Five-minute prepared article speech

Practicing both critical reading and oral communication skills is an important part of a Comm-B course. In this assignment you work on both of these skills by preparing and performing a five-minute speech to your discussion section, summarizing and commenting on one of the scholarly articles from your course reader.  You will first write out your ideas in a structured outline, then craft that written outline into a five-minute speech that you practice on video and finally perform live in discussion section.

Your TA will match you with one of the sixteen weekly scholarly articles in your course reader.   Refer to your discussion section's  board on the Discussions page to remind yourself which week is your turn to give a speech on this article.

Steps to follow

1. Read carefully and take notes.  Once you have learned which article you are summarizing in your speech, read it thoroughly at least twice.  The second time through, note any useful concepts or terms, any key claims or arguments, and any points where the author seems to nicely summarize their thoughts.  Also note any ideas you don't quite understand or names which aren't familiar!

2. Decide what you think about this article. This is more than just "do I believe the article or not."  Do you feel the topic of concern raised by the article is an important one?  Do you feel the concerns explored by the author are very specific and idiosyncratic to one specific situation or case, or are the author's concerns more generally applicable to a wide variety of situations and cases?  Do you feel the evidence provided by the author is convincing, ambiguous, or incomplete?  Does this article at least help you ask interesting questions about the way the world works that you would not have thought of before?

3. Summarize and evaluate the author's arguments and evidence.  What is the thesis, argument, or main point of the article?  How does the author attempt to argue for that thesis?  What kind of evidence does the author present?    Who does the author cite in the article as either supporting or challenging their position?  Write one paragraph summarizing the key arguments and evidence presented in the article.  

4. Do some background research on the author. Using Google or Wikipedia, find out where the article author works, what they do, what credentials they have, and what other books or articles they have recently written.  What makes them an expert on the topic of the article that you read?  In short, why should you believe them?  Write a second paragraph on the author's background and credentials.

5. Set the article in context.When was the article written?  Did it appear in a scholarly journal, a newspaper or magazine, or a book?  Why do you think it was published -- what were the circumstances of the time that made the editor think, "This is an essay worth bringing to the public"?  What is the reputation of the journal, newspaper, magazine, or book series that the piece appeared in -- does the outlet have a widely-held reputation or stated mission of advocating for a particular set of political, social, or cultural views?  This is also a good time to try to evaluate the "scholarly conversation" around this article: Who else has written about this issue?  Who does the author cite in the article as either supporting or challenging their position?  You want to get a rough idea of the scholarly conversation around this article.  Are the author's claims widely shared, or extremely controversial? Write a third paragraph on the context of the article's publication.

6. Identify key terms and concepts.   Scour the article for key terms and concepts from this article that might be useful later when you and your fellow students are writing your essay assignments.  Think about how you would define these terms or concepts in your own words.  Write a fourth paragraph identifying and defining at least two important terms or concepts from this article.

7. Propose discussion questions.  Finally, given your own reactions to the article and what you have discovered above, think about what kinds of questions would be helpful to spark student discussion about the article.  For example, does the author address any counter-arguments to their thesis, or acknowledge any evidence which might undermine their thesis?  If not, can you come up with any counter-arguments, or imagine any contrary evidence that one might search for, to challenge the author's thesis?  Write a fifth paragraph outlining and explaining two possible questions for discussion.  

8. Upload this five-paragraph speech draft to Canvas to demonstrate that you are prepared before discussion and to allow your TA to easily grade your work.  You should upload your written speech draft by 11:59pm Wednesday night before your Thursday discussion.