Features

New to This Edition

Always the best support on the basics of public speaking --now even better. A Speaker’s Guidebook is known for its focus on the fundamentals, and this edition is no different by providing foundational help on organizing and outlining.

• New sample speech outlines in all formats. The seventh edition of A Speaker’s Guidebook now contains speeches outlined in each of the three outline formats: full sentence and key word outlines appear in Chapter 13, and a new phrase outline of a student speech organized in Monroe’s Motivational Sequence design appears in Chapter 26.
• Additional emphasis on organizational arrangements. A Speaker’s Guidebook contains two full chapters (12 and 26) on organizational arrangements, revised in this edition for increased clarity. Two comprehensive new tables further enhance student learning. In Chapter 12, "One Topic (A Speech About Immigration) Organized Six Ways" provides students with a concrete demonstration of how one topic can be organized using six different patterns, thus easing students’ entry into this sometimes daunting aspect of speechmaking. Chapter 24 contains a table correlating all sample speeches and speech excerpts in A Speaker’s Guidebook with the organizational pattern it uses.

The 7th Edition doubles down on the skills that make up the pillars of good speechmaking--listening, ethics, credibility, and persuasion--with accessible coverage that students can apply to their own speeches.

• The latest scholarship on listening. Fully revised in the last edition and made even more accessible in this one, Chapter 4, Listeners and Speakers stresses the centrality of listening in the communication act, the crucial role of selective perception and steps students can take to counter it, and reflects an effort to represent current scholarship on listening-processing strategies and approaches to the listening event published in the literature.
• Interactive communication ethics, updated with the foundations. The revised Chapter 5 retains its popular basic structure while offering student speakers tangible new tools with which to engage in ethical decision making. A newly revised overview of major ethical theories, each reflecting differing standards by which to distinguish ethical from non-ethical behavior in communication, 　enables students not just to read about what they "should" or "should not" do, but to reflect on and actively engage their own values when considering the role of ethics in the speechmaking process.
• New coverage on building speaker credibility. The seventh edition adds to existing coverage of classical theories of ethos and contemporary theories of speaker credibility with a new section in Chapter 24 on building credibility during a speech.
• Theory and practice of persuasion carefully streamlined to drive home core principles and demonstrate their application to building a persuasive speech. Persuasion lies at the heart of public speaking, but learning about it can be daunting for the first-time student. In three successive chapters, each carefully revised in this edition for increased accessibility and ever-more relevant examples, students learn about following: Classical and contemporary persuasive appeals, from ethos, pathos, and logos, to needs, motives, and routes of mental engagement (Chapter 24); constructing arguments using effective claims, evidence, and warrants that incorporate these appeals (Chapter 25); and choosing organizational patterns to maximize appeals for specific audiences (Chapter 26). New tables and dynamic figures provide students with the criteria they need to make effective choices.

• Focus on Business and Professional Presentations. The authors completely re-envisioned Chapter 30 with new coverage of business reports and proposals, bringing material in line with current practice.
• Even more Useful Coverage of Presentations in Other Courses. Using multidisciplinary feedback from experts, the authors have added new presentation types, omitted others, 　and reorganized material in Chapter 31, Presentations in Other Courses, providing students with precise guidelines on preparing specialized oral presentations assigned in science, mathematics, and technical courses, as well as courses on the social sciences, arts and humanities, education, and nursing and allied health.

A brand new professionally shot, video program in LaunchPad introduces students to the foundations of speech-making. These new videos discuss topics such as speech anxiety, outlining, and persuasive speaking with humor, and get students interested in these essential topic and thinking about applying their learning to their speeches. After students watch the videos in LaunchPad, critical thinking questions about each video are easily assignable for a great pre-made assignment.