After watching speech buddies from the Interactive Videos of chapter 7 and 8, I found the most effective way to use facts and statistics is in the persuasive speech. When we need to convince our audiences our ideas, we must have strong evidences to support our viewpoints. Thus, facts and statistics, which are from reputable institutions, are helpful for us to strengthen our points, which are not coming from self-bias or “quantify” the extent problem. For example, the “Drinking and Driving” speech, Pete selects the credible statistics from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to persuade his audiences his main point that the drinking problem causes the most fatal accidents on highways.
Conversely, I would not use facts or statistics for my supporting materials in my informative speech. Because an informative speech is meaningful to my own personal experience, it is not necessary to cite a fact or statistics to firm my point. For example, my topic of the demonstration speech is rice balls. My responsibility for this topic is to teach my audiences how to make a rice ball and to introduce the history of rice balls. I believe if I cite a statistic about how many rice balls consume a year in Chinese society, this would not persuade my American audiences to eat rice balls, due to the diet cultural differences. For this reason, I believe the most effectively using facts and statistics is in the persuasive speech, not effective in the informative speech.
I agree that using statics and fact is MOST effective in persuasive presentation. Trying to get the audiene to eat rice balls is not your goal.I would find it kinda interesting to hear how many rice balls were eaten in China , fun fact kinda.. I always find too many facts to be boring and I lose attention. So I don't think leaving of stats out will hurt your informative speech at all.
ReplyDeleteYou are totally right when you said that adding statistics to your informative speech on rice balls would be a bad idea. Most likely it will cause the audience to wonder what the point was for giving them that statistic, and in the end they might not take your speech as seriously as they could have. Facts and statistics are meant to unify an audience or to educate them, even. I agree that the best time to use facts and statistics are in a persuasive essay when you are trying to convince the audience to belive in or to take action in something.
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