So let me give you an example of when this happened that I can remember.
So I taught a lot of classes and years ago I was co-teaching a class,
so I didn't have to do every lecture.
And it was a large lecture class so we had a couple hundred students and
we would bring in guess speakers.
So one time we were doing this we brought in a guest speaker.
So I'm sitting in the back of the room watching the class, watching the speeches.
And so we bring in this guest speaker and
the speaker set up at the front of the room and there are two overheads.
And on one overhead there is a picture of the Mediterranean Basin,
that was the region that was going to be discussed.
And on the other overhead, written in purple ink,
I remember the color for some reason, there were these 17 points.
17 points that the speaker was going to cover in their 50 minute talk, 17 points.
So sitting in the back of the room, here's what I see.
I see students file in and make their way up the steps, they sit down, and
they look up.
They finally see what the talk is, they see 17 points, they're like nope.
So they get their laptop out, they open up, they start Facebooking,
you know ear buds go in.
They're gone, they might as well not of come.
And then, so that is fair number of people,
I saw lots of people just groaning when they saw 17 points.
But then I am going to guess may be ten percent of the class that I saw
sitting in the back of the room, there's doors at the front.
They would walk in, look up at the 17 points, and be like, nope, not today.
And then they would leave, they just skipped class all together and
that is not what we want to have happen, right?
We don't want that, so for longer speeches, I think in terms of grouping.
I still want everything broken up into units of two to five, so
I'll break up a big speech into multiple small ones.
And that's generally what I think should have happened in that 17 point speech.
There were really only about three or four key ideas there.
So lemme show you an example of this.
Here's a bit of lecture I do on Plato's work the Gorgias.
So each key point here, each Roman numeral here,
is a claim that I explain in terms of the textual support in the book.
So each key point here probably runs,
I'd guess about five to ten minutes depending on how in depth I go.
The whole talk's probably about 75 minutes.
So this is an entire day's class.
And then at the start of the lesson, what I do is I preview the big three, you know?
Plato's key terms,
his concern with definitions, his specific definition of rhetoric.
And then once I get into a big chunk I preview the smaller ones.
So what I don't want is I don't want to tell the class,
today we're going to talk about the nine important points in Plato's Gorgias.
If I do, I might as well say to them like,
I'm going to start talking, but go ahead and start playing on your phone now.
Please ignore me, ignore me for the next 75 minutes.
But if I say that we're going to talk about three big ideas in Plato's Gorgias,
well, you know that’s more manageable, that’s less intimidating.
So I want to break up speeches into two to five key points.
Now that's not a hard and fast rule, if I need to, I can deviate from that, but for
me it's a good starting point.
Obviously if you're speaking on the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,
have seven points.
It would be weird if you did it any other way.
So in sum, picking the right number of points is tough.
When talking about rhetoric in the Phaedrus, not the Gorgias,
Plato says that we should cleave nature at it's joints like a good butcher.
Dividing speeches and ideas into appropriate parts.
Now this is tough because it requires skills, experience, and judgement.
I wish there were a perfect rule for the right number of key points in each and
every speech, that would be great.
But there's not, it depends on your content.
Now, that said, having two to five key points,
that's a pretty good starting point.
[MUSIC]
Dr. Matt McGarrityPrincipal Lecturer
