>> Okay, class, we're going to go over Chapter Eight, "Supporting Your Ideas."
Now, this is an extension of the last chapter where we had to -- we learned about library,
and Internet, and where to go to get information.
Now we're going to look at what information you're getting when you go
to those places, so supporting your ideas.
This is all the stuff that goes in the body of your speech.
This makes up the bulk of your speech, and this is what supports the main points
which support the central idea, or thesis, or the proposition there.
Okay. So what is it that we're actually looking for when we're looking for supporting materials?
Well, we're looking for examples, statistics, and testimony.
And we'll go through each of these in a lot more detail.
So examples; examples are specific cases to illustrate the speaker's ideas.
And there are different types of examples that we can use.
We have brief examples, we have extended examples, and we have hypothetical examples.
So brief examples; brief examples are a specific case referred
to in passing to illustrate a point.
Now, with brief examples they could be just a word, or a sentence.
They don't have -- they're really not very long at all.
The downside to brief examples are that they might not necessarily give a lot of support
to what you're talking about, so you might need to use more than one.
So in the example here we'll see she actually has six brief examples
in a very short amount of time.
So let's watch that now.
>> Many of us are familiar with prominent Chicanos and Chicanas,
such as actress Jessica Alba, boxer Oscar De La Hoya, and guitarist Carlos Santana.
But you may be less familiar with other Americans of Mexican origin,
who have made important contributions to US society.
Nancy Lopez played a crucial role
in popularizing women's professional golf, and won 48 tour championships.
Dr. Ellen Ochoa is a former astronaut who logged more than 480 hours in space,
and invented several optical methods that greatly aid space exploration.
Dr. Maria Molina won the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his research on the formation
and decomposition of the ozone layer.
>> So, again, she had three names right up front, and then gave us one sentence each
for the last three examples, so six examples in a very short amount of time.
Okay; so those are brief examples.
Sometimes that's not going to get the job done so you need to use an extended example.
And this is a story, narrative, anecdote, something developed
at length to illustrate your point.
Now, when you're doing this, we don't always have to do it all at the same time.
You can break it up.
And we'll give an example and we'll talk about --
I'll talk about where you might want to break this.
So these can be longer, they could be, you know, a couple of sentences, or they could be --
really although an extra couple of minutes and they can be broken up in different ways.
So let's listen to an example of a story here.
>> In the history of the Olympic Games, there have been many shining stars.
Among them was a European girl.
With the lapse of time her name has faded from our memory,
yet her unbending spirit shall never perish.
It was she who highlighted the Olympic Creed.
In lead though she had been, she stumbles near the terminus and her leg was injured.
Competitors passed her from behind in succession, until finally only her weak
and lonely figure remained on the track.
Doctors came and offered to take her away.
Yet she refused.
With the only strength left in her, she managed to get up and shuffled feebly to the end point,
with drops of blood along her trail.
But cheers broke out.
Though she failed in the race, the girl won the applause from people all over the world.
It was she who elucidated the Olympic Creed of participation.
It was she who instilled perseverance in our mind.
>> So she's telling a story to support perseverance and participation
in the Olympics; so this story reinforces those.
Now, I said earlier that you don't necessarily have to talk about --
give the whole story at one time.
With this particular one, this might work well if you were going to use it
in an introduction and a conclusion.
So if I were going to go that, I would probably start the story and get all the way
to where the runner is lying bleeding in the middle of the track, and the doctors offer
to take her away, and I would stop it there.
So she falls, she's in the track, doctors offer
to take her away, but I'll get back to that later.
And then go on with the speech; because that gets the audience wanting
to find out what happened.
So we'll talk more about that when we get into the introductions and the conclusions.
So remember this example when we get there.
Sometimes the example can also be used within the body of the speech, so you could refer back
to it throughout, if it's a longer example.
Okay. So we've got brief examples, we've got extended examples,
and then sometimes we want to us hypothetical examples.
And these are examples that describe a fictitious situation.
Now, when you're doing this there are a few things that you need to do,
and I'll let you watch this example of a fictitious example, and then we'll talk about --
I'll talk about what you need to do.
>> Imagine this, you're taking your psychology exam
when you notice the student sitting next to you staring at your answers.
You also notice his open notebook under his desk.
You feel your cheeks redden as you become angry that he may get a high score by cheating,
while you've worked hard to earn your grade.
And you feel helpless because you think telling the professor will do nothing.
But now imagine that you attend a school with an honor system.
At the beginning of each exam, you sign a statement that says you will not cheat,
and that you accept the responsibility to report cheating.
After the professor hands out the exam, she leaves the room.
In this case, you have the power and the duty
to report cheaters, rather than feel robbed by them.
Such a system has worked elsewhere, and can work at our school.
Professor Donald McCabe, president of the Center for Academic Integrity,
has surveyed more than 20,000 students at 70 colleges throughout the country,
and his research shows that the level of cheating is significantly lower at schools
with honor codes, than at schools without them.
>> So when you're using a hypothetical example, a couple of things that you need to do;
you need to let your audience know that it's a hypothetical example,
and she does that here by saying, "Imagine this."
So anytime you set it as an "imagine this," or a, "what if," or, "in the future," or,
"this could have happened," as long
as you're letting your audience know this didn't actually happen, then you're fine with that.
The other thing that she does is she supports the hypothetical example with other examples,
with other statistics, and other testimony.
So she doesn't let the hypothetical example just stand on its own.
It needs a little bit of help.
Okay; so brief, extended, and hypothetical examples.
So sometimes you don't want to use an example, or an example isn't going
to help, so you try other things.
Okay; so before we move on, let's talk about tips for using examples.
You want to make sure that you're clarifying your ideas.
The example should be there to clear things up to support it.
If you find that you're using examples to clarify your examples,
you need to get rid of a layer of examples.
So they should be there to clarify the ideas, they should be there
to reinforce what you're talking about.
If your example is not related to what you're talking about,
get rid of it; it doesn't belong there.
They should be there to personalize the ideas for you and for the audience.
The example is there to kind of help you engage the audience,
to help you identify with the audience.
So you them there to personalize them.
Make sure your examples are vivid and richly textured.
You want to create an image or create a scene in your audience's mind.
And you do that with the language that you use.
So make sure that they have enough detail,
but not so much that they kind of -- the audience gets lost.
Practice your delivery to enhance your extended examples.
Here's the thing with extended examples.
A lot of times they're your own stories, and you have a lot of information about that story.
You could tell that story for hours sometimes.
Well, you don't have hours to do it.
You have a very finite amount of time to relay this example.
So practice your delivery of that example so you know what to include,
and more importantly sometimes, what not to include, so you come in under time.
Okay; last example for using examples here.
Yes.
>> Alan Marx is one of those people,
a 58-year-old real estate developer and father of three.
He talked on his cell phone an hour a day for 23 years.
Two years ago, doctors found a golf ball sized tumor in his brain.
There's no question what caused it, he says, "It was my cell phone."
If Marx had known the dangers of prolonged cell phone use,
he would have done things a lot differently.
"I wouldn't have held it to my head," he says.
"I would have used the headset.
I would have used the speaker phone.
And I would not have had the problems I had."
>> Okay; so she uses an example of Marx and using his cell phone.
Now, she also supports that with some testimony.
And the testimony is from doctors and from Marx himself.
And we'll get back to -- like the lawyers say, we'll get back to Marx's testimony in a minute.
Okay; so sometimes you don't want to use examples, sometimes you want
to use statistics, you want to use numbers.
So statistical measures -- and as we all learned from math class in high school
that we have what we call the "mean," the "median," and the "mode."
So when we are using statistical measures, these are just basic descriptive statistics.
So the first one we have is the mean.
The mean is the average value of a group of numbers.
And this is just -- it's the average there.
The median, the middle figure in the group once the figures are put from highest to lowest.
So theoretically, half would be higher and half would be lower.
A lot of times we'll see these things for --
we'll see these used for things like median income, so half the people
in the area make more, half make less, or median home price, that kind of stuff.
The mean and the median can be different because with a mean, that's the average.
Sometimes you might have someone at one end of the scale
or another kind of throwing things off.
So the medians can be a useful number.
And then the mode, the number that occurs most frequently in a group.
So this is kind of where most of those numbers are.
So if we're talking about income, where are most of the people,
what are most of their incomes there?
Okay; so when you're using statistics, statistics can be very persuasive.
But you want to be careful and not use too many, and you don't want
to just throw statistics out there all on their own.
And we want to actually use them to support what we're saying.
So we'll see an example of someone using statistics here.
>> According to the Urban Mobility Report from researchers at Texas A&M University,
Americans collectively spend 4.2 billion hours stuck in traffic every year.
All told, traffic congestion results in more than $87 billion worth
of wasted fuel and lost productivity.
Now, that number breaks down to about $750 per traveler, per year.
Clearly, we are wasting far too much time and money on highway gridlock.
>> So when he's doing this, he's talking about 4.2 billion hours and $87 billion.
Those are not numbers that we can really relate to.
I mean, how much would you need to spend every week to spend $87 billion in your lifetime;
you don't know that from the top of your head.
How long is 4.2 billion hours; you don't know that off the top of your head.
But you know what, $750 you know how much that is.
So when he's using those statistics, he uses them in a way
that the audience can relate to, and they can understand.
So those big numbers can be -- yes, they're impressive, but they can be kind of meaningless.
Okay; when you're using statistics, a couple of tips here.
Use them from reliable sources.
As we talked about with the Internet,
just because it's on the Internet doesn't mean that it's real.
And people will throw statistics out all the time.
But you need to know where it came from; was it a good survey, was it good research?
So use it for reliable sources.
Use them to quantify your ideas.
Instead of saying it's better, or worse, or more, or less, we want to know how much more,
how much less, how much better, how much worse?
So use statistics, use numbers to add a quantity to them.
But use them sparingly.
If you use more than about two or three numbers,
that's going to start to sound like a math class.
So in the last example, he used three, told us what it meant, and then moved on from there.
And that's what you want to do.
Now, if you need to use more, we'll talk about that when we get to visual aids,
and how you can use more statistics and numbers without really turning your audience off.
Identify the sources of your statistics.
Yes; you want reliable sources, but you want to make sure that they're credible and identify
where they came; that's part of your citation.
And it can be really important.
And then explain them thoroughly.
Don't just throw a number out there.
I can throw a number out there, and the number is just a number.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything all on its own.
I could say, "Unemployment is at 4.2%," but what does that mean?
I could say, "Unemployment is still at 4.2%," which means, "Ooh, that's kind of bad,"
or I could say, "Unemployment is down to 4.2%," "Oh, look, that's good."
It's just a number.
I need to explain what that actually means.
So don't just toss the number out there, tell us what it means.
And then round the numbers off.
He used 4.2 billion and $87 billion, 4.2 billion hours.
It probably wasn't bad; it was probably a much more precise number.
You know, it was four billion, 200 million, 313,000, you know,
all the way down to the second or millisecond, we don't need to know that; 4.2 billion hours.
So round it off.
Round it off in a way that makes sense.
And then use a visual aid if needed.
And again, we'll see that in a future chapter
where visual aids can be very effective when using statistics.
Okay; we'll look at making statistics meaningful.
How do we make it mean something to the audience?
Well, we like statistics because they could back things up.
We could be turned off by statistics if there are too many of them.
So we'll see an example of making them meaningful.
>> According to the Rainforest Action Network,
rainforests are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Within the next second, we will lose an area of rainforest equal
to the size of two football fields.
Within the next 15 minutes, an area equal to the size of this campus will be erased.
By this time tomorrow, 214,000 acres, an area equivalent to the size
of New York City will be gone forever.
>> Now, when she's giving those statistics,
I don't know how many square feet a football field is, but I know how big that is.
So when she says "two football fields," I know how big that is.
She talks about campus.
I don't know that particular campus, but her audience does.
So they know how big that is.
I don't know how big New York City is, she gives us a number, but I know it's awfully big.
So when she's using the statistics, she doesn't just throw numbers out, she gives them meaning.
Okay, testimony; and we're going to talk a little bit about testimony.
And the book talks about two different types of testimony.
I do want to talk about a third type because it does come up from time to time,
and we actually see it fairly often.
So testimony; what we're really talking about is quotations
or paraphrases used to support your point.
And different types of testimony you have, we have expert testimony,
and we have peer testimony; your book talks about that.
But there's another type of testimony that we see out and about,
and that is celebrity testimony; so we'll talk about that.
Okay, so expert testimony; this is testimony from recognized experts.
And if we go back to the previous example with Marx and the cell phone, she presents testimony
from doctors, and doctors found the golf ball sized tumor.
Doctors would be expert testimony because medical doctors and tumors,
that's kind of what they do; they know a lot about that.
Marx wasn't that, though.
If you go back to that, Marx is a real estate developer.
And the real estate developer knows exactly what causes tumor.
Well, what is it that real estate developing that allows you
to know what causes brain tumors; probably not a lot.
Even though it's your brain tumor, it's not like you can ask it, "Hey, where did you come from?"
Marx is not expert testimony, Marx is peer testimony, testimony from ordinary people
with firsthand experience or insight on the topic.
Now, Marx might really believe that his tumor was caused from the cell phone.
But doctors didn't necessarily say that.
So these two types of testimonies serve two different purposes.
Expert testimony is there to build an enhanced credibility.
Expert testimony, that's the talking head you see on television kind of like my head
in the corner, I'm the expert on this, at least theoretically.
[Laughs] But expert testimony is there for credibility.
Peer testimony is a little bit different.
This is the regular person.
This is the person on the street.
This is when they send the reporter out with a microphone and the camera person,
and after the disaster, and they find out what's going on.
This is there to connect with the audience.
This is for audience identification.
This is for relating to the audience.
When we see that suit on TV, that talking head, we don't relate to that person.
It's the person on the street we relate to; it's the peer testimony.
So expert testimony is there for credibility.
Peer testimony is there for relatability.
And then we get to this type of testimony.
And see if you can identify what this is.
>> I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV.
Now, if your child had a cough, she'd get just what the doctor orders.
But for your cough, you play doctor at home,
even trying medicine you originally bought for your child.
You need one of the adult formulas from Vicks,
for the coughs adults get, with the strength adults need.
Formula 44 for cough, 44D for cough with congestion, and 44M for coughs
with congestion and a raw irritated throat.
The adult formulas, you can't buy anything more effective.
>> The adult formulas from Vicks, of course.
>> Now, this is a commercial from the 1970s.
And it is not expert testimony.
He starts off by saying, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV."
So he's not a doctor, he's an actor.
And he's telling us he's an actor.
And then he gives us medical advice.
Now, we normally take medical advice from doctors,
and that would be expert testimony, but he's not an expert on this.
Now, he never says he uses Vicks 44, so it's not pure testimony either
because he's not a user of the product.
If he used the product and said, "Hey, I use this when I get sick, and it works really well,"
then it's peer testimony, but it's not that either.
So it's not expert testimony, it's not peer testimony.
What it is is celebrity testimony.
And this is testimony a popular person gives even though they may be clueless
about the subject, but we believe them anyway because we like the team they're on,
the movie they're in, their TV show, or the song they sing.
So celebrity testimony, this is celebrities endorsing products,
telling us we should eat this, or buy this, or go there.
Don't use this.
This is meaningless.
[Laughs] That guy was -- I guess we should believe him
because he's honest he's not a doctor.
"Well, he's honest, so I should believe him about this."
No; we should ask our doctor or ask someone that had those symptoms, "Hey,
I've got this thing that you had last week.
What did you use to make it feel better?"
"Oh, I used Vicks."
"Okay, fantastic."
Then we have something to base it on.
But celebrity testimony, don't use this.
And there are tons of examples out there where celebrities tell us to buy something
or use something, and could we look at them and know
that they really have no idea what they're talking
about because they don't use that particular product.
Okay; so three different types of testimony.
Okay; when you're using testimony, you could use direct quotations.
This is testimony presented word for word.
And when you're doing this, you need to use the quotation.
Now, when you're doing this, you need to be very specific.
When you're giving a quote, you need to say, "quote," give the words, and then say,
"unquote" to let the audience know that you're done with the quotation.
It's just like in a paper, if you're writing a paper, you have a quotation mark,
and then you have whatever's in that quotation, and then you end that quotation.
You don't just have a quotation at the beginning,
or you don't do quotation mark, quotation mark.
And you see people that are giving speeches, you know, they'll say, "Well, quote, unquote."
Well, if you do that, nothing is in the quotation.
You need to say, "Quote," give the quotation, and then, "Unquote."
So we'll see identifying sources here.
>> [Inaudible] pharmaceuticals are so widespread that they have become big business.
The FDA estimates that they will bring in close to $75 billion in revenue this year alone,
up from $40 billion only a few years ago.
Tom Cubic, head of the Pharmaceutical Security Institute, told USA Today in September 2010
that criminals can make more money in counterfeit drugs than they can in heroin.
>> Okay; so she has a couple of different sources there.
She identifies the sources.
She tells us where she got this stuff.
Now, each specific piece of information that you get from somewhere,
you need to identify that in your speech.
You can't say, "I got all my sources from here and there."
No blanket citations; you need to cite each specific piece of information.
Just like in a paper, you need to cite each specific piece of information.
Okay; quoting out of context, distorting a statement by removing it
from the words or phrases around it.
So I've got a quote here from Thomas Friedman, "He's the worst president I've ever seen."
So Thomas Friedman is someone who is considered a liberal economist,
and he was talking about President Obama.
And you might think, "Wow, friendly fire here.
He's the worst president I've ever seen."
Yes; this is a quote he actually had those words in an article.
So you might go, "Wow, that's kind of weird."
Well, the actual quote came from this.
"He's a great orator, but he's the worst president I've ever seen when it comes
to explaining his achievements and putting them in context, connecting with people
on a gut level through repetition, and thereby defining how the public views an issue."
Well, you know what, that statement is different than the first one.
The first one, "Worst president I've ever seen,"
implies that Thomas Friedman thinks President Obama is a terrible president.
Now, people might agree with that sentiment, but that's not what Thomas Friedman was saying.
He was saying he's bad at these specific things, not bad at being president.
So make sure that that quote there, what you're saying, make sure that whatever it is
that that is that that person would agree with what that means.
Okay, paraphrasing; sometimes, you can't actually use the quote.
Maybe it's awkward, maybe it doesn't really fit, maybe you need to trim it down.
That's restating the source's ideas in your own words.
And again, you still need to cite when you're paraphrasing.
When you're using testimony,
quote and paraphrase accurately; no taking it out of context.
Again, that person needs to agree that that is the meaning.
Use it from qualified sources.
Use it from unbiased sources.
Now, we can argue about whether any source is truly unbiased.
But if there's an overt bias, you need to identify that bias.
So if you're using testimony from, say, the Congressional Budget Office,
that is generally considered an unbiased source.
But if you're using a source from a particular congressperson,
you need to identify what their bias actually is.
Identify people that you quote and paraphrase.
And then when you're doing it orally, this is kind of how you need to do it.
Give the name of the document, so where did you get it; the author or sponsoring organization;
their qualifications, because if you're using expert testimony, you're using their credibility
so what is their credibility; and then the date, because that can matter.
So let's give an example here of this.
So Kimberly Palmer, financial columnist, for US News & World Report reported
in the January 28th issue that graduating students now owe an average
of $15,500 in student loan debt.
So in this example -- and I'm using the words from this article by this person,
I'm telling you it's Kimberly Palmer, that's who it is, what her credibility is,
She's a financial columnist for this organization and reported in January 28, 2008.
Why is that important?
Well, there's a number here, and $15,500 in student loan debt was an accurate number
as of January 28, 2008, but it's probably not an accurate number now.
So if I were using this, this is a statistic that's almost ten years old now,
I would want to follow this up with something much more recent there.
Okay. So next time, we'll get into organizing the body of the speech.
So now that we've gotten a bunch of information, we've got a lot of supporting information,
how do we put it altogether; that's going to matter.
Okay; have a great day, and we'll see you next time.