do need to cite your use of AI in your speech.  Each chat prompt is unique so you cannot cite it in traditional ways. The APA has developed some guidelines on how to cite this. You can find that information here. Your outline will need to include a very specific discussion of how you used AI to create the speech and during the speech, you will need to cite your use of AI out loud. This does NOT count as one of your three required sources. Any outline and speech that is found to be 50% or more created by Chat GPT will be returned for a rewrite. It is a TOOL, not the whole speech. 

 

AI is a tool but the speech has a personal component that AI can not truthfully supply. If you are a victim of social injustice, that story or example needs to come from you and be crafted using your own words, memories and experiences. The computer is not a substitute for your unique soul and voice. If you have an interest in social justice, that needs to come directly from you. During the introduction, you will begin with an attention-getter but you will supply your reason for sharing this topic as part of your credibility statement. That should be written entirely by you. Anything requiring sources or personal experience should be wholly crafted by you.

 

Tip for using AI: While you can use it, you need to make sure your own abilities are represented in the writing.  If you use AI in creating your speech, go through and identify words that you do not know. Look them up and make sure you know how to pronounce the words. Most online dictionaries have a tool to help with pronunciation. If the word is not easy for you to say, use an online thesaurus to identify a synonym that is more to your liking. Inability to correctly pronounce a word will negatively impact your credibility. Public speaking is different from writing and sometimes Chat GPT creates complicated sentences which are not appropriate for a listening audience. Make sure that your audience will be able to follow your words easily. So while you may use SOME part of a sentence, you will likely not use the whole sentence because it would not be appropriate for a spoken speech. 

 

 

 

 

 

social justice. Oxford Reference. Retrieved 15 May. 2024, from https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100515279.