For the following main ideas that will be used to develop a speech, write a specific purpose statement, a central idea, and give examples of three types of appropriate supporting material for the topic. I. Low-carbohydrate diets are not well balanced. II. Low-carbohydrate diets have not been proven to be effective. III. Low-carbohydrate diets have been proven to be unsafe.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

(Student examples may vary.) Specific purpose: at the end of my speech, my audience should believe that low-carbohydrate diets are harmful.
Central idea: Low-carbohydrate diets are harmful to your health.
Supporting material might include statistics on as how many people are using the diet, or how much money is spent on the diets annually. If statistics can be found on how many people lose weight, how much, and how long they keep it off, they would be effective. In order to make the speech more interesting to the audience, the speaker might find illustrations that consist of people who have stories about the diet, or a hypothetical illustration of a person struggling to stay on the diet. Expert testimony of medical doctors or medical researchers might be effective to make the arguments believable. Lay testimony might help make the arguments clear or identifiable for the audience.