Chapter 14 Discussion

 A part of me has been dreading the persuasive speech this whole semester. Its a big chunk of our grade, and I have never been a very good salesperson (note the gender neutral language!). Chapter 14 made me feel a little more confident, and helped me start to organize my thoughts about how I'm going to pull this off. I liked Monroe's Motivated Sequence in that it provides a template for how to get people fired up. You start with your usual attention getter to get the audience listening. Next you establish the need for something to happen by showing what the problem is. Your audience will want a potential solution to the problem now, to help them feel invested and involved in your topic. My favorite step is visualization. I like it when a speaker gives me the technical side then allows my imagination to take over. With visualization you help the audience see what the solution will look like, cost like, and how it will benefit the problem. Lastly you give the audience a chance to see how they can take action themselves. Compiled together this sequence is a way to  take your audience through a series of steps that will most likely lead them to accept or at least consider your proposition. In the problem solution organization you present a need to the audience and then offer a way to solve it. Its a simpler technique, that the speaker has to be sure to establish what the problem is and make the audience understand its importance. For my next speech I have not started writing yet but I like the idea of Monroe's 5 steps. I think the 5 steps of building up to the action is effective. Hopefully I can convince my audience with this foolproof technique!