This preview from your weekly readings is designed to give you an overview of the material we will cover this week. Please be sure to completely read each assigned chapter since the material will be needed to answer the quizzes and to complete other graded work such as discussions and assignments.
For this week, please read:
Chapter 9.2 Researching and Supporting Your Speech (Pages 451 to 459)
Please read pages 451 to 459
Visual aids help a speaker reinforce speech content visually, which helps amplify the speaker’s message. They can be used to present any of the types of supporting materials discussed previously. Speakers rely heavily on an audience’s ability to learn by listening, which may not always be successful if audience members are visual or experiential learners. Even if audience members are good listeners, information overload or external or internal noise can be barriers to a speaker achieving his or her speech goals. Therefore skillfully incorporating visual aids into a speech has many potential benefits:
Helping your audience remember information because it is presented orally and visually
Helping your audience understand information because it is made more digestible through diagrams, charts, and so on
Helping your audience see something in action by demonstrating with an object, showing a video, and so on
Engaging your audience by making your delivery more dynamic through demonstration, gesturing, and so on
