Chapter 13:

Informative, Group, and Special Occasion Presentations

Chapter Objectives and Integrator Guide

The opening page of each chapter in Communicating at Work lists desired learning outcomes.
The Integrator Guide will assist you in locating activities and resources relevant to each
objective.

Integrated Objectives Resources

Prepare and deliver the following types of In the text:
informative presentations: Page references: 433-453
Briefing Activities: 1-4
Feasibility report Career Tips:
Status report Technical Reports
Final report Adult Learning Styles
Training session On Your Feet:
Explanation. Poster Presentations

Key terms: briefing; explanation; feasibility report; Instructor's Manual online:

final report; report; status report; training Personal Reflection for Journaling
Discussion Launchers: 1-4
Classroom Activities: 1-4
Video Activities: 1
Work with others to plan and deliver a group In the text:
presentation. Page references: 453-458
Activity: 5
Career Tips:
Signals in Team Presentations
Ethical Challenge:
Honoring a Less-than-Honorable Person
Self-Assessment:
Evaluating Your Group Presentation

Instructor's Manual online:

Discussion Launchers: 5
Classroom Activities: 5

Student Online Learning Center:

Prepare and deliver the following types of special
occasion presentations:
Welcoming remarks
Introducing another speaker
Honoring a person or institution
Toast
Internet Exercises 1 & 2 from Ch 14 "Appendix"
In the text:
Page references: 458-464
Activities: 6
Career Tip: How to Request a Raise
Instructor's Manual online:

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 Presentation and acceptance of an award Discussion Launchers: 6
Classroom Activities: 6
Key terms: award presentation; speech of
introduction; toast; tribute; welcoming remarks Student Online Learning Center:
Internet Exercise 1 from Ch 14
Other resources found on the Online Learning Center:
Student online center
Glossary
Key Term Flashcards
Key Term Crosswords
Self-Quizzes
Instructor online center
PowerPoint Files

About Chapter 13

Chapter 13 examines informative presentations that are standard in business: briefings,

several types of reports, trainings, and explanations. Students are prompted to apply specific
strategies for constructing informative presentations that are suitable to their audiences. As in
previous chapters, the information presented encourages students to consider the context of their
presentation by appealing to the particular audience, shaping the presentation to the occasion,
using comparisons that fit this audience's interests and needs, and involving the audience
appropriately.
A new section covering group presentations has been added to this chapter. This section
offers practical tips for coordinating the performances of team members. These suggestions
assist students in planning, organizing, delivering, and evaluating their group presentations. In
conjunction with this section, you may wish to remind students about key factors from Chapter 8
regarding shared goals, desirable norms, cohesiveness, and creativity.

This chapter continues with an overview of various types of special occasion speeches that
students may be called upon to present in their academic, personal, civic, and workplace
experiences. These include welcoming remarks, introducing a speaker, honorary remarks, toasts,
and presenting and accepting awards. When covering this portion of the chapter, it is useful to
review the material about impromptu speeches and managing anxiety from Chapter 12, to assist
students in feeling more comfortable and confident on these special occasions.

.
Personal Reflection for Individual Journaling Assignment

Envision yourself as having studied the characteristics that contribute to effective

speaking, developed a positive mind-set, and dedicated enough hours of practice to have
become fairly competent at presenting ideas in front of an audience. (If you are already

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 competent, envision yourself as you are now!) As a competent speaker, what will be
some of your personal lifelong contributions to your workplace and your community?

Discussion Launchers
1. The text states: "There is a persuasive element to most, if not all good informative
talks." Agree or disagree with this statement. Support your stance with examples.

2. Select one type of informative presentation described in the text. Choose a topic you are
knowledgeable about and, using the texts guidelines your chosen format, explain how you
would present your topic.

3. What does it mean to "signpost" an idea? Can you think of some creative ways that you have
heard that done?

4. Recall a presentation you've attended in which the speaker covered more information than
was necessary. How did this verbosity impact the audience? Do you think the speaker was
aware of this oversight? If so, what clues helped you notice this? How can you prevent such
an awkward experience when you are presenting to a group?

5. Recall several effective group presentations you have watched in any of your classes. What
made these presentations effective? Now recall several group presentations that you thought
were not very effective? What suggestions for improvement could you offer to these groups?

6. Create an outline of an effective special occasion speech you might give (choose any of the
types mentioned in the text).

Classroom Activities

1. Drafting a Report

Objective: Students will apply information from this chapter as they construct an outline
for a report.

Procedure: Review with the class the sections of this chapter covering status, final, and
feasibility reports. Be sure students understand the differences among the types and how
each can be organized. Divide students into six groups, so that each type of report can be
assigned to two different groups.
Instruct groups to think of a topic suitable to their type of report. They should
then develop an outline, demonstrating how they would arrange their points. Have them
prepare to justify their organizational and content choices based on audience and situation
analysis. When groups are ready, ask them to explain their outlines to the class.

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 Class Discussion: Ask each group to share its recommendations with the class. Critique
the pattern choices, paying particular attention to students justifications.
What is your overall informative goal in this situation?
What is your relationship to the audience? How does this affect your credibility?
How does the specific occasion and setting affect your choice of pattern?
What other considerations influenced your choice of pattern?
Why did you choose these particular main points?

2. Covering Only the Necessary Information, AKA "Less Is More"

Objective: Students will practice focusing their presentations, emphasizing only what is
necessary for their audience to know. Students will learn the value of developing a few
points in depth instead of glossing over so many points that the listener becomes
confused.

Procedure: Arrange students in groups of three or four. Ask each group to select a topic
that one of the students is quite familiar with and that is interesting to the entire group.
The group will then narrow the topic. Instruct each group to write the topic and draw a
circle around it. For every related idea that you think you should include, draw a line
branching off from the main circle, and write the concept on the branch. Next, the group
will choose the one concept they find most interesting. They will now repeat the process
by drawing a new circle with this word as the centerpiece. From this second diagram,
students will select one of the branches to use as the main topic of the presentation. They
will then draw a third circle using this concept as its centerpiece. The centerpiece of this
third flow chart will become the topic of the presentation. Group members will then
choose two to four of its branches as the main points of the presentation. With the help of
the group "expert" on the topic, they will create an outline of the main points and the
supporting material. All group members must agree that the material included is
interesting, enlightening, relevant, and neither too complicated nor so obvious that it
would insult the intelligence of the audience.

Class Discussion: After groups have created their key word outlines, ask them to present
to the class the process they used in narrowing their topics. Find out whether the class
agrees that the narrowed topic is more interesting and informative than the original. If
there is no class consensus, elicit a variety of suggestions regarding what types of
information are necessary and unnecessary. Use this opportunity to point out that
sometimes, with an audience of mixed levels of background knowledge, the speaker's
best tack is to include a few elements that will appeal to each segment of the audience.

3. Informative Presentations in the Workplace

Objective: This assignment helps students become more familiar with various types of
informative presentations used in business settings.

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 Procedure: Divide the class into groups. Assign each group one type of informative
presentation. For their assigned type, students should identify the following:
purpose
suggested length
typical type of content
recommended organizational pattern or format
other considerations
As time permits, students should choose a topic they have knowledge of and develop a brief
outline that illustrates this type of presentation.

Class Discussion:
After groups have presented their results, you could follow up with questions such as
Which types of presentations are you most familiar with?
Do some types seem to correlate with various types of job positions?
Which types seem require the most care and planning?

4. Constructing Clear Explanations

Objective: Students will gain skills in explaining concepts clearly, using language that
aids the interest and understanding of the audience.

Procedure: Review with students the guidelines for avoiding jargon and linking the
familiar to the unfamiliar in the section of this chapter titled "Explanations." Next,
instruct each student in the class to write down one jargon term and one procedure they
are familiar with. They should draw the jargon and procedures from their own jobs or
hobbies. For example, a student who owns a horse might suggest the jargon "tack"; a
student who works in a photocopy lab might suggest the procedure of preparing a
customer order for copying.
Place students in groups of three. Each group will (a) devise alternative language
for expressing their jargon words (without obscuring the original meaning) and (b)
explain the procedures in lay terms by comparing them to concepts most students are
familiar with.

Class Discussion: After groups have completed their tasks, ask them to share examples
with the class. Have class members decide whether the explanations are clear. If not, ask
the class to suggest additional modifications.

5. Organizing a Group Presentation

Objective: Students will become familiar with two ways of organizing group
presentations.

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 Procedure: Review the text section titled "Approaches to Organizing Group
Presentations." Assign students to groups of seven students. Ask each group to select a
section of the text they are familiar with. They will imagine that they have been assigned
to deliver a 20-minute presentation about this material to the class.
The group's task is to devise two potential methods of organizing this material:
(a) by topic and (b) by task. For each method, the group should develop an outline,
indicating who would speak, in what order, about what, and for how long. Each group
should try to be creative enough to design two substantially different outlines. In each
case, the hypothetical workload should be spread relatively equally among all
participants.

Class Discussion: Ask groups to share with the class the group presentation formats they
constructed. As each group presents their organizational patterns, encourage class
members to analyze one another's patterns:
Which of the group's suggested patterns do you think works best for this topic? Why?
Can you suggest modifications that would improve the group's organization?

Wrap up the discussion by asking the class how difficult it was to get out of the box and
dream up a different organizational pattern after they had already thought of one. Were
there any situations in which the second pattern worked better?

6. Analyzing a Speech of Acceptance

Objective: This activity gives students a chance to apply primacies from the text in
analyzing real-world special occasion speeches.

Procedure: Give students audio, video, or print transcripts of authentic special occasion
speeches, such as Robert Krafts 2004 Super Bowl Victory Speech, available at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/robertkraft2004superbowl.htm.

Class Discussion: Ask students to analyze the speech(es) using the following questions
Which type of special occasion speech does this represent?
Which guidelines from the text does this speech incorporate?
Which guidelines does it ignore?
Was the speech successful? Why or why not?

Video Activities

1. Emphasizing Important Ideas in Informative Presentations

Objective: This activity should enable students to better assess a speaker's efforts to
emphasize the important parts in an informative presentation.

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 Procedure: Review the techniques used to emphasize important points in speeches (pp.
397398). Then watch an informative presentation from C-SPAN or a famous historical
speech; "I Have a Dream" works well for this. Also consider Great Speeches Volumes IXI
and Great Speeches-Today's Women (references at the end of chapter). Ask students to take
notes on examples of the techniques.

Class Discussion: After viewing the speech, the following questions could be used to
engage students.
What did the speaker do to highlight his or her important ideas?
Did the speaker use signposts, interjection, repetition, or redundancy?
Did the speaker add internal summaries and/or previews?
Would you suggest anything to help the speaker make the important ideas even more
noticeable?

Additional Resources

Print
Griffin, J. (1994). How to say it best: Choice words, phrases, and model speeches for every
occasion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Nearly any special occasion imaginable is covered in this book. Each type of speech is
accompanied by a section indicating what to say, what not to say, words to use, words to avoid, phrases to
use, sentences to use, sample paragraphs, and sample speeches. In addition, there is information on
diverse topics such as support and slang, humor and hecklers.

Pearce, T. (1995). Leading out loud: The authentic speaker, the credible leader. San Francisco,
Jossey-Bass Publishers.
This book is an "antidote to our media-driven world" of superficially sounding good but
communicating little of authenticity. The author believes you can use speech as a leadership tool to
articulate a vision, communicate with a passion, and connect authentically with the audience.

Robbins, J. (1997). High-impact presentations: A multimedia approach. New York: John Wiley &
Sons, Inc.
Chapter 13 includes information and advice about handling questions within a presentation.

Video
Great Speeches. Volumes I-XI. and Great Speeches-Today's Women. 90140 min. each. The Educational
Video Group.
Each volume contains five speakers representing the U.S. in the Twentieth Century. Wonderful
for analysis and enjoyment.

Reporting and Briefing. 16 min. Centron.

Types of Information. 15 min. Films for the Humanities.

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Powerful Presentation Skills by Debra Smith. 3-volume video (2 1/2 hrs.) or 4 audiocassettes (3 1/2 hrs.).
CareerTrack.
Distinguishes between speaking and presenting and discusses the presentations you'll make at
team meetings, committees, brainstorming sessions. Includes getting an audiences attention, anxiety,
closing a speech, and tips on persuasion.

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