6.2 Informative and Persuasive Presentations
Learning Objectives
After studying this unit, you will be able to
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- describe the functions of the speech to inform
- provide examples of four main types of speeches to inform
- understand how to structure and develop a speech to inform
- identify and demonstrate how to use six principles of persuasion
- describe similarities and differences between persuasion and motivation
- identify and demonstrate the effective use of five functions of speaking to persuade
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Introduction
Regardless of the type of presentation, you must prepare carefully. Are you trying to sell life insurance to a group of new clients, or presenting a proposal to secure financing to expand your business operation? Are you presenting the monthly update on the different sales divisions in your company, or providing customers with information on how to upgrade their latest computer purchase. Your future career will require you to present both to inform or to persuade. Knowing the difference between these two types of presentations and knowing how to construct each type of presentation will be beneficial to your future careers.
Presenting to Inform
At some point in your business career, you will be called upon to teach someone something. It may be a customer, coworker, or supervisor, and in each case, you are performing an informative speech. It is distinct from a sales speech, or persuasive speech, in that your goal is to communicate the information so that your listener understands. Once you master the art of the informative speech, you may mix and match it with other styles and techniques.
Functions
Informative presentations focus on helping the audience to understand a topic, issue, or technique more clearly. There are distinct functions inherent in a speech to inform, and you may choose to use one or more of these functions in your speech. Let’s take a look at the functions and see how they relate to the central objective of facilitating audience understanding.
Share: The basic definition of communication highlights the process of understanding and sharing meaning. An informative speech follows this definition when a speaker shares content and information with an audience. As part of a speech, you wouldn’t typically be asking the audience to respond or solve a problem. Instead, you’d be offering to share with the audience some of the information you have gathered related to a topic.
Increasing Understanding: How well does your audience grasp the information? This should be a guiding question to you on two levels. The first involves what they already know—or don’t know—about your topic, and what key terms or ideas might be necessary for someone completely unfamiliar with your topic to grasp the ideas you are presenting. The second involves your presentation and the illustration of ideas. The audience will respond to your attention statement and hopefully maintain interest, but how will you take your speech beyond superficial