Based on What You Have Read in This Chapter, You Would Correctly Conclude That _______

xi.2 Steps of a Conclusion

Learning Objectives

1. Examine the three steps of an effective conclusion: restatement of the thesis, review of the primary points, and concluding device.
2. Differentiate among Miller's (1946) ten concluding devices.

Matthew Culnane – Steps – CC By-SA ii.0.

In Section 11.1 "Why Conclusions Matter", nosotros discussed the importance a conclusion has on a speech. In this department, we're going to examine the 3 steps in building an constructive conclusion.

Restatement of the Thesis

Restating a thesis statement is the first step in a powerful decision. Every bit we explained in Affiliate 9 "Introductions Matter: How to Brainstorm a Speech Effectively", a thesis statement is a short, declarative sentence that states the purpose, intent, or chief idea of a spoken language. When we restate the thesis statement at the decision of our speech, we're attempting to reemphasize what the overarching main idea of the speech has been. Suppose your thesis statement was, "I volition clarify Barack Obama's utilise of lyricism in his July 2008 speech, 'A World That Stands equally 1.'" You could restate the thesis in this fashion at the conclusion of your spoken language: "In the past few minutes, I have analyzed Barack Obama's apply of lyricism in his July 2008 spoken communication, 'A World That Stands as One.'" Discover the shift in tense: the statement has gone from the future tense (this is what I will speak about) to the past tense (this is what I take spoken near). Restating the thesis in your conclusion reminds the audience of the major purpose or goal of your speech, helping them remember it better.

Review of Principal Points

Later on restating the speech'south thesis, the second stride in a powerful conclusion is to review the main points from your speech. One of the biggest differences between written and oral communication is the necessity of repetition in oral communication. When nosotros preview our main points in the introduction, effectively discuss and make transitions to our main points during the body of the speech communication, and finally, review the chief points in the conclusion, we increment the likelihood that the audience will retain our main points afterward the speech is over.

In the introduction of a voice communication, we deliver a preview of our chief trunk points, and in the conclusion we deliver a review. Permit'south look at a sample preview:

In order to understand the field of gender and communication, I will starting time differentiate between the terms biological sex and gender. I volition and so explain the history of gender research in communication. Lastly, I volition examine a series of important findings related to gender and communication.

In this preview, we take three clear chief points. Let's see how nosotros tin can review them at the conclusion of our speech:

Today, we have differentiated betwixt the terms biological sex and gender, examined the history of gender research in communication, and analyzed a series of inquiry findings on the topic.

In the by few minutes, I take explained the difference between the terms "biological sexual activity" and "gender," discussed the rise of gender inquiry in the field of communication, and examined a serial of groundbreaking studies in the field.

Notice that both of these conclusions review the main points originally set forth. Both variations are equally effective reviews of the master points, but you might like the linguistic turn of one over the other. Retrieve, while in that location is a lot of scientific discipline to help usa understand public speaking, there'southward also a lot of art as well, and then you are ever encouraged to cull the wording that you remember volition exist about constructive for your audience.

Final Device

The final part of a powerful conclusion is the concluding device. A last device is essentially the concluding thought you want your audience members to take when you lot stop speaking. It also provides a definitive sense of closure to your speech. One of the authors of this text frequently makes an analogy betwixt a gymnastics dismount and the concluding device in a voice communication. Just equally a gymnast dismounting the parallel bars or balance beam wants to stick the landing and avoid taking 2 or three steps, a speaker wants to "stick" the ending of the presentation by ending with a final device instead of with, "Well, umm, I guess I'one thousand washed." Miller observed that speakers tend to use i of ten concluding devices when ending a spoken language (Miller, 1946). The residuum of this section is going to examine these x final devices.

Conclude with a Challenge

The first way that Miller plant that some speakers end their speeches is with a challenge. A challenge is a call to appoint in some kind of action that requires a contest or special effort. In a speech on the necessity of fund-raising, a speaker could conclude by challenging the audience to raise ten percent more than their original projections. In a speech on eating more than vegetables, yous could claiming your audience to increase their current intake of vegetables by two portions daily. In both of these challenges, audience members are existence asked to exit of their way to practise something different that involves effort on their function.

Conclude with a Quotation

A second way you tin can conclude a spoken communication is by reciting a quotation relevant to the voice communication topic. When using a quotation, you need to remember about whether your goal is to end on a persuasive note or an informative note. Some quotations will have a articulate phone call to activity, while other quotations summarize or provoke thought. For case, let's say y'all are delivering an informative speech about dissident writers in the former Soviet Spousal relationship. You could end past citing this quotation from Alexander Solzhenitsyn: "A great writer is, so to speak, a second government in his country. And for that reason no regime has e'er loved great writers" (Solzhenitsyn, 1964). Find that this quotation underscores the idea of writers as dissidents, merely information technology doesn't ask listeners to put along effort to engage in any specific idea process or behavior. If, on the other hand, you were delivering a persuasive speech urging your audience to participate in a very risky political demonstration, you might use this quotation from Martin Luther King Jr.: "If a man hasn't discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to alive" (King, 1963). In this case, the quotation leaves the audience with the message that great risks are worth taking, that they make our lives worthwhile, and that the correct thing to do is to become alee and take that great take a chance.

Conclude with a Summary

When a speaker ends with a summary, he or she is simply elongating the review of the main points. While this may non be the most heady concluding device, it can be useful for information that was highly technical or circuitous or for speeches lasting longer than 30 minutes. Typically, for short speeches (like those in your class), this summary device should be avoided.

Conclude by Visualizing the Futurity

The purpose of a determination that refers to the future is to help your audition imagine the future you lot believe tin occur. If you lot are giving a speech on the development of video games for learning, y'all could conclude by depicting the classroom of the hereafter where video games are perceived as truthful learning tools and how those tools could exist utilized. More oftentimes, speakers apply visualization of the future to draw how society would be, or how private listeners' lives would exist different, if the speaker'south persuasive try worked. For instance, if a speaker proposes that a solution to illiteracy is hiring more than reading specialists in public schools, the speaker could ask her or his audience to imagine a world without illiteracy. In this utilise of visualization, the goal is to persuade people to adopt the speaker'southward point of view. By showing that the speaker's vision of the future is a positive one, the decision should help to persuade the audience to help create this future.

Conclude with an Appeal for Activeness

Probably the most common persuasive concluding device is the appeal for action or the call to action. In essence, the appeal for action occurs when a speaker asks her or his audience to appoint in a specific beliefs or alter in thinking. When a speaker concludes by request the audience "to do" or "to call up" in a specific way, the speaker wants to see an bodily modify. Whether the speaker appeals for people to swallow more fruit, buy a auto, vote for a candidate, oppose the death penalty, or sing more in the shower, the speaker is asking the audience to appoint in action.

I specific type of appeal for activeness is the immediate call to action. Whereas some appeals ask for people to engage in beliefs in the future, the immediate call to activity asks people to engage in behavior right now. If a speaker wants to meet a new traffic light placed at a dangerous intersection, he or she may conclude by asking all the audience members to sign a digital petition correct and then and there, using a computer the speaker has made bachelor (http://www.petitiononline.com). Here are some more examples of immediate calls to action:

• In a speech on eating more vegetables, pass out raw veggies and dip at the conclusion of the speech.
• In a speech on petitioning a lawmaker for a new law, provide audience members with a prewritten e-mail they tin ship to the lawmaker.
• In a spoken communication on the importance of using mitt sanitizer, hand out little bottles of hand sanitizer and evidence audience members how to correctly apply the sanitizer.
• In a oral communication asking for donations for a charity, send a box effectually the room asking for donations.

These are just a scattering of unlike examples we've really seen students utilize in our classrooms to elicit an firsthand change in behavior. These firsthand calls to activity may non lead to long-term change, but they tin be very constructive at increasing the likelihood that an audition volition alter behavior in the curt term.

Conclude by Inspiration

By definition, the discussion inspire means to affect or agitate someone. Both affect and arouse have strong emotional connotations. The ultimate goal of an inspiration concluding device is similar to an "appeal for action" but the ultimate goal is more lofty or ambiguous; the goal is to stir someone'due south emotions in a specific manner. Maybe a speaker is giving an informative speech on the prevalence of domestic violence in our gild today. That speaker could end the voice communication by reading Paulette Kelly'due south powerful verse form "I Got Flowers Today." "I Got Flowers Today" is a poem that evokes strong emotions because information technology's almost an abuse victim who received flowers from her abuser every fourth dimension she was victimized. The verse form ends by proverb, "I got flowers today… / Today was a special 24-hour interval—it was the day of my funeral / Final nighttime he killed me" (Kelly, 1994).

Conclude with Advice

The next concluding device is ane that should be used primarily by speakers who are recognized as proficient authorities on a given field of study. Advice is essentially a speaker'southward opinion about what should or should not be done. The problem with opinions is that anybody has one, and one person's opinion is not necessarily whatsoever more right than some other's. At that place needs to exist a actually good reason your opinion—and therefore your communication—should matter to your audience. If, for instance, yous are an expert in nuclear physics, you lot might conclude a speech on energy by giving advice well-nigh the benefits of nuclear energy.

Conclude past Proposing a Solution

Another fashion a speaker can conclude a spoken communication powerfully is to offer a solution to the problem discussed inside a speech. For example, perhaps a speaker has been discussing the problems associated with the disappearance of art didactics in the United states of america. The speaker could then propose a solution of creating more customs-based fine art experiences for school children equally a fashion to fill this gap. Although this can be an effective conclusion, a speaker must inquire herself or himself whether the solution should be discussed in more depth every bit a stand-alone main point within the torso of the speech so that audience concerns well-nigh the proposed solution may exist addressed.

Conclude with a Question

Some other style you tin can terminate a speech is to enquire a rhetorical question that forces the audience to ponder an idea. Maybe you are giving a speech on the importance of the surround, and then you cease the spoken communication by saying, "Recall about your children's futurity. What kind of world practise you want them raised in? A earth that is clean, vibrant, and beautiful—or one that is filled with smog, pollution, filth, and affliction?" Notice that y'all aren't actually asking the audience to verbally or nonverbally answer the question; the goal of this question is to forcefulness the audience into thinking about what kind of world they want for their children.

Conclude with a Reference to Audience

The final final device discussed by Miller (1946) was a reference to one'due south audience. This concluding device is when a speaker attempts to answer the basic audience question, "What's in it for me?" The goal of this concluding device is to spell out the directly benefits a behavior or thought change has for audience members. For example, a speaker talking most stress reduction techniques could conclude past clearly list all the concrete health benefits stress reduction offers (e.g., improved reflexes, improved immune arrangement, improved hearing, reduction in blood pressure). In this example, the speaker is clearly spelling out why audience members should intendance—what's in it for them!

Informative versus Persuasive Conclusions

As you lot read through the x possible ways to conclude a speech, hopefully you noticed that some of the methods are more appropriate for persuasive speeches and others are more than advisable for informative speeches. To assistance you choose appropriate conclusions for informative, persuasive, or entertaining speeches, we've created a table (Table 11.1 "Your Speech Purpose and Concluding Devices") to assist you apace identify advisable concluding devices.

Table xi.one Your Speech Purpose and Terminal Devices

Types of Concluding Devices	Full general Purposes of Speeches
		Informative	Persuasive
Challenge		x	x
Quotation	x	x	x
Summary	x	10	x
Visualizing the Future	x	x	ten
Entreatment		x	x
Inspirational	x	x	x
Advice		10	10
Proposal of Solution		x	x
Question	10	x	ten
Reference to Audience		x	ten

Key Takeaways

• An constructive conclusion contains three basic parts: a restatement of the spoken communication's thesis; a review of the chief points discussed within the spoken language; and a concluding device that helps create a lasting image in audiences' minds.
• Miller (1946) plant that speakers tend to employ one of ten terminal devices. All of these devices are non advisable for all speeches, so speakers need to determine which concluding device would have the strongest, most powerful effect for a given audition, purpose, and occasion.

Exercises

1. Take the last speech you gave in class and rework the speech's decision to reflect the three parts of a conclusion. Now exercise the same thing with the speech you are currently working on for course.
2. Call back about the speech you are currently working on in class. Write out concluding statements using three of the devices discussed in this chapter. Which of the devices would be about useful for your speech? Why?

References

Kelly, P. (1994). I got flowers today. In C. J. Palmer & J. Palmer, Fire from within. Painted Post, NY: Creative Arts & Science Enterprises.

King, M. L. (1963, June 23). Speech in Detroit. Cited in Bartlett, J., & Kaplan, J. (Eds.), Bartlett'southward familiar quotations (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., p. 760.

Miller, E. (1946). Speech introductions and conclusions. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 32, 181–183.

Solzhenitsyn, A. (1964). The first circle. New York: Harper & Row. Cited in Bartlett, J., & Kaplan, J. (Eds.), Bartlett's familiar quotations (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., p. 746.

ballesterosforripsy1964.blogspot.com

Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/chapter/11-2-steps-of-a-conclusion/

Bagikan Artikel ini