Internet Exercises

Exercise 1

Goal: This activity is designed to help students think about the importance of analyzing the speaking situation before they deliver a presentation. By analyzing a presidential inaugural they can get a sense of how important this practice is.

Instructions: Your task is to go to the following website on Presidential Inaugurals <www.re-quest.net/history/inaugurals/> and select an address that you might be interested in. After you have made your selection, you should read the speech and then answer two questions:

a) Based on the President's comments, how do you think he analyzed himself as a speaker during the development of the speech?

b) Based on the President's comments, how do you think he envisioned the makeup of the audience for his speech?

Exercise 2

Goal: This activity is designed to provide students with an opportunity to find health information and use it to practice writing a specific purpose statement. This should help reinforce the importance of the work that should go into every presentation.

Instructions: You have been asked to give a speech to your former high school class on some issue of health care. Using the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's website <www.cdc.gov> as your guide, come up with a specific purpose statement that you could use to give your speech. Your topic should be selected based on how well you perceive the audience will accept this information.