Embedded Files
Actually, this is a pretty charismatic-looking skeleton. (Source)
A great main idea is like a skeleton. It provides a framework for the rest of the speech and holds the whole thing up. But you don't want to go in front of an audience with just a skeleton, do you? That would be scary, for you and for your audience. Better add a little meat onto those bones.
Or in other words: better do the work of assembling support for your main idea.
It might be that a lot of the support for your main idea comes directly from your prior knowledge and experience. If so, then great. You know what you're talking about—a good characteristic for a public speaker. Sharing stories from your own personal or professional life is an excellent strategy. (Jay Heinrichs did this all the time in Thank You For Arguing. It's why we feel we know his family well enough to write a sitcom based on their lives despite never having met them.)
Maybe you've even got data or anecdotes from your own original research. That's amazing, unless your research is fallacious or flawed in some way. (We'll discuss common fallacies to know later.)
But no matter how much support you bring to the subject you're going to speak about, it's always a good idea to go a step further and gather support from outside sources. Of course, it's not enough to just find any old sources. After all, you want to make sure the meat you're slapping onto your idea skeleton is fresh, not rotten.
Or, in less weird terms: you've got to make sure your sources are credible.
THE INCREDIBLE CREDIBLE
Let's be honest and admit that most of us are going to start our research on the internet. It's right there, after all—in your computer or phone or tablet or chip that's been implanted into your brain.
Because it's so easy to access, the internet is a great place to start. You can find lots of great information there as well as references to other sources to seek out.
We assume you already know how to use a search engine to look for stuff on the internet, but do you also know how to look for signs of credibility? After all, you don't want to spout nonsense in front of a live audience, who will likely sniff it out and laugh loudly at you. (That can make it hard to keep your own credibility intact.)
Go ahead and watch this video, titled "Web Literacy: Credibility of Web Sources," to get some tips on evaluating internet information.
Did you get those four main categories for determining credibility? Let's take one more look, just in case:
Authority: Who wrote it, who published it, and should we believe them?
Currency: Is the information current?
Objectivity: Do I see evidence of bias?
Support: Who does the author and/or publisher cite?
Effective Internet Searches
Effective Internet Searches
We said we assume you already know how to do an internet search, but sometimes knowing a few more advanced search strategies can help.
We've sifted through all of our thoughts on internet searching (and boy do we have a lot), and we've come up with the following four tips for searching effectively:
Be more specific. General terms and phrases can leave you with millions of junky results. It sounds obvious (and um, it kind of is), but if you're looking for Shmoop's analysis of The Great Gatsby, your best bet is to type in shmoop the great gatsby. If you just go with the book title, who knows what hacks you'll get talking about the book.
Use quotations marks for exact phrases. Know exactly the phrase (or name) you're looking for? Put it in quotation marks if you don't want the words in your search considered separately. That way you just get stuff about Power Rangers and not stuff about power and rangers. (Though that sounds cool, too.)
Use the minus sign (-) to exclude unwanted guests. Want to learn about the ice age but keep getting movie results? Try ice age -film as your search.
Search only within a specific domain. Looking just for .edu or .gov sites? Just tell Google. If you type site:.edu before your search terms, Google will hear you loud and clear and only give you .edu results. If you want to get even more specific and only search on one site—say, Shmoop—just let 'em know by typing site:shmoop.com before your search. It's magic. Or…an algorithm?
Google Sites
Report abuse