This document provides guidance on delivering a persuasive oral presentation. It emphasizes the importance of engaging the audience from the beginning through the use of stories, jokes, questions or other attention-grabbing techniques. The tone should be carefully controlled and transition smoothly between emotional, moderate and rational. Effective delivery is also stressed, including memorizing content, maintaining eye contact and practicing in front of others. The overall message is that persuasive presentations require strong openings, consistent tones and polished delivery to influence the audience.

1. Transition
Class 3
PERSUASIVE ORAL
PRESENTATION

2. Hook your
audience!

3. Your opening will need to:
 Engage your audience.
 Establish your issue.
 Establish your contention.
 Establish your approach.
 Establish your overall tone.

4. So how can you hook an
audience?
 Start with a story.
 Start with a misdirect.
 Start with a joke.
 Start with a series of rhetorical questions.
 Start with a metaphor.
 Start with a shocking or provocative
statement.

5. Tone: control it!
Don’t switch
drastically between
tones! A distressing,
emotive introduction
shouldn’t lead into a
humorous first
argument with only a
sentence in
between!
You need to
transition between
tones to ensure that
you are taking your
audience along for
the ride.

6. EMOTIVE MODERATE RATIONAL
Appropriate
Tones:
Passionate
Zealous
Alarmed
Outraged
Hostile
Scathing
Arrogant
Amused
Apologetic
Diplomatic
Approving
Disappointed
Sympathetic
Friendly
Calm
Controlled
Authoritative
Conservative
Formal
Modest
Educated
Particularly
Useful
Persuasive
Techniques:
• Anecdotes
• Emotive Language
• Appeals to fear,
etc.
• Exclusive language
• Hyperbole
• Attacks
• Rhetorical
questions
• Inclusive
language
• Appeals to family
values, etc.
• Humour
• Statistical
evidence
• Expert opinion
• Logic and reason
• Appeals to
economic
concerns, etc.
What is your approach?

7. Delivery
(it helps everything!)

8. Can I read my speech?
 No.
 No.
 No.
 No.
 No.
 No.

9. Can I read my speech?

10. Why not?
 Because it completely disengages your
audience.
 Because it kills your delivery.
 Because it destroys your structure.
 Because, if you don’t care enough about
what you’re saying to be able to memorise it
and look up at us, then don’t expect us to be
persuaded by you.

11. So what do I do?
 Try to memorise as much of your speech as
possible.
 Have cue cards, but use dot points only. They
are prompts (i.e. ‘cue’s’), not a script.
 Have palm cards that are discreet.
 Make eye contact with your audience for
most (90%+) of your speech.

12. Why do teachers keep going on
about eye contact?
 Eye contact isn’t the ‘holy grail’ that gives you
A+ delivery.
 Rather, it is an essential first step to unlocking
any sort of meaningful engagement with your
audience.
 Looking at your audience allows you to react
to them, and allows you to control things like
PACE, TONE, VOLUME, STANCE and HAND
GESTURES much more effectively.

13. So how do I improve my
delivery?
 Lots of rehearsal. LOTS.
 Practising in front of a mirror.
 Practising in front of an audience.
 Recording yourself and reviewing your
performance.
 Looking at high-quality examples of
delivery that you can emulate.

14. Always ask:
WHAT EFFECT WILL
THIS HAVE ON MY
AUDIENCE?

15. Remember:
TRY TO ESTABLISH THE
MEDIA CONTEXT OF
YOUR ISSUE EARLY ON.

16. Holiday Homework
1. Get your persuasive oral presentations
ready for the first day back!
You can email me with questions, but remember that I
CANNOT view or comment upon completed drafts of
speeches.

17. Holiday Homework
2. Read and/or view ALL of the texts for this
year AT LEAST ONCE.

18. Holiday Homework
3. Begin annotating your texts.

19. Holiday Homework
4. Start to collect articles and ideas
surrounding ‘Encountering Conflict’.