Objective:

As students begin to search for information to give their persuasive speeches they need to understand what good evidence is and what isn't. This assignment is to help them understand what kind of information they need to use in order to build their credibility.

Preset Activity:

Have students come up with something that they think they could represent and write-up why they should represent their items. Most likely students will pick something that they like to do (i.e. mountain bikes, the students rides mountain bikes). Have students tell what their thing is that they should represent, and why they should represent these things. They can pick a product, idea, or anything they would like.

Lesson:

There are different things that a message and persuader must have in order to be effective. Building credibility is the most important aspect of persuading. These are the elements that a persuader must provide if they wish to persuade. The class picked things that they knew about or liked. They did this because they could claim some sort of expertise in that thing.
 

Speaker Attributes: Trust, Expertise, and Dynamism.

• Dynamism is something that you can't really teach, it's something you either have or don't have. (Bill Clinton has dynamism, it is suggested that is how he became the president, with his dynamism.) You may be able to build your own dynamism.
• Expertise and Trust can be taught. There are things a speaker can do in order to make others believe they have these attributes.

• Reliability - Evidence should be drawn from sources that have been proven to be correct many times in the past.
• Expertise - Evidence should be drawn from sources Having a background of knowledge in relevant information.
• Objectivity - Evidence should be taken from sources who hold a fair and undistorted view on a question.
• Consistency - Evidence should agree with other sources and should be consistent with itself.
• Recency - Evidence should be based on the most current information available.
• Relevance - The facts and evidence presented should be relevant to the claim that is made.
• Access - Evidence should be drawn from sources who have observed first-hand the matter being disputed.
• Accuracy - Citations should be complete and the sources of evidence fully identified.

Reflection: Complete Test of Evidence handout.