EXERCISES

1.  Make a list of five topics of which you know so little that you would have to secure information by interviews.

2.  Of these choose two, define your opinion or feeling in each, and tell to whom you could apply for material.

3.  Choose one dealing with some topic of current interest in your locality; define your own opinion or feeling, and tell to whom you could apply for material.

4.  Explain exactly why you name this person.

5.  Prepare a set of questions to bring out material to support your position.

6.  Prepare some questions to draw out material to dispose of other views.

7.  Interview some person upon one of the foregoing topics or a different one, and in a speech present this material before the class.

8.  In general discussion comment on the authorities reported and the material presented.

Reading.  The best way and the method most employed for gathering material is reading.  Every user of material in speeches must depend upon his reading for the greatest amount of his knowledge.  The old expression “reading law” shows how most legal students secured the information upon which their later practice was based.  Nearly all real study of any kind depends upon wide and careful reading.

Reading, in the sense here used, differs widely from the entertaining perusal of current magazines, or the superficial skimming through short stories or novels.  Reading for material is done with a more serious purpose than merely killing time, and is regulated according to certain methods which have been shown to produce the best results for the effort and time expended.

The speaker reads for the single purpose of securing material to serve his need in delivered remarks.  He has a definite aim.  He must know how to serve that end.  Not everyone who can follow words upon a printed page can read in this sense.  He must be able to read, understand, select, and retain.  The direction is heard in some churches to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.”  This is a picturesque phrasing of the same principles.

You must know how to read.  Have you often in your way through a book suddenly realized at the bottom of a page that you haven’t the slightest recollection of what your eye has been over?  You may have felt this same way after finishing a chapter.  People often read poetry in this manner.  This is not really reading.  The speaker who reads for material must concentrate.  If he reaches the bottom of a page without an idea, he must go back to get it.  It is better not to read too rapidly the first time, in order to save this repetition.  The ability to read is trained in exactly the same way as any other ability.  Accuracy first, speed later.  Perhaps the most prevalent fault of students of all kinds is lack of concentration.