Calls to action. Highlighting audience efficacy.

Loading...

From the course by University of Washington

Speaking to persuade: Motivating audiences with solid arguments and moving language

67 ratings

University of Washington

Speaking to persuade: Motivating audiences with solid arguments and moving language

67 ratings

Course 3 of 4 in the Specialization Dynamic Public Speaking

In the professional realm, we need to be able to argue without being argumentative. Whether you are fundraising for a nonprofit, pitching a business proposal, or suggesting a change to company policy, you are making arguments. In making the case for your topic, you often want to raise awareness, identify a pressing problem, discuss appropriate solutions, and outline specific steps for the audience. To be persuasive, you must be clear (the audience may have little to no existing knowledge), you must be convincing (you are trying to sway the audience that your argument is valid), and you must be compelling (you are trying to motivate the audience enough so that they want to take specific actions). Persuasive speaking thus requires clarity, strategy, topic mastery, plus a sense of style and presence. By the end of this course, you should be able to design persuasive speeches that address problems and solutions and that motivate audience members. You should be able to use rhetorical style strategically and deliver passionate and compelling speeches. Learners will record speeches, providing and receiving peer feedback.

From the lesson

Designing your persuasive speech

Having mapped out a basic strategy, we now need to think more about the audience and how to respond to their concerns. Additionally, we need to build the speech logically. We will examine how to design congruent speeches that build to clear and motivational calls to action. By the end of the week, you will have a number of techniques for making your case in a way that invites agreement rather than disagreement. If you want strengthen these skills, you’ll be able to engage in some speech analysis.

Calls to action. What should the audience do?5:12

Calls to action. Highlighting audience efficacy.3:23

Stock issues arrangement. Building to the call to action.5:44

Monroe's motivated sequence. Helping the audience visualize the cure.2:46

Meet the Instructors

Dr. Matt McGarrity
Principal Lecturer
UW Department of Communication

No matter what type of call to action you have,

you should probably emphasize efficacy.

What do I mean by that?

I mean show how individual actions will be effective for the cure.

Now the further the gap between the cure and the individual,

then you probably need to really emphasize efficacy even that much more.

And we kind of know this.

So Deborah Small is a psychologist and

marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

And one of her oft-cited studies dealt with this idea.

So she and her colleagues ran this study.

Now in the study, people came in and they took a survey, and

they were paid five individual dollar bills.

The survey itself was irrelevant, it was just to get people there.

But they wanted the study subjects to have money in their hands.

So then, when the subjects left, they received a charitable donation request.

Some of them received this request,

food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than three million children.

In Zambia,

severe rain deficits have resulted in a 42% drop in maize production from 2000.

As a result, an estimated three million Zambians face hunger.

Four million Angolans, one third of the population,

have been forced to flee their homes.

More than 11 million in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance.

So that's what some of them got.

Now others instead received this message, any money that you donate will

go to Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa.

Rokia is desperately poor and

faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation.

Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift.

With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children

will work with Rokia's family and other members of the community to help feed her,

provide her with basic education, as well as basic medical care and

hygiene education.

So you can probably guess which one was more effective, right?

The Rokia story earned twice as much money in donations.

Why?

Well, Small and her colleagues note that in

that story there's an identifiable victim instead of simply a statistical one.

So I would also add that if you give money, right?

If you get that request and

you give money, you're going to help that one person.

You're making a difference in their life.

Your action is effective.

Non-profits have known this for years.

There was a fairly recent review of mechanisms that drive charitable giving.

Non-profits and charitable giving, that's an area of scholarship.

And there was a meta-review, and when you look at it it talks about these factors.

Efficacy is right there, it is key.

I would also point out that in that study the other mechanisms

are a lot of the other things that we are doing.

So one of the other mechanisms was demonstrating need,

that's what we do when we talk about ill.

Another was showing cost and benefits.

Hey, hey, hey, that's our consequences.

It's also an argumentative tactic that we use.

Reputation was one.

What, we do that when we think about Ethos.

So there's a pretty close alignment here between, sort of the research on

charitable giving, and this notion and this approach to stock issues.

But ultimately it makes sense, because if I'm asking someone to do something,

I want to show them that it's going to matter.

I want the highlight the efficacy of that audience's action.

[MUSIC]

Explore our Catalog

Join for free and get personalized recommendations, updates and offers.

Coursera provides universal access to the world’s best education, partnering with top universities and organizations to offer courses online.

© 2018 Coursera Inc. All rights reserved.

Download on the App Store

Get it on Google Play