Thien Christian Nguyen

Prep #5
Preparing to Participate: Chapter 7

Advanced Information Seeking

1. Define advanced information seeking skill set.
- Advance information seeker and consumer involves being to find appropriate sources, analyze the
material and content, evaluate the credibility and relevance of the sources, and integrate those sources
ethically and legally through a variety of techniques.
- To place this in the context of public speaking, you need to develop the abilities to:
Determine what information you need
Access information effectively and efficiently
Evaluate information critically
Use and incorporate information ethically and legally
2. How can becoming an advanced information seeker and information literate help you, as a consumer,
make decisions?
- I think being advanced information seeker and information literate help me, as a consumer, because of
the following:
(1) It will help me locate the important information in any text or speech to gain a more detailed
and bigger picture about the topic is being discussed.
(2) It teaches me how to distinguish credible sources from untrustworthy ones, to make an
evaluation whether the piece of information is accurate and unbiased, and also to make an
informed decision based on legitimate sources.
Developing a Research Strategy
3. Describe the three main steps in developing a successful research strategy.
- Three main steps in developing a successful research strategy.
(1) Create Research Questions: This is the process of thinking about your topic. What do you
want to know? What might your audience like to know? For example, if your speech topic
explored the topic of Syrian refugees, you might pose the following research questions
o Is USs pledge to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees economically realistic and historically
reasonable?
o What are the responsibilities of European countries and US after taking in the refugees?
o How big and intensive is the social impact on this years Syrian diaspora on Europe?
(2) Generate a List of Symptoms
o Generate a list of potential search terms based on the key concepts of your topic; focused
search terms aid you in connecting with relevant and credible sources.
Based on the questions proposed above, my list of potential search terms include:
Syrian refugees, US pledge, social impact, FiveThirtyEight (fact-tank website to
provide accurate and well-researched data).
(3) Search Information Resources.
o Information resources are where you can find the resources made available to the public.
These resources can contain a variety of types of supporting materials that you can use
for your speech.
Library catalogs is a search engine that provides access to this distinctive
collection of information that belongs to a particular library. TCU Library
catalogs are available at the site or online.
Databases is a collection of information that is stored and organized in a very
structured way. Depends on your topic, you will have to find databases that
contain information related to what are you going to cover. Some of the common
databases JSTOR, Access World News
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Thien Christian Nguyen

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Open Web: There are many different types of information sources available for
free on the Internet. These sources include, but are not limited to current news,
government information, editorials, etc.
4. How does each part of the process help you to develop your speech topic?
- I believe that the step of create research question will help me narrow down my topic to a number of
questions that are interesting to the audience and at the same time, practical to in-depth research. The
second step is also an important step in developing my speech topic because the terms will help provide
the better look at what information about my topic is available and more importantly, how other people
reacted to the same or similar topics. Choosing information resources is crucial to the process as well. The
type of speech, its level of formality and its requirement greatly determine what type of resources we can
incorporate into your speech.
Incorporating Supporting Materials
5. List and define the five types of supporting material.
- There is a number of different types of supporting material to gather information related to your topic.
The most effective presentations incorporate a mix of supporting materials. There are five types of
supporting material:
Books: Books cover virtually any topic. Their lengths provides a lot of information, typically
contain historical information. It is worthwhile to keep in mind that books often take years to get
published so their information might be outdated.
Journals articles are written by scholars in an academic or professional field and cover research in
that field. These research are completed first-handed by scholars and be accepted by an editorial
board of experts. Because of these characteristics, these articles are in-depth and extremely
credible.
Magazines include articles on various popular interest topics and current events. Magazine
articles are written for people who are not specialists on a topic and therefore, can be helpful to
inform an audience who are unfamiliar with the topic
Newspapers/News sources: Its offer you news feeds and recent information. They can written on
international, national or local levels and their credibility are vary based on its reputation and its
mission is transmitting information to their readers.
Government documents cover important public policy issues and include items created by
government agencies.
6. What types of support material have you used in the past? What types would you like to consider now?
Which ones will be best for your topic?
- The types of support material I have used in the past are journal articles, well-written and well-research
magazine articles, news sources using statistics to back up their articles, and government documents,
including opinions to the courts, Supreme Courts majority opinions.
- I consider to use the same types of support material I have been using since last semester because (1) I
am used to gathering these types of material at the library and on the Internet and (2) these materials are
concise, clear and extremely trustworthy.
- In my opinion, since my next speech is informative speech, the information I am going to provide must
be credible, and more importantly, objective and accurate. Therefore, journal entries and news source with
data will be best for my topic.
Evaluating Supporting Materials
7. What should you consider when selecting and incorporating support material for your speech?
- Are the Statistics Representative? A representative sample is a critical measure of the reliability and
validity of statistics. To be representative, a sample must be similar to the population from which it was
taken. For example, I strongly believe that my Speech class accurately represents the entire population of
TCUs body regarding the proportion of men and women, the diversity and their memberships on campus.

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- Are the Items Being Compared in Analogies Similar? The analogies you use to support your ideas
should compare cases that share similar characteristics.
o Example: The Syrian diaspora created a huge social and political impact throughout
Europe, which is similar to the Palestinian diaspora resulted from Israels creation in
1948.
o The two events are similar to each other by scope and their impacts on the society.
- Are the Facts Verifiable? It is important to ask whether you can find the same fact in more than one
source.
o Example: President Obama, [], has told his administration to take in at least 10,000
displaced Syrians over the next year. (New York Times)
o Since the fact is extracted from the Presidents speech, it is verifiable and can easily
found on different newspaper and news sources
- Are the Examples Relevant, Typical and Vivid? It is important to use examples that are relevant to the
claim that they are supporting.
Typicality assesses the extent to which your example is normal. Exceptional cases are rarely
persuasive to audience members.
o Example: Yahoo! makes a profit from Web advertising is an atypical example because
the very small percentage of website will make enough money from advertising to offset
their expenses.
- Is the Source Identified and Credible? It is important to consider the credibility of your sources in your
speech because it directly related to your credibility.
o Example: On the topic of Syrian diaspora, the article on BuzzFeed written by one of its
authors might not be the best source to include in your speech because the content of this
website is not peer-reviewed and can be greatly exaggerated for the websites interests.
- Is the Source Biased? A source is biased when it provides an opinion that is so slanted to one perspective
that is not objective or fair.
o Example: Political websites can be greatly biased because of their agendas and the beliefs
of the investors. The interpretation of the news from FOX and ABC can be biased since
these news channels are historically related to the agenda of Republican and Democratic
Party, respectively.
- Is the Information Timely? Outdated information is not credible; therefore, it can affect your own
credibility as a speaker.
o Example: The speech that advocated the legalization of gay marriage in the United States
may be completely irrelevant if the Supreme Court has already passed the law regarding
this topic.
8. What are the implications for using support material that may violate one of these considerations?
- The biggest implication of violating one of these considerations is that it will minimize your credibility
as a speaker. The second implication is that the violation in any of these consideration will decrease the
quality of your speech and directly (or indirectly) make your topic irrelevant or outdated. This leads to the
third implication, which involves the decrease in audiences attention and interest in your speech.
Documenting Supporting Materials
9. What information should be included in an oral citation?
- In the oral citation, you should include information about author, statement about credibility, publish
date, relevant information about source (title of the journal, magazine, etc).
10. Why is it important to provide the audience with an oral citation?
- It is important to provide the audience with an oral citation because of these following reasons:
(1) Plagiarism is a serious ethical offence that could result in a failing grade or expulsion for
college.
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(2) This step establishes the credibility and reliability of your supporting material.

Preparing to Participate: Chapter 7

Answer the following questions for your informative speech topic to develop a research strategy.
1. From your general topic, what are your research questions? What, specifically, do you want to talk
about? What do you think the audience will be interested in hearing about?
- General topic: Syrian refugees:
- Research questions:

Is USs pledge to take in 10,000 Syrian refugees economically realistic and historically
reasonable?

What are the responsibilities of European countries and US after taking in the refugees?

How big and intensive is the social impact on this years Syrian diaspora on Europe?

- I think my audience will interested to hear the impact of Syrian diaspora on Europe.
2. Brainstorm various terms that can be used to describe your topic.
Based on the questions proposed above, my list of potential search terms include: Syrian refugees, US
pledge, social impact, FiveThirtyEight (fact-tank website to provide accurate and well-researched data).
3. What sources are most appropriate to use given your topic? Do they answer your research questions?
Do they address the needs/concerns of your audience? Are these sources credible, timely, or free of bias?
- I consider the following sources to be most appropriate to use:

News articles from FiveThirtyEight the fact-tank website that creates analysis based on hard
statistic. This source captures and summarizes the event to provide my audience some
background information. It is credible, timely and free of bias.

Peer-review on the social impact of large-scale immigration on recipient countries in the history.
This source will offer in-depth analysis on these impacts. It is credible and free of bias.
Media Interaction: Chapter 7

1. According to the website, what should every writer (speaker) know about statistics? Why?
- It is important for every writer to know that even though numbers are powerful, one cannot accept them
as gospel, without ever question their veracity or appropriateness
2. How can individuals avoid getting "duped" by numbers?
- You can ask yourself the following hard questions to avoid getting duped by numbers.
Does your evidence come from reliable sources? Because there are many ways statistics can be
played with and misrepresented in order to produce a desired outcome.
What is the datas background? Because these questions help you orient yourself possible biases
or weakness in the date you are reading. The goal is making any biases explicit, ir order to more
accurately interpret the evidence.
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Thien Christian Nguyen

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Are all data reported? Because a reliable source should not exclude data that contradicts or
weakens the information presented.
Have the date been interpreted correctly? Because it is normal that authors can use perfectly good
statistic to come up with perfectly bad interpretation. This question also encourages you to
interpret the statistics yourself to avoid any inaccuracy or mistake made by the authors.

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