You are speaking to a room full of your peers, both apathetic and bored with the constant pressure to recycle. Your goal is to encourage at least a minimal effort toward recycling

Question

Discuss how you would go about selecting your motivational appeals and how you would incorporate them into Monroe's motivated sequence.
What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The successful answer will identify several appeals pertinent to an apathetic and bored group of college students, explaining why the speaker thinks these appeals will be effective. It will then detail how he/she would develop this persuasive message in the form of Monroe's motivated sequence. Specific appeals might include acquisition/savings if recycling can generate cash, such as recycling aluminum cans; pride in so far as this university could become a leader in such recycling efforts; fear if the university intends to increase fees in order to pay for the waste generated by not recycling, and so forth. In the motivated sequence special attention will have to be payed to capturing the audience's attention and demonstrating the relevance of the problem to them. Once convinced that the problem is significant and relevant, strong visualization will be needed to generate action. Realistically, the speaker should not expect action from an apathetic audience and may want to focus on simply generating agreement on the need for recycling.