SPEECH/FORENSICS

1. Which of the following statements BEST summarizes the fundamental difference between an informative speech and a persuasive speech?

A. An informative speech requires audience

analysis, and a persuasive speech does not.

B. An informative speech does not require as much

background research and preparation as does a

persuasive speech.

C. An informative speech primarily supplies

important information to increase understanding,

but a persuasive speech goes one step further

by asking the audience to do or think something

based on the information given.

D. An informative speech is easy and often quite

dull, whereas a persuasive speech places greater emphasis on adding style and sophistication through audience appeal, methods of reasoning and rhetorical devices.

2. In a persuasive speech about cars, the speaker is most likely to

A. demonstrate how to assemble a car engine.

B. explain how the car engine works.

C. convince you to buy a certain type of car.

D. analyze the automotive industry.

3. Why is audience analysis so important when giving a persuasive speech?

A. Because the audience controls your confidence.

B. Because you always want to anticipate the

audience’s reaction, especially if it is negative.

C. Because there are four types of audiences:

supportive, uncommitted, indifferent, and opposed.

D. Because if you accurately evaluate how your

audience feels about you and your message, you can

adjust what you say and how you say it in a manner

most effective for that particular group of people.

4. Which type of audience would most likely throw

tomatoes at you?

A. supportive C. indifferent

B. uncommitted D. opposed

5. All of the following are ways to appeal to your audience EXCEPT

A. showing them how smart you are.

B. getting them to feel strong emotions.

C. proving to them you are good person.

D. bragging and boasting you are better than them.

6. Using effective methods of reasoning as you construct the arguments in your speech is an essential component of

A. logical appeal. C. personal appeal.

B. emotional appeal. D. physical appeal.

7. Understanding and utilizing logic and reasoning

A. is useless.

B. is something you only need in Speech/Forensics.

C. makes your thinking clearer and more systematic.

D. makes the audience become more emotional.

8. Errors in reasoning are known as

A. fables. C. fabrications.

B. fallacies. D. fidelities.

9. Which of the following is the best reason to consider the differences between the spoken word and the written word, especially when giving a persuasive speech?

A. Because the audience might be deaf.

B. Because the audience might be unintelligent.

C. Because the audience will only have access to a copy

of the speech after it is delivered.

D. Because the audience has only one chance to

understand what the speaker says, which means the

speaker must say things in an accurate and

economical way that allows his/her particular audience

to get it the first time.

10. Which of the following is NOT a way to make a speech easier for the audience to understand?

A. using more concrete words than abstract words.

B. paying attention only to the denotation of a word

since the connation is often different for each

person.

C. incorporating figurative language that allows the audience to picture in their minds what the speaker is talking about.

D. presenting the speech in a musical manner that makes what the speaker says easier to remember in the same way that a song is often easy to remember because of its rhythm, beat, and flow.

Section II: Logical, Emotional & Personal Appeal (10 PTS)

Directions: Read each of the scenarios below and identify whether it is an example of logical, emotional, or ethical appeal. Write the type of

appeal on the blank space provided.

1. You are trying to persuade people to adopt unwanted pets and show them images of some of the sad, malnourished, and physically injured animals from the shelter.

2. You are trying to persuade your peers to take their education more seriously by citing the fact that people with a college degree make an average of $30,000 more a year than those with only a high school diploma.

3. You are trying to persuade lawmakers to legalize stem-cell research and mention your extensive knowledge and study of the field since graduating from one of the most prestigious medical schools in the country.

4. You are trying to persuade your teacher to let you do make-up work and list your reasons in an organized manner.

5. You are trying to persuade people to vote for you to be class president because you are honest, competent, and have a good reputation.

6. You are trying to persuade your friend that adoption is a better solution than abortion for an unwanted pregnancy and show her pictures of how humanlike a fetus looks, even at only a few weeks after conception.

7. You are trying to persuade your parents to buy you are car and ask, “Don’t you love me?”

8. You are trying to persuade the principle to replace the junk food cafeteria vending machines with machines that offer more healthy alternatives and cite the negative effects of junk food on the brain and body.

9. You are trying to persuade people to donate money to the non-profit organization where you work as an advocate for poor people and share stories of how you go out into the streets, projects, food banks, and homeless shelters to actually get to know the very people you’re trying to help.

10. You are trying to persuade people to buy a new brand of bottled water and promise to donate 25% of your profits to helping victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Section III: Methods of Reasoning (5 PTS)

Directions: Identify the method of reasoning used in each of the examples below. Write the corresponding letter on the blank space provided.

1. You study the work habits of ten journalists for six months and find that each worked a) induction

an average of 60 hours per week, and you conclude that all journalists are likely to

work long hours. b) case study

2. You read an article in a scientific magazine about an experiment which found that a c) reasoning by sign

popular artificial sweetener caused cancer in lab rats; you conclude that in the same way

the sweetener caused cancer in rats, foods that contain the sweetener will likely cause d) analogy

cancer in humans.

e) deduction

3. Your cousin dealt drugs and went to prison, and you conclude that anyone who sells

drugs will go to prison.

4. All teenagers attend high school, and since you are a teenager, you must attend

high school.

5. You find strands of your sister’s hair in your brush and conclude that she used it without

your permission.

Section IV: Fallacies (10 PTS)

Directions: Read each of the following statements and identify which type of fallacy it is. Some may be used more than once.

HG - Hasty Generalization MC - Mistaken Causality BQ - Begging the Question

FP - False Premise FA - False Analogy IQ - Ignoring the Question

CE - Circumstantial Evidence PN - Playing w/ Numbers

1.	______	As soon as Dr. Phil came on television, the baby started to cry; the sound of his voice must have caused her to get upset.
2.	______	Every slip of the tongue is significant in that it reveals some unconscious and suppressed desire. There can be no question of the truth of this principle because it was put forth by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.
3.	______	Interviewer: "Your resume looks impressive but I need another reference." Bill: "Jill can give me a good reference." Interviewer: "Good. But how do I know that Jill is trustworthy?" Bill: "Certainly. I can vouch for her."
4.	______	Person A travels through Town X for the first time. He sees 10 people, all of them children. Person A returns to his town and reports that there are no adult residents in Town X.
5.	______	Employees are like nails. Just as nails must be hit in the head in order to make them work, so must employees.
6.	______	You smell like marijuana and Mr. Tarver assumes you have been getting high.
7.	______	Supporters of the bill, however, claimed that the Environmental Protection Agency was "dragging its feet" on a chemical that could cause 300,000 cancers in the American population in 70 years.
8.	______	President: “Just how would you suggest improving the performance of our sales force?” Sales manager: “I’ll simply tell them that the returns for next month will have to be up by 14 percent. Any employee failing to show improvement will be dismissed at once.”
9.	______	Smith, who is from England, decides to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. He has never been to the US before. The day after he arrives, he is walking back from an orientation session and sees two white (albino) squirrels chasing each other around a tree. In his next letter home, he tells his family that American squirrels are white.
10.	______	Murder is wrong; therefore, abortion is wrong because it is the murder of an unborn baby.

Section V: Concrete Words v. Abstract Words (10 PTS)

Directions: Identify whether each of the following words is a concrete word or an abstract word. On the blank space provided, write C for Concrete and A for Abstract.

1. happiness

2. exaggeration

3. computer

4. music

5. racism

6. Stone Mountain High School

7. banana

8. confusion

9. swimming pool

10. creativity

Section VI: Figures of Speech & Sound Devices (15 PTS)

Directions: Identify the figure of speech or sound device used in each of the examples below. Write the corresponding letter on the blank space provided. Note: Some terms will be used more than once.

a) metaphor c) allusion e) oxymoron g) hyperbole i) personification k) parallelism

b) simile d) antithesis f) irony h) understatement j) alliteration

1. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.

2. I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.

3. We ate jumbo shrimp for dinner.

4. The clouds sobbed quite a storm over the weekend.

5. Her eyes are diamonds in the sky.

6. In O. Henry's story The Gift of the Magi, a young couple is too poor to buy each other Christmas gifts. The man finally pawns his heirloom pocket watch to buy his wife a set of combs for her long, beautiful, prized hair. She, meanwhile, cuts off her treasured hair to sell it to a wig-maker for money to buy her husband a watch-chain.

7. My sister is such a Scrooge when it comes to getting gifts for people.

8. Hurricane Katrina caused some damage to the city of New Orleans.

9. “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

10. His shoes were talking.

11. “And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

12. Her eyes are like diamonds in the sky.

13. "government of the people, by the people, for the people"

14. You momma’s so fat, she sat on a rainbow and skittles popped out.

15. The motto for a famous company is “We care,” which it writes on the side of all its trucks; but the amount of gas these trucks pollute into the atmosphere makes them seem they don’t’ care about the environment at all.

Section VI: True/False (25 PTS)

1. You increase your chances of being successful if you analyze your audience before giving a speech.

2. The more supportive an audience, the more facts and details you should include in your speech.

3. The best test of a persuasive speaker’s ability would come in front of an opposed audience.

4. You would expect the most number of facts in the emotional sections of a persuasive speech.

5. Pathos is the Greek word related to appealing to people’s feelings.

6. It is not a good idea to combine the different types of appeals into one speech.

7. Most experts believe that persuasive speaking skills are innate—that is, you are either born with them or you are not.

8. Logical appeal is gained through good organization, solid reasoning, and valid evidence.

9. Fallacies are errors in reasoning or mistaken beliefs.

10. Fallacies strengthen a speaker’s credibility.

11. Hasty generalizations are faulty arguments that occur because the sample chosen is too large or presents too many different types of people.

12. A causal relationship means that one event brings about a another.

13. Correlated events happen at the same time, although one did not cause the other.

14. All statistics presented in articles or speeches should be assumed to be true.

15. If you support your opinion simply by restating it, than you are begging the question.

16. The difference between the written word and the spoken word is that the audience has to understand the speaker’s message the first time he or she says it.

17. Abstract words should be used with care because they have too many connotations.

18. A good speaker does not worry about economy of language.

19. Rhetorical questions tend to confuse and complicate your message.

20. The most effective allusions will be recognized by the audience.

21. Euphemisms often avoid the truth, lack clarity, and are more evasive than helpful.

22. The music of words combined with their imagery can make communication more effective.

23. Antithesis, oxymoron, and irony all have something to do with opposites.

24. Hyperbole and understate mean the same thing.

25. Using figures of speech and sound devices weakens your ability to effectively persuade an audience.