Evaluating for Content

The COPE model of evaluation focuses on four areas – content, organization, presentation, and extras. It encourages you to think about the evaluation the same way the speaker thinks about his speech. This article focuses on the first of those four areas – content.

What Is Content?

Every speech has a purpose. An informative speech has facts. A persuasive speech has arguments. An entertaining speech has stories. Once you know what the purpose of the speech is, you can evaluate for content based on quality or value.

Content Quality

Evaluate quality of content based on the content itself. Try to determine if the content is accurate, consistent, and suits the speaker’s purpose. If the speaker is addressing a subject you aren’t familiar with, focus on whether the content appears to meet these criteria.

Accuracy is the critical measure of a speaker’s research. It generally applies to the informative aspects of a speech, but it can apply in other contexts as well. For example, a reading of “Casey at the Bat” which gives the “Wrong” score would still fail a test for accuracy. “Accurate” can be a relative term so you may want to give a speaker benefit of the doubt. A three-minute evaluation is not the place to argue the accuracy of information, but it would be fair to comment that a fact check might be in order.

Consistency measures the various facts and arguments against each other. If the points of a speech don’t feel related to you, they have failed your test for consistency. A special case of this would be where the presenter is trying to give both sides of a story – the facts are consistent because they address a single subject, but if a speaker is trying to persuade or sell this may not be in his own best interest and deserves a comment.

Just because something is true doesn’t make it in the speaker’s best interest to present it. A speaker may accurately quote the height of the Statue of Liberty and (consistently) mention its weight, but this information would not suit his purpose if the purpose of the speech was to convey the emotional impact of the first time he saw it. Persuasive speeches in particular need to address whether the information selected suits the speaker’s purpose.

Content Value

Value is a matter of personal interpretation, making it an important part of personalizing an evaluation. We aren’t usually examining value in financial terms – we’re trying to determine if the content is appropriate to the audience, serves some useful purpose, and if it is presented in an interesting way.

A speech needs to be appropriate to an audience. It’s easy to see that an R rated movie would not be appropriate for a young child, but there is more to it. A wonderful talk on geology might not be appropriate to an audience of physicians present to learn about diagnosis of disease. Since one purpose of a Toastmasters meeting is to help members prepare speeches for other events, this needs to be taken into account. If this is a speech intended for use elsewhere, you need to know the intended audience to evaluate appropriateness.

A useful speech depends on both the speaker and the listener. In broad terms, an informative speech should inform, an entertaining speech should entertain, and a persuasive speech should persuade. As always, life can get complicated. In giving a speech on three good reasons to vote for a school levy, a speaker may present a fact that convinces you to vote against it. This is useful in that it helped you to make a decision. Quoting facts everyone has heard, and packaging them in a way that changes no opinions, might not be useful.

An interesting speech is one that makes the audience glad it was present. If the goal is pure entertainment, interesting might mean enjoyable, fun, scary, or dramatic, If the goal is informing, interesting might mean educational or thought-provoking. Once more, you need to know the target audience – a speech intended to teach tax basics would be interesting to certain adult audiences but would be boring to a classroom of seventh graders.

Use Your Experience

As an evaluator, your job is to talk about your reactions. If the content of a persuasive speech doesn’t persuade you, you should acknowledge that. If the facts don’t make the speaker’s case, say so. If the speech brought to mind a personal experience that the speaker might use when giving the speech again, mention it. The very best evaluations I’ve ever heard used the evaluator’s experience to make strong suggestions to the speaker.

Praise Based on Content

Here is a partial list of items that might be used to praise a speech for its content:

• You found the content helpful, informative, entertaining or inspirational.
• The information presented was of value to you – explain how.
• The speaker correctly cited sources of information in quotes or resources.
  

Suggestions Based on Content

Here are a few areas where helpful suggestions might be based on content.

• The facts don’t make the speaker’s case – can you suggest other facts that would? Can you suggest arguments against a case that someone might bring up so the speaker can prepare for them?
• The speaker is trying to make a logical argument, but leaves a hole in the logic. When I’ve seen this happen, the speaker says he was running out of time and skipped a part. He may also say that he forgot a piece. Either way, a logic hole should be high on your list of suggestions to fix.
• Can you suggest a way to simplify what the speaker is presenting so it would work for a broader audience?
• Can you suggest specific reference materials where the speaker might get more information?
• The speaker should identify a quote or source of information and neglected to do so.

Conclusion

The content of a speech depends on its purpose. A speech must have content, and it is the content a speaker wants you to get from hearing the speech. That means there should always be something to say regarding content. Focus on your interpretation of it or how it affected you. Reciting the speech back isn’t an evaluation.