How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 162

In this speech, you want to persuade people to support a new campus-wide policy calling for zerotolerance of hate speech. Once you have shown the problem, you then explain to your audience that the
cause of the unnecessary confrontations and violence is prior incidents of hate speech. Lastly, you
argue that a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy could help prevent future unnecessary confrontations
and violence. Again, this method of organizing a speech is as simple as its name: problem-causesolution.
52.5 Comparative Advantages

The final method for organizing a persuasive speech is
called the comparative advantages speech format. The
goal of this speech is to compare items side-by-side
and show why one of them is more advantageous than
the other. For example, let’s say that you’re giving a
speech on which e-book reader is better:
Amazon.com’s Kindle or Barnes and Nobles’ Nook.
Here’s how you could organize this speech:
Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that the
Nook is more advantageous than the Kindle.

Main Points:
1.The Nook allows owners to trade and loan books to other owners or people who have downloaded
the Nook software, while the Kindle does not.
2.The Nook has a color-touch screen, while the Kindle’s screen is black and grey and noninteractive.
3.The Nook’s memory can be expanded through microSD, while the Kindle’s memory cannot be
upgraded.
As you can see from this speech’s organization, the simple goal of this speech is to show why one
thing has more positives than something else. Obviously, when you are demonstrating comparative
advantages, the items you are comparing need to be functional equivalents—or, as the saying goes, you
cannot compare apples to oranges.

161