Revise the article and complete the outline

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Informative Outline Example – El Salvador

*Topic: El Salvador

*General Purpose: To inform

*Specific Purpose: By the end of my speech, my audience will have learned basic information about El Salvador such as its history, most popular dish, and unique communication behaviors.

El Salvador: Tiny, But Mighty!

I. Introduction

A. Attention Getter: There is only one country in the entire world that carries the name of Jesus Christ and that would be the Central American country of El Salvador, which, in English, is “The Savior”.

B. Thesis Statement-Today, I’m going to share with you all how the tiny, yet mighty El Salvador has a unique and beautiful culture.

C. Credibility Statement-I have a lot of knowledge of El Salvador as both my parents are from there and I have also done a lot of research about the country for school projects in the past.

D. Preview your main points - First, I’m going to tell you some information about the country itself. Second, I’m going to tell you about the culture of El Salvador. And lastly, I’m going to tell you about some of their unique communication behaviors.

Transition statement: Let me begin by giving you some background about El Salvador.

II. Body

A. With a population of just over 6 million people, El Salvador is the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America.

1. The capital city of El Salvador is San Salvador.

a) The country is split up into 14 departamentos, or departments.

b) These departments are the Salvadorian version of our states.

2. From 1980 to 1992, El Salvador experienced a brutal Civil War between the government and rebels from the left.

a) One of the immediate effects of the war was a great influx of Salvadorian immigrants into countries such as Mexico, Australia, the United States, and Canada.

b) According to the United States Central Intelligence Agency World Fact Book about El Salvador which was last updated on July 30th 2015, an astounding 20% of the country’s population lives abroad.

c) One of the lasting effects of this war has been the remaining violence and tension in the country, as described by the authors Linda Cooper and James Hodge in their article “Violence, culture of impunity still plague El Salvador,” which appeared in the May/June 2015 issue of the National Catholic Reporter.

Transition statement: Now that I have given you some background about El Salvador, I am now going to tell you about some of the culture.

B. I did research on the CultureGrams website, overseen by the ProQuest LLC Company to learn more about the culture of the country. In the section entitled “El Salvador,” it stated that the food from El Salvador is not as spicy as other Latin American countries.

1. The defining dish of the country is pupusas.

a) The best way to describe it is cheese and your choice of meat or vegetables enwrapped in a hand-made tortilla.

b) My personal favorite is queso con loroco, or cheese with the flower of a plant named loroco that is grown in El Salvador.

c) This dish is accompanied by curtido, a combination of cabbage and other vegetables that have been lightly fermented, along with salsa.

2. It is a joke among many Salvadorians that the way you can distinguish a Salvadorian from a non-Salvadorian is by the way they eat their pupusas.

a) Most people that grew up exposed to the Salvadorian culture eat pupusas with their hands, without using forks or knives.

b) It does get a little messy so it is important to have a lot of napkins available. However, it is definitely worth the experience and combination of delicious flavors.

Transition statement: Now that I have told you about some of the cultural aspects of El Salvador, I will tell you about some of the very unique communication styles of Salvadorians.

C. The dominant language of El Salvador is Spanish. However, Salvadorians definitely add their own flair to the language (CIA World Factbook).

1. One of the ways they do this is by speaking in something called “vosero.”

a) This is when the informal “tu” is substituted with the even more informal “vos.”

b) In conjunction with this, either the accent on the following verb also changes or the conjugation of the verb completely changes.

c) For example, instead of saying “Tu hablas,” which means “You speak,” you would say, “Vos hablás.” Can you tell how both the pronoun and the accent change?

2. The second way that distinguishes the communication in this country is the use of “caliche”, which is the name for the type of Spanish spoken in El Salvador.

a) It consists of different verbs, phrases, and nouns that are unique to the people of the country.

b) Some common examples are: bolado which means object or thing, chucho which means dog, puchica which expresses anger or frustration, and cabal which means exactly.

Transition statement: Now that I have told you information about El Salvador’s history and culture, let me conclude.

III. Conclusion

A. Summary of main points - First I gave you some background information about El Salvador. Second, I told you about the country’s most famous dish and how to eat it. Finally, I told you about the distinct way that Salvadorians speak.

B. If you ever get the chance to visit the beautiful country of El Salvador, I highly encourage you to do it!

Works Cited

“El Salvador.” CIA World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency, n.d. Web. 2 Aug. 2015

"El Salvador." CultureGrams Online Edition. ProQuest, 2015. Web. 29 Jul 2015.

Cooper, Linda, and James Hodge. "Violence, Culture Of Impunity Still Plague El Salvador." National Catholic Reporter 51.16 (2015): 7-8. Academic Search Complete. Web. 29 July 2015.