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Once you have solidified your position in your thesis statement, you want to back up your thesis with various supporting ideas and examples.
There are several ways you can support your claims while adding variety and interest to the overall story of your speech.
Using exposition is a great way to get your audience all on the same playing field. When you use an expository approach, you're carefully laying out all of the background information your audience needs to know to understand your point.
As you notice commonalities between audience members, the audience and your topic, and you and your audience, appeal to those commonalities to not only establish rapport but also to more easily persuade them to your thesis and claims. Your audience is more likely to trust and believe you if they share something in common with you and your topic.
Your audience may already feel a certain way about your topic. Depending on what you're trying to argue, you may want to go ahead and appeal to that consensus. Just be careful—you don't want to bore your audience by "preaching to the choir."
One of the best ways to back up your claims—besides cold, hard facts and data—is to share a personal story or anecdote. Anecdotes show your audience that you personally connect to your subject, making you more believable and personable.
Anecdotes are a perfect opportunity to lighten the mood and add some humor as appropriate to your speech.
You might have a particularly complex subject or thesis. In these instances, it's helpful to break it down into its simplest parts. By breaking your information down into bite-sized chunks, your audience may have an easier time following your train of thought or logic.
There are many different types of supporting evidence. What you choose will vary depending on your topic; however, it’s important to always include a balance of different kinds of support to fully engage your audience.
Statistics, facts, and figures might seem like the most credible, but they can be boring or hard to understand. Including a story, analogy, or diagram will help bring this hard evidence to life and make it more compelling.
Consider who is in your audience when choosing your support. How familiar with your topic are they? What sort of evidence do they need to hear? The most persuasive speeches are well balanced, including elements that appeal to both logic and emotion.
EXAMPLE
If you’re giving a speech about the benefits of a new weight loss product, you might include personal testimonies. People relate well to this kind of anecdotal evidence, but most people also want you to provide well-researched proof about the product with facts and statistics. You need to provide both types of support for your speech to be effective.Here are some common types of supporting materials. Following this section are some examples of how supporting materials might be used in real-life situations.
| Type of Supporting Materials | Description |
|---|---|
| Data and statistics | Data are individual pieces of factual information used for analysis. Statistics are the result of data analysis. |
| Scientific evidence | These are statistics or facts proven to be true through rigorous scientific methods. |
| Case studies | These are in-depth examinations of an event with a real-world context. |
| Expert research | These are opinions given by a person with a special skill or mastery of a subject. |
| Tables, graphs, and diagrams | Graphs visualize the relationship between different quantities. Tables use columns and rows to organize and compare facts. Diagrams can zero in on a specific focus of interest. |
| Stories and anecdotes | Anecdotes tend to be shorter than stories, but both paint a picture in the mind of the listener. They allow the audience to visualize what’s being said. They can come from a variety of sources, including personal experience. |
| Testimonials | These are statements supporting a particular truth, fact, or claim. |
| Pictures and imagery | These are visual tools that help communicate concepts by tapping into sensory memory. |
| Analogies | Analogies are used to link unfamiliar ideas with common ones, making complex or abstract ideas easier to understand. |
EXAMPLE
Michelin tires ran a commercial that featured a baby sitting in a Michelin tire along with the slogan, “So much is riding on your tires.” Their advertising for the tires also included statistical data about the superiority and performance of the tires; however, using the baby proved to have the biggest impact on buyers because viewers remembered the baby and associated the tire with protecting their family.EXAMPLE
If you are giving a speech to a neighborhood group to promote a local nonprofit providing valuable resources to the community, you would want to include objective facts such as:EXAMPLE
If you’re communicating something complex or technical, you need to present it in a way your audience will understand and care about. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod in 2001, he could have introduced it this way:EXAMPLE
if you’re giving an update to inform your audience on how the move to a new IT network has improved customer service, you could include:EXAMPLE
To explain the importance of two genes, SNA-PK and p53, in protecting the body from cancer, Dr. Carl Anderson of Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York used an analogy. He compared the human genome to a great castle. In healthy cells, the castle stands strong, but as cancer develops, it quickly crumbles. DNA-PK and p53 are the crucial cornerstones that hold the castle up. When they are intact, we are safe, but when either goes wrong, the castle starts to collapse.Supporting materials are necessary to turn an opinion into a persuasive argument. Being able to say something and have others immediately accept it as truth is a privilege afforded few speakers in few settings. In the vast majority of cases, audiences will not just want to hear the view you are asking them to accept but also why they should accept it.
Supporting materials come in many different forms, from scientific evidence to personal experiences. Each is useful in different situations, but all are used to cause the audience to stop rejecting your idea as foreign and instead internalize it as truth.
Not all supporting evidence, however, is created equally.
EXAMPLE
Scientific evidence is vital for settings such as an exam. Appealing to the emotions of the professor is unlikely to yield a positive result, while articulating and analyzing the correct facts is. Scientific evidence is used to prove that a set of facts or conditions is present in the world.In other instances, more experiential evidence will help you connect to the audience on a personal level. Personal experiences and anecdotes are great for establishing an emotional connection with the audience. Being able to connect emotionally helps to mitigate some of the boredom that often accompanies appeals that are just facts.
Regardless of the type you use, supporting materials are effective only if they fulfill your burden of proof. If the supporting materials are not delivered in a way that advances that goal, they are not deployed effectively.
EXAMPLE
If you are speaking in front of a large crowd and use a chart printed out on a sheet of paper, it doesn't really matter what the chart says. If the audience cannot see the chart, then it will not be understood or effective. The same goes for other types of supporting materials; they are only effective if they can convince the audience.Supporting materials are the difference between an opinion and a convincing argument. Supporting materials are effective only if they help to persuade the audience. The type of supporting materials that should be deployed depends on the following:
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