outline on outlining

Outline on Outlining

Header

Kepa M’Organized

Informative Speech

SPCH 1321

Core Elements

Element	Completion
Topic	Outlining
Intended Audience	Undergraduate college students in a study skills development seminar.
Specific Purpose	My purpose is to inform undergraduate college students at Brookhaven College about the uses of outlining.

Outline

Introduction: Start with “I;” add four more “I’s” and you have “V;” two “V’s” and you have “X.” What in the world does all this mean? Well, had I gone on much longer you would have decided I suffering from heat stroke or I was talking about Roman numerals. Roman numerals aren’t used much in everyday life—except to designate the Super Bowl currently being played. Some of us are familiar with Roman numerals because we learned to outline using what’s called the Harvard Style of outlining. There are other forms of outlines, thankfully, because the experience of the learning the Harvard Style outline may have proved so tedious that some of us forgot it as quickly as we learned it. In general, an outline is a document that divides a subject into major topic and subtopics and provides an easily recognizable pattern to see the relationships and hierarchy of the topics. Outlining can be a helpful way to organize your complex thoughts into manageable form. Today we will look at three uses of outlining: first—preparing a speech; second—organizing a project; third—studying a textbook.

I. Speech Outlines

A. Jo Sprague and Douglas Stuart, The Speaker’s Handbook, “The speech outline is an indispensable tool of speech organization.” (Sprague and Stuart)

1. Reasons

2. Enables organization

3. Insures coherent development of your speech

B. Practical suggestions

1. Create a full-sentence outline

2. Make notes in abbreviated form for a speaking outline.

C. Extemporaneous speaking—speaking from an outline

II. Creating a checklists

A. The Checklist Manifesto,

1. Atul Gawande, surgeon, tasked by the World Health Organization to reduce post-operative infection around the world.

2. Focus: preventable errors

a. Exponential increase in know-how has created a problem that people are making basic mistakes.

b. People cannot always follow through on routine tasks and investigate new problems.

c. Investigated other complex activities like flying and large building construction and discovered the prevalence of checklists--list that divide complex tasks into grouped and sequences subtasks. (Gawande)

3. Outlining is incredibly helpful way to think through the complexity of a problem and create a checklist

B. Scenario

1. Kim

a. engineering student

b. senior design project: create a product to install in vehicles that automatically rolls up the windows when:

i. it's raining,

ii. night falls,

iii. crack the windows when the interior temperature is above 100 degrees.

c. Use an outline software program

i. OneNote

ii. OmniOutliner

d. Delineates the various areas

i. safety,

ii. logistics,

iii. efficiency and

iv. city codes

Kim’s Sample Outline

1. Sensing

0. Moisture sensing

0. photon sensing (for loss of day light);

1. placement of sensors on vehicle

1. functional

1. aesthetics

1. Vehicle Choice

2. SUV's

2. compact cars;

1. communication

3. sensors to the servo-motors that make the windows move

3. wireless communication (keyless) between servos and the driver/owner.

1. Power (shouldn't take much - can tap into battery like the radio does)

1. Build and Test  

III. Studying complex material

A. Outlining reading material is like “reverse engineering” writing

B. Helps clarify what’s most important

C. Makes studying easier

So, we have seen how an outline can help people develop speeches, create checklists, and study complex material. So now, I hope you have a new use for Roman numerals besides counting the number of Super Bowls we’ve had.

Works Cited Gawande, Atul. The Checlist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Metropolitan Books, 2009. Sprague, Jo and Douglass Stuart. The Speaker's Handbook. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1988. Book.