1. A SPEAKER’S GUIDEBOOK 4TH EDITION CHAPTER 8
Developing Supporting Material

2. Gather Supporting Material
Now that you know a little about your audience, you can gather supporting material with them in mind. Ask yourself the following questions:
What information will clarify the topic for your audience?
What details will they find interesting?
How can you relate the topic to yourself or the audience with your supporting material?
What sources will the audience find credible?

3. Types of Supporting Materials
Examples
Narratives
Testimony
Facts
Statistics
TIP: Audiences expect supporting material to come from credible sources regardless of the type of supporting material.

4. Illustrate Your Topic with Examples
Brief examples offer a single illustration of a point, such as a story from your own personal experience that is a sentence or two in length.
Extended examples offer multifaceted illustrations of an idea, item, or event, such as a longitudinal description of the issue.
Hypothetical examples provide a visualization of “what if” scenarios.

5. Convey Your Message through Narratives
Narratives, also called stories, tell tales from either personal experience or to reveal how things happened. Our understanding of history is conveyed through stories.
Fairy tales, legends, parables, and myths are all types of narratives which have been passed down through the generations via storytelling.
Anecdotes, often used in speeches, are brief stories of humorous or real-life incidents related to the topic.

6. Support Your Topic with Testimony
Testimony includes firsthand findings, eyewitness accounts, and opinions.
When those opinions are from experts in the field related to your topic, knows as expert testimony, audiences tend to consider your evidence more credible.
Lay testimony can be compelling when non-experts have firsthand experience with your topic.
Testimony that is not credible will do harm to your speech and should not be used.

7. Prove It with Facts and Statistics
Facts are actual events, dates, times, and places that can be independently verified by other sources.
Statistics demonstrate relationships between two or more things, quantify items, and clarify abstract concepts.
Frequency (including averages and distributions) and percentages are common types of statistics used to clarify information in speeches.

8. Question
When the speaker cites evidence based on the experiences of a non-expert, this is called:
A. A fact
B. A narrative
C. Lay testimony
D. Expert testimony
E. An extended example

9. Cherry-picking
Some speakers selectively present supporting material and statistics which buttress their point of view and ignore competing data which contradicts their goal.
Credible speakers present their evidence objectively and in context.

10. Discussion
When presenting statistical information, should the speaker use visual aids, such as charts, graphs, or tables?
If a speaker uses a chart copied from a web- based source, should he/she orally cite the source, or is a written citation on the slide under the chart sufficient?

11. Chapter 8 Key Terms for Review
supporting material
example
brief example
extended example
hypothetical example
story
narrative
anecdote
testimony
expert testimony
lay testimony
facts
statistics
frequency
percentage
average
mean
median
mode
cherry-picking