Hey!
(There are different techniques for approaching this, this is just an idea
) Write out your speech, considering your purpose and key elements to include. Make sure to start it with a hook. Include directions to yourself (eg. point to key point on graph) Then try to reduce it by maybe about a third - this should reduce the extra stuff you don't need and force you to focus on what's important. I'd recommend making any backing materials (eg. powerpoint) after you know what's in your speech. Try to keep any slides you use from being cluttered or text heavy, otherwise they'll distract from your speaking.
Edit: included an example of a three minute speech
the task was to give an informative and engaging science speech to a non-science audience
(feel free to ignore my weird punctuation to myself, this was just me figuring out how I wanted to say it)
Do you know where to turn to get home?/
What if you were blindfolded\
Could you find your way then?/
We might be able to (.) if we were sea turtles.
//*reveal turtle prop*
In the 1980s scientists discovered that sea turtles return to their birthplace to nest/
Travelling ^thousands of kilometers across ^unmarked ocean
Simply to go home\
But they didn’t know how.
30 years prior/
biologists discovered that salmon find home\
by detecting the ^chemical ^fingerprint/
of their birthplace\
(.) They thought that this might be the answer for sea turtles
^How would the chemical trail be clear thousands of kilometers out?
^Why were turtles equally able to navigate when the current prevented the waters of home from flowing to them?
The evidence didn’t\ and doesn’t/ support chemistry being the answer.
We have ^now discovered that sea turtles have an in-built compass/
*slide open turtle prop, revealing it to be a compass*
They detect and respond to the magnetic field generated by Earth itself\
In 2007 the first field evidence for this was collected\
By attaching magnets to the heads of some sea turtles and not others/
- and ^most of them did manage to arrive home\
But the ones with magnets took longer, less direct routes
This suggests that they may have experienced a state ^usually associated with maths or politics - that is, a state of confusion.
Multiple experiments have also been conducted outside of the field/
And in ^controlled environments\
One setup that has been used is to have a turtle in a small pool wearing a harness tethered by string.
This tethering system is important, as it allows for ^computer ^tracking
of the direction of swimming.
Another thing it does, is it means that no matter how much the turtles twisted and turned or tried, they weren’t going to get anywhere - an effect which also holds true for arguments held in the comment sections of social media.
One researcher noted “ They did not appear to notice that they were not making any progress”
And this lead us to why research into turtle navigation is so important.
We don’t know how sea turtles detect longitude and latitude, only that they do.
We know that to some extent the magnetic map is inherited, but not how much.
Maybe if we look at their genes in the right way we can learn about the Earth of their ancestors - before there were any humans
Or maybe we can travel forwards, not backwards,
and see the impacts of our actions on the ^survival of species more than 100 ^million years old
If they inherit the location of home\
we ^don’t ^know how to rehome them when the old beaches are no longer suitable
But what we ^do ^know
about turtle navigation\
is ^already informing conservation efforts.
When they crawl out of their nests turtles use a navigational aid familiar to humans - ^eyes - to find the water
They look for the brightest light - and the reflection of the sun or moon on the ocean brings them to safety.
Except that the brightest light can now come from us and our buildings
and the turtles are lead away from sanctuary to dehydration, predation, and often death.
This has been found to significantly impact turtle survival
But they’re only on the beach for a fraction of their life
So imagine the impacts that we could be having
that we may only know exist
once we look ^deeper into the largest portion of their life.
The hatching rates for sea turtles may be as low as 1-8%.
So if you see a sea turtle, don’t give it a torch to help it navigate
It ^definitely doesn’t need it
some of the feedback on that speech
- prop was good, but hard to see for some people ----> use large props, text etc if possible
- could've been more emotionally engaging
- could've mentioned relevant applications/conservation earlier to increase emotional engagement
- how compasses & magnetism relate could've been more clear
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Topic: Multimodal speeches!!! Help! (Read 822 times)