The freely downloadable 2018 fourth edition of the Exploring Public Speaking e-book has a Chapter 26 titled Avoiding Plagiarism. It discusses three types: stealing, sneaking, and borrowing. Stealing is wholesale, it involves taking the entire text.
Sneaking involves shuffling the order of sentences. Borrowing is more subtle.
Images of a robber and shuffling cards came from Wikimedia Commons.
A Wikipedia page for Plain Language defines that:
“Plain language is writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly, easily, and completely as possible. Plain language strives to be easy to read, understand, and use. It avoids verbose, convoluted language and jargon.”
Another Wikipedia page on Plain English elaborates that:
“Plain English (also referred to as layman’s terms) is a mode of writing or speaking the English language intended to be easy to understand regardless of one’s familiarity with a given topic. It usually avoids the use of rare words and uncommon euphemisms to explain the subject. Plain English wording is intended to be suitable for almost anyone, and it allows for good understanding to help readers know a topic. It is considered part of plain language.”
On December 4, 2022 I blogged about Advice from the U. S. National Institutes of Health on writing clearly using Plain Language and discussed a 13-page article.
Recently I found a 270-page pdf e-book from the Government of Canada in 1994 titled PLAIN LANGUAGE: CLEAR AND SIMPLE: Trainer’s Guide. It has the following sections for giving a two-day course:
Module 1: Introducing Plain Language [page 1]
Module 2: The Starting Point: Your Reader
and Your Purpose [page 13]
Module 3: Organizing Your Ideas [page 19]
Module 4: Using Appropriate Words [page 29]
Module 5: Writing Clear and Effective Sentences
[page 51]
Module 6: Writing Clear and Effective Paragraphs
[page 75]
Module 7: Presenting Your Message Effectively [page 81]
Module 8: Testing and Revising the Document
for Usability and Readability [page 89]
Module 9: Putting It All Together: Working
with Plain Language [page 101]
Idioms are important in speechwriting. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an idiom as carrying a figurative or non-literal meaning:
“an expression in the usage of a language that has a meaning that cannot be understood from the combined meanings of its elements (such as up in the air for ‘undecided’) or in its grammatically atypical use of words (such as give way for ‘retreat’).”
Having a dictionary or reference guide for idioms is very useful. There is a free 133 page pdf e-book by the Office of English Language Programs at the United States Department of State from 2010 titled IN THE LOOP: A Reference Guide to American English Idioms. You can download it either here or here.
The book cover was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.
On May 15, 2024 I blogged about My workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Toastmasters Conference on May 18, 2024 about Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions. Story Prompts are one type of question.
There is a 56-page pdf e-book by Chris Davenport from 2023 titled Story Prompts for Nonprofits: 900+ storytelling prompts for attracting new donors, generating media buzz, connecting with your community, and deepening relationships with donors!
One large series of Story Prompts for Different Categories of Nonprofits with twenty for each of the following 17 categories [340] is:
Advocating
Animals
Arts
Children’s Hospital
Community Foundation
Dog and Cat Shelters
Environmental
Foreign Aid
Healthcare
Higher Education
Independent Schools
K-12 Schools
Museums and History
Political
Religious
Social Services
Theater
Another large series of Story Prompts Based on Types of Beneficiaries and Help Provided with twenty for each of the following 29 categories [580; 580 + 340 = 920] is:
Cancer
Clean Water
Climate Change
Community Service
Disabled
Domestic Violence
Drug and Alcohol Addiction
Families in Need
Feeding the Hungry
Holiday Season
Homeless
Human Services
Job Provider
Land Conservation
Legal Aid
Low-Income Housing
Medical Device Provider
Music Programs
Political Action
Research
Scholarship Programs
Senior citizens
Sports
Technology Provider
Therapy
Transportation Services
Veterans
World Events
The image was modified from this one at OpenClipArt.
There is an interesting 11-minute TEDx talk by Martin J. Eppler recorded on May 18, 2024 at TEDxDonauinsel and posted on December 31, 2024 titled Want to Give a Great Presentation? Use Ugly Sketches | Martin J. Eppler | TED. He said to:
Use provisional, unpolished images
Apply fitting visual metaphors [simple and concrete]
Vary your visuals
At 7:20 he has a monochrome cartoon image with visual metaphors (and captions at the right). My color PowerPoint version (with captions at the left) is shown above.
Martin also has a 32-page e-book from 2022 titled An Introduction to Visual Variation for Better Leading, Learning, and Living.
My PowerPoint slide used cartoon images of a bridge and car from OpenClipArt.
A writing prompt (or story prompt) is a brief topical suggestion to help us get started. There is a 46-page pdf e-book by Stevan Krajnjan titled 1000 Quick Writing Ideas.
And there is a free 56-page e-book by Chris Davenport from 2023 titled Story Prompts for Nonprofits that is a nonprofit storytelling conference publication subtitled 900+ storytelling prompts for attracting new donors, generating media buzz, connecting with your community, and deepening relationships with donors!
There is also a 181-page pdf e-book from LearningExpress in 2003 titled 501 Writing Prompts.
On November 12, 2022 I blogged about how Writing Prompts also can be used for Table Topics questions at Toastmasters club meetings. And on May 15, 2024 I blogged about My workshop presentation at the 2024 District 15 Toastmasters Conference on May 18, 2024 about Creating or Finding Great Table Topics Questions.
On December 1, 2022 the Defense Technical Information Center published a self-paced course with 11 learning modules on active listening as a 75-page .pdf file titled Active Listening Learning Resource. It was prepared by psychologists at South Dakota State University. The eleven modules are:
Active Listener Characteristics
Attending Behaviors
Effective Questioning Techniques
Reflection of Content
Reflection of Feeling
Empathetic Listening
Reflection of Meaning
Confrontation
Using Immediacy
Self-disclosure
Providing Supportive, Critical Feedback
Toastmasters may want to look at this course. On October 19, 2024 I posted regarding More about active listening.
The cartoon ear was captioned from one at Openclipart.
At the web site for the Association of Fundraising Professionals there is a useful and free 52-page e-book from 2019 by Wayne Olson on How to Give a Great Speech or Presentation. Its ten sections are:
To Speak Well – page 1
Elements of a Great Speech – page 7
Prepare for Success – Page 19
The Point in PowerPoint – Page 23
Putting It Together – Page 27
Appendix A [Sample Speaker Biography] – Page 29
Appendix B [Speechwriting Checklist] – Page 33
Appendix C [Day-of-Speech Checklist] – Page 35
Appendix D [PowerPoint (Keynote) Checklist] – Page 37
Bibliography and Sources for Further Reading – Page 39
The image was adapted from one at Openclipart.
There is a relatively brief article by Diane Windingland on pages 10 and 11 of the November 2024 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Exploring 5 types of speeches. She discusses informative, persuasive, entertaining, demonstrative, and ceremonial ones, and which is the best type for your goal.
What is missing? There is no link to educational material from Toastmasters. But at Toastmasters NZ you can find a .pdf file of the current Pathways Level 3 Project on Persuasive Speaking. And elsewhere from the former Advanced Communication Series you can download .pdf files of The Entertaining Speaker, Speaking to Inform, and Special Occasion Speeches. There is an article about the Special Occasion Speeches manual by Maureen Zappala on pages 22 to 25 of the December 2016 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled It’s a Special Occasion.
Also, at the APSU Writing Center for Austin Peay State University you can download .pdf files for Informative Speech, Persuasive Speech, and Demonstrative Speech.
Of course, as I blogged about on October 5, 2024 in a post titled Free 2023 e-book on Public Speaking as Performance you can download an e-book with entire chapters on informative, persuasive, and special occasion speeches.
There is a free 148-page e-book from 2023 by Mechele Leon, Renee Cyr, and Jonah Greene titled Public Speaking as Performance: Practicing public speaking in the theatre & performance. It has four parts and sixteen chapters:
Prologue: Part I
Thinking about Public Speaking - Chapter 1
Actor Tools for Public Speaking - Chapter 2
Context: Part II
Speaking Occasion - Chapter 3
Audience Analysis - Chapter 4
Ways of Delivering Speeches - Chapter 5
From Page to Stage - Chapter 6
Speechwriting: Part III
Writing for Listeners - Chapter 7
Purpose and Thesis - Chapter 8
Structure and Organization - Chapter 9
Introductions and Conclusions - Chapter 10
Ethics in Public Speaking - Chapter 11
Language in Speechwriting - Chapter 12
Presentation Aids - Chapter 13
Purposes: Part IV
Informative Speeches – Chapter 14
Persuasive Speeches - Chapter 15
Special Occasion Speeches - Chapter 16
The authors all are in the Department of Theatre & Dance at the University of Kansas. Mechele Leon is a professor and the other two are graduate teaching assistants.
On December 22, 2020 I blogged about Be your very own Santa Claus by downloading free e-textbooks about public speaking and mentioned another 2019 e-book from the University of Kansas by Meggie Mapes titled Speak Out, Call In: Public speaking as Advocacy.
My cartoon of an actor was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
The National Speakers Association has a web page from 2023 for their Council of Peers Award for Excellence [CPAE] which has a link for a free download of a very useful 118-page-pdf ebook titled 50 Years of Speaking Advice.
The speaker and lectern was adapted from Openclipart.
At the SearchResearch blog by Dan Russell there is an excellent post on July 5, 2024 titled Answer: How to find the best learning resources in a crowded field? He has the following headings:
What do I want to learn about this topic?
Topic area
Breadth vs, depth
Skill vs. knowledge learning
Organize your learning approach
Get an overview to start
Leverage other people’s overviews
Make a list of what you want to learn
Find high quality resources that match your interests
That high-quality resource might be a Great Courses video collection or a for Dummies book. On February 4, 2019 I blogged about Reliable places to find information for your speeches. In that post I said:
“Unless you are already very experienced at searching (like I am), I would suggest you should start by interviewing a reference librarian at your friendly local public library. Ask her both about books and which of their databases you can best use for finding information to put in your presentation.”
One of those databases would have come from your state. In Idaho it would be the EBSCOhost Research Platform, which contains ebooks, magazine articles, and newspaper articles. It is powerful, but not simple to learn. That database has subject indexing, which lets you narrow down topics better than a search engine like Google.
The Where question mark cloud was adapted from Openclipart.
In her The Master Communicator Blog on July 15, 2024 Rosemary Ravinal has a post titled How tour guiding can make you a better speaker. She says to do a half-dozen things:
Tell unforgettable stories
Delight diverse audiences
Build confidence
Improve non-verbal communication
Find your unique style
Handle questions with grace
An article by Karen Friedman on January 3, 2024 titled What business communicators can learn from tour guides discussed the topics of having a connection, being memorable, being engaging, using differentiation and creating trust.
There also is another article about tour guides by Barnaby Davies on pages 22 to 24 in the December 2018 issue of Toastmaster magazine titled Entertaining Travelers Around the World.
What do these three items have in common? They all ignore the broader jargon for describing a tour guide. Back on December 19, 2010 I blogged about Heritage interpretation and public speaking. Interpreters are people who explain natural or cultural resources to visitors at places like parks, nature centers, museums, zoos, botanical gardens, aquariums, and tour companies. As shown above via a Venn diagram, a tour guide is at the intersection of public speaking and heritage interpretation.
When you search under heritage interpretation, you will find there are organizations with much useful information. In the U.S. there is the National Association for Interpretation (NAI), which publishes two magazines, Legacy and the Journal of Interpretation Research. Most articles and issues are at their web site and for members only. There is a long article by Marc J. Stern and Robert B. Powell in the Journal of Interpretation Research for 2013 (Volume 18, number 2 pages 9 to 44) titled What leads to better visitor outcomes in live interpretation? For it they surveyed 3,603 visitors from 312 live interpretive programs at U. S. National Parks. As shown above, Figure 1 describes fifteen best practices.
Interpretation Canada (IC) has an eighty-page 2015 book titled The Interpreter’s Big Book of Disasters. Their IC blog has a post by Munju Ravindra on June 12, 2019 titled IC Blog: Lessons from the Interpreter’s Book of Disasters: Intertidal Stranding. On July 3, 2024 I blogged about how A public speaker can tell us a story about being in a seemingly dangerous place. But a heritage interpreter can actually take us there.
Interpret Europe has a forty-page ebook by Thorsten Ludwig titled The Interpretive Guide – Sharing Heritage with People (2nd edition, 2015).
An image showing a tour guide and wall painting came from 3DeyeNET at Wikimedia Commons.
My previous post on March 29, 2024 was titled Good brief advice from Indeed [Canada] on Eight Key Steps to Successful Speech Writing. Where can you find more detailed advice?
On December 20, 2023 I had blogged about Getting better at speechwriting by learning from professional organizations. In that post I mentioned the European Speechwriter Network. There is a free download of their 74-page pdf textbook from 2017 by Alan Barker titled Essentials of Speechwriting [Some notes for speechwriters], which accompanies The Essentials of Speechwriting training course. Most sections are just a single page. Section headings and [page numbers] in it are:
Introduction [3]
Rhetoric: what it is and why it matters [5]
The five canons of rhetoric [6]
Kairos [7]
Responding to the Kairos: ethos, logos, pathos [8]
Ethos: key features [9]
Logos: key features [10]
Pathos: key features [11]
Thinking about the audience [12]
Audience profiling [13]
Establishing the speech’s objective [14]
Judicial speeches [15]
Deliberative speeches [15]
Ceremonial speeches [16]
Ceremonial speeches: purpose [17]
Ceremonial speeches: goals [18]
Ceremonial speeches: strategies [19]
Invention [20]
Invention: a worked example 21]
Arrangement: the classical model [22]
Arrangement: the classical model explained [23]
Building pyramids [24]
Arrangement: Monroe’s Motivated Sequence [25]
Starting the speech [34]
Seven ways to start a speech [35]
Style? [36]
PRAISE: six elements of style [37]
Proverbs: making your message memorable [38]
Proverbs: rhetorical characteristics [39]
Resonators: making your material concrete [40]
Resonators [41]
Attention: grabbing it and holding it #1 [42]
Attention: grabbing it and holding it #2 [43]
Attention: the curiosity factor [44]
Influence: making yourself credible [45]
Influence: finding your stance [46]
Influence: making your material credible [47]
Stories: involving your audience in the action [48]
Stories: creating a plot [49]
Emotions: stimulating action in your audience [50]
Style: creating a text for speaking [51]
Transitional devices [52]
Varying sentence construction [53]
Verbs: active and passive [54]
Nouns: concrete and abstract [55]
Nominalization [56]
Writing for non-native English speakers [57]
Figures of speech [58]
Working with your speaker [60]
Talking to your speaker [61]
Speechwriter as Consultant [62]
The three modes of appeal revisited [64]
Speechwriter as Coach [67]
Speechwriter as Style Consultant [69]
Speechwriter as Event Manager [70]
Writing for non-native English speakers [71]
Useful resources: books [72]
Useful resources: websites [73]
Alan Barker [74]
There also is a 38-page 2010 ebook by Peter Dhu titled The Killer Speech Writing Workbook. Section headings and [page numbers] in it are:
Introduction to the Speech Writing Workbook [4]
Warm Up Exercise: Preventative medicine for writer’s block [6]
1) Start at the End [9]
2) Theme: The thread that weaves your speech together [12]
3) WIIFM – What’s in it for Me [17]
4) Identify Three or Four Key Points [22]
5) Start Strong [28]
6) Write Your First Draft [30]
7) Practise and Prepare [34]
References [36]
The June 2018 issue of Toastmaster magazine has a profile article by Missy Sheehan about Peter Dhu on pages 12 to 14 titled Finding His Voice.
And back on May 23, 2010 I blogged about another useful publication in a post titled Speechwriting advice US citizens already have paid for. I discussed Speechwriting in Perspective: A Brief Guide to Effective and Persuasive Communication which is Congressional Research Service Report #98-170. You can download a 26-page pdf here.
The Santa Claus image was adapted from this one at the Library of Congress.
Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (acronym SWOT) is a tool for strategic planning and management using a 2x2 chart, as shown above. There is a succinct three-page pdf article about it at the American Academy of Nurse Anesthesiology, and a Wikipedia page.
Also, there is another longer article by Joseph Ferriolo at WiseBusinessPlans on November 29, 2023 titled SWOT Analysis: What it is and how to do it correctly with examples. Finally, there is a 33-page e-book you can download for free as a pdf from West Virginia University titled SWOT Analysis – strategy skills.
If you were looking for a free e-book about public speaking (and debate), then I just found one you could download. It is the 111-page 2021 updated .pdf edition of The Art & Science of Original Oratory by Ashley Mack, which can be found at the web site for the National Speech & Debate Association.
I found it via a Google phrase search including “filetype:pdf”. But curiously it doesn’t seem to be on their Resources page for Coaching Speech.
This e-book has 13 examples. You can look at an abstractive summary of it by Augusto Frederico at Medium on June 27, 2018.
Silhouettes of two people arguing were adapted from an image at Openclipart.
There is an illustrated 132-page ebook from the World Health Organization (WHO) titled Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide which you can download for free. It has five sections about Grounding, Unhooking, Acting on Your Values, Being Kind, and Making Room.
I found it via serendipity - an incorrect link in a blog post at Prezi by Anete Ezera on July 5, 2022 on titled How not to be nervous for a presentation: 6 useful tips. The link instead was supposed to go to an article on how 73% of the population supposedly is affected by public speaking anxiety. But that is a bogus statistic I blogged about back on March 22, 2019 in a post titled An apparently authoritative statistic about fear of public speaking that really lacks any support.
The image of business stress came from Openclipart.
On December 12, 2017 I blogged about how to Be your own Santa Claus – download free public speaking e-textbooks. There is another 665-page e-book titled Advanced Public Speaking by Lynn Meade, Bill Rogers, Cathy Hollingsworth, Robert Kienzle at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. You can best download the .pdf here (complete with internal links). Advanced Toastmasters may be interested in it as reference material.
There is a very useful article by Andra Picncu at MakeUseOf on July 18, 2021 titled 5 Digital libraries where you can download ebooks for free. In alphabetical order they are: Internet Archive, Open Library, Project Gutenberg, Wiley Online Library, and World Digital Library. (At the Internet Archive another category is Books to Borrow – logged in patrons can read them but perhaps not download).
Those are not the only sources for collections of free ebooks. The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) of the U.S. National Library for Medicine (NLM) has an NCBI Bookshelf with 8745 titles. And the National Academies Press (National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine) has 10104 free books you can download as a guest.
The home page for Google Books claims you can “Search the world’s most comprehensive index of full-text books,” but that’s not quite true because some just are previews. It still is an excellent search tool. You might instead need to borrow a hard copy (or ebook) from your friendly, local public library. For example, mine has the EBSCOhost databases which include the MasterFILE Reference eBook Collection.
The cartoon of a woman was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
Back in 2006 there was a 100-page ebook by Andy Goodman titled Why Bad Presentations Happen To Good Causes, which you can download from the Goodman Center. I blogged about it on August 10, 2008 in a post titled Free e-book on presentations, with a great story.
An appendix in that ebook describes an online survey done beginning on January 5, 2005 which had 2,501 responses. It listed 16 problems that can affect presentations, and asked both how frequent and how harmful that was. Frequency was reported on a scale from 1 = Never to 5 = Always, and harmfulness on a scale from 1 = Not harmful at all to 5 = Extremely harmful. Answers were reported on pages 84 and 85 as tables of percentages for each of those five levels (plus Don’t know). But it is not obvious how to compare those percentages between questions.
On October 30, 2015 I blogged about how According to the 2015 Chapman Survey of American Fears, adults are less than Afraid of federal government Corruption and only Slightly Afraid of Public Speaking. That post showed how to calculate a Fear Score from their survey results. These results can be summarized by a Harmfulness Score (or a Frequency Score) similarly calculated by a linear formula and reported on a scale from 1 to 5):
Harmfulness Score = [1*(Level 1 %) + 2*(Leve1 2 %)
+ 3*(Leve1 3 %) + 4*(Leve1 4 %) + 5*(Leve1 5%)]/100
Based on harmfulness 13 of 16 problems were ranked above 3 (middle of the scale), but based on frequency just 2 of 16 were. Harmfulness Scores and rankings for the sixteen problems [and Frequency Scores and their rankings] are as follows:
01) The speaker was not well prepared: 4.18 [2.43 #13]
02) The speaker did not connect with the audience: 4.04 [2.91 #3]
03) The material was poorly organized: 3.89 [2.72 #7]
04) The objective was not made relevant to the audience’s concerns: 3.86 [2.72 #8]
05) The overall objective of the talk was not clear to the audience: 3.81 [2.56 #11]
06) The presentation ran too long: 3.5 [3.21 #2]
07) Time was not allocated to ask questions or engage the presenter in a discussion: 3.44 [2.87 #4]
08) The presentation duplicated the content of the slides and/or handouts without adding anything significant: 3.44 [3.40 #1]
09) The amount of material presented was overwhelming: 3.39 [2.81 #6]
10) Technical problems (e.g. poor sound system, malfunctioning projector) disrupted the presentation: 3.37 [2.60 #10]
11) The material was overly complex: 3.34 [2.39 #14]
12) Sufficient time was not allowed for the presenter to cover all the material: 3.22 [2.84 #5]
13) There was not enough information to help the audience make a decision or reach a conclusion: 3.21 [2.49 #12]
14) The presentation was not tailored to the size of the audience: 2.89 [2.38 #15]
15) Translating the material into PowerPoint templates (e.g. bullet lists) made it more difficult to understand, less interesting, or both 2.84 [2.64 #9]
16) The speaker was too nervous: 2.82 [2.18, #16]
Note that The speaker was too nervous ranked #16 based on both harmfulness and frequency. So novice speakers (like new Toastmasters) shouldn’t sweat over that.
Bar charts for both scales are shown above.
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