Essay Becoming Informed
Note: Keep in mind that you will need to assemble a small “audience” to listen to you for your assignment. More instructions can be found there—you might want to look
at them before finishing this lesson.
Once you have selected the topic you are interested in pursuing for your speaking activity in Lesson 8, identify at least two sources that have information relevant to
the topic. For instance, you might be interested in what can be done to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related automobile accidents or how Health Management
Organizations (HMOs) might be improved to assure that those in need of medical attention receive the care they need. For these two topics, Reader’s Guide to Periodical
Literature would probably point you to several articles in news magazines that would be relevant. You might also find potentially useful information by using one of
the search engines for accessing the Internet. However you go about locating the particular information on which you draw for this assignment, it is unlikely that it
will be available in a form that you could easily use in presenting a speech or participating in a discussion. It will be too lengthy, too detailed, too technical, or
the like. Your job is to reduce the information to a form that you could present in a speech or a discussion, such as a summary, a set of selected quotations, a review
of key ideas, a table, a chart, and so on. Before you do the reduction, however, you need to be convinced that you have good information. You also have an obligation
to present the best information possible to your audience (in the case of a speech) or to other group members (in the case of a discussion). Hence, you should study
the material very carefully and critically before you reduce it to what you consider to be usable form. To do this, you need to apply the kinds of questions on p. 390
of the assigned reading.
After you have located the information you would be willing to use, critically evaluated it, and condensed it to a presentable form, prepare a document in which you do
the following:
Indicate how you located the information.
Identify the sources; for example, John Jones, Accidents Don’t Just Happen, Harper & Row, 1997. Do not simply list Web addresses or titles.
Discuss the qualifications of the sources.
Review the means by which you evaluated the information.
Exhibit the form in which you would present the information in a speech or in a discussion; for example, in summary form, as a table, as a set of quotations, etc.
Do not say something such as, “I plan to use quotations.” You need to present some.
You should be able to do all of this in approximately 500 words
