the problem solution speech

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Problem-Solution Speech [Topics, Outline, Examples]

Jim Peterson has over 20 years experience on speech writing. He wrote over 300 free speech topic ideas and how-to guides for any kind of public speaking and speech writing assignments at My Speech Class.

In this article:

Problem-Solution Outline

Problem-solution examples, criminal justice, environment, relationships, teen issues.

What to include in your problem-solution speech or essay?

Problem-solution papers employ a nonfiction text structure, and typically contain the following elements:

Introduction: Introduce the problem and explain why the audience should be concerned about it.

Cause/Effect : Inform the audience on what causes the problem. In some cases, you may also need to take time to dispel common misconceptions people have about the real cause.

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Thesis Statement: The thesis typically lays out the problem and solution in the form of a question and answer. See examples below.

Solution : Explain the solution clearly and in detail, your problem-solving strategy, and reasons why your solution will work. In this section, be sure to answer common objections, such as “there is a better solution,” “your solution is too costly,” and “there are more important problems to solve.”

Call to Action: Summarize the problem and solution, and paint a picture of what will happen if your final solution is adopted. Also, let the reader know what steps they should take to help solve the problem.

These are the most used methods of developing and arranging:

Problem Solution Method Recommended if you have to argue that there is a social and current issue at stake and you have convince the listeners that you have the best solution. Introduce and provide background information to show what is wrong now.

List the best and ideal conditions and situations. Show the options. Analyze the proper criteria. And present your plan to solve the not wanted situation.

Problem Cause Solution Method Use this pattern for developing and identifying the source and its causes.

Analyze the causes and propose elucidations to the causes.

Problem Cause-Effect Method Use this method to outline the effects of the quandary and what causes it all. Prove the connection between financial, political, social causes and their effects.

Comparative Advantage Method Use this organizational public speaking pattern as recommendation in case everyone knows of the impasse and the different fixes and agrees that something has to be done.

Here are some examples of problems you could write about, with a couple of potential solutions for each one:

Marriage Problem: How do we reduce the divorce rate?

Solution 1: Change the laws to make it more difficult for couples to divorce.

Solution 2: Impose a mandatory waiting period on couples before they can get married.

Environmental Problem: What should we do to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Solution 1: Use renewable energy to fuel your home and vehicles.

Solution 2: Make recycling within local communities mandatory.

Technical Problem: How do we reduce Windows error reporting issues on PCs?

Solution 1: Learn to use dialogue boxes and other command prompt functions to keep your computer system clean.

Solution 2: Disable error reporting by making changes to the registry.

Some of the best problems to write about are those you have personal experience with. Think about your own world; the town you live in, schools you’ve attended, sports you’ve played, places you’ve worked, etc. You may find that you love problem-solution papers if you write them on a topic you identify with. To get your creativity flowing, feel free to browse our comprehensive list of problem-solution essay and paper topics and see if you can find one that interests you.

Problem-Solution Topics for Essays and Papers

How do we reduce murder rates in the inner cities?
How do we stop police brutality?
How do we prevent those who are innocent from receiving the death penalty?
How do we deal with the problem of gun violence?
How do we stop people from driving while intoxicated?
How do we prevent people from texting while driving?
How do we stop the growing child trafficking problem?
What is the best way to deal with domestic violence?
What is the best way to rehabilitate ex-cons?
How do we deal with the problem of overcrowded prisons?
How do we reduce binge drinking on college campuses?
How do we prevent sexual assaults on college campuses?
How do we make college tuition affordable?
What can students do to get better grades in college?
What is the best way for students to effectively balance their classes, studies, work, and social life?
What is the best way for college students to deal with a problem roommate?
How can college students overcome the problem of being homesick?
How can college students manage their finances more effectively?
What is the best way for college students to decide on a major?
What should be done about the problem of massive student loan debts?
How do we solve the global debt crisis?
How do we keep countries from employing child labor?
How do we reduce long-term unemployment?
How do we stop businesses from exploiting consumers?
How do we reduce inflation and bring down the cost of living?
How do we reduce the home foreclosure rate?
What should we do to discourage consumer debt?
What is the best way to stimulate economic growth?
How do we lower the prime cost of manufacturing raw materials?
How can book retailers deal with rising bookseller inventory costs and stay competitive with online sellers?
How do we prevent kids from cheating on exams?
How do we reduce the illiteracy rate?
How do we successfully integrate English as a Second Language (ESL) students into public schools?
How do we put an end to the problem of bullying in schools?
How do we effectively teach students life management skills?
How do we give everyone access to a quality education?
How do we develop a system to increase pay for good teachers and get rid of bad ones?
How do we teach kids to problem solve?
How should schools deal with the problem of disruptive students?
What can schools do to improve reading comprehension on standardized test scores?
What is the best way to teach sex education in public schools?
How do we teach students to recognize a noun clause?
How do we teach students the difference between average speed and average velocity?
How do we teach math students to use sign charts?
How can we make public education more like the Webspiration Classroom?
How do we stop pollution in major population centers?
How do we reduce the negative effects of climate change?
How do we encourage homeowners to lower their room temperature in the winter to reduce energy consumption?
What is the best way to preserve our precious natural resources?
How do we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?
What is the best way to preserve the endangered wildlife?
What is the best way to ensure environmental justice?
How can we reduce the use of plastic?
How do we make alternative energy affordable?
How do we develop a sustainable transportation system?
How can we provide quality health care to all our citizens?
How do we incentivize people to stop smoking?
How do we address the growing doctor shortage?
How do we curb the growing obesity epidemic?
How do we reduce dependence on prescription drugs?
How do we reduce consumption of harmful substances like phosphoric acid and acetic acid?
How can we reduce the number of fatal hospital errors?
How do we handle the health costs of people living longer?
How can we encourage people to live healthier lifestyles?
How do we educate consumers on the risk of laxatives like magnesium hydroxide?
How do we end political corruption?
How do we address the problem of election fraud?
What is the best way to deal with rogue nations that threaten our survival?
What can our leaders do to bring about world peace?
How do we encourage students to become more active in the political process?
What can be done to encourage bipartisanship?
How can we prevent terrorism?
How do we protect individual privacy while keeping the country safe?
How can we encourage better candidates to run for office?
How do we force politicians to live by the rules they impose on everyone else?
What is the best way to get out of a bad relationship?
How do we prevent cyberbullying?
What is the best solution for depression?
How do you find out where you stand in a relationship?
What is the best way to help people who make bad life choices?
How can we learn to relate to people of different races and cultures?
How do we discourage humans from using robots as a substitute for relationships?
What is the best way to deal with a long-distance relationship?
How do we eliminate stereotypical thinking in relationships?
How do you successfully navigate the situation of dating a co-worker?
How do we deal with America’s growing drug problem?
How do we reduce food waste in restaurants?
How do we stop race and gender discrimination?
How do we stop animal cruelty?
How do we ensure that all citizens earn a livable wage?
How do we end sexual harassment in the workplace?
How do we deal with the water scarcity problem?
How do we effectively control the world’s population?
How can we put an end to homelessness?
How do we solve the world hunger crisis?
How do we address the shortage of parking spaces in downtown areas?
How can our cities be made more bike- and pedestrian-friendly?
How do we balance the right of free speech and the right not to be abused?
How can we encourage people to use public transportation?
How do we bring neighborhoods closer together?
How can we eliminate steroid use in sports?
How do we protect players from serious injuries?
What is the best way to motivate young athletes?
What can be done to drive interest in local sports?
How do players successfully prepare for a big game or match?
How should the revenue from professional sports be divided between owners and players?
What can be done to improve local sports venues?
What can be done to ensure parents and coaches are not pushing kids too hard in sports?
How can student athletes maintain high academic standards while playing sports?
What can athletes do to stay in shape during the off-season?
How do we reduce teen pregnancy?
How do we deal with the problem of teen suicide?
How do we keep teens from dropping out of high school?
How do we train teens to be safer drivers?
How do we prevent teens from accessing pornography on the Internet?
What is the best way to help teens with divorced parents?
How do we discourage teens from playing violent video games?
How should parents handle their teens’ cell phone and social media use?
How do we prepare teens to be better workers?
How do we provide a rational decision-making model for teens?
How do we keep companies from mining our private data online and selling it for profit?
How do we prevent artificial intelligence robots from taking over society?
How do we make high-speed internet accessible in rural areas?
How do we stop hackers from breaking into our systems and networks?
How do we make digital payments more secure?
How do we make self-driving vehicles safer?
What is the best way to improve the battery life of mobile devices?
How can we store energy gleaned from solar and wind power?
What is the best way to deal with information overload?
How do we stop computer makers from pre-installing Internet Explorer?

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80+ Problem Solution Speech Topics

A problem/solution speech takes the approach of highlighting an issue with the intent to provide solutions. It is a two-phase approach where first the speaker lays out the problem and explains the importance. Secondly, a variety of solutions are provided to tackle the said issue. The best solutions are those that can be actively applied.

The first problem to tackle is picking a topic. It is a good idea to pick something topical but then again, the world just supplies so many options that it can be overwhelming.

When you are assigned to write a problem-solution essay or research paper, choosing a good topic is the first dilemma you need to work out.

The world is full of issues that need to be resolved. However, it is not sufficient to simply pick a subject because it is topical. Ideally, you should pick a subject that is important to you on some level as well. Speaking about an issue you care about brings out an irreplicable passion that people are sure to respond to. If you’re still confused, we have included a wide variety of topics so that you can pick one that calls out to you.

Let’s get started!

Table of Contents

Introduction:
Thesis Statement:
Cause/Effect:
Call to Action:

Problem Solution Method

Comparative advantage method, social issues, environment, relationships, wrapping up, problem/solution speech outline.

Before we jump into the topics, it can be handy to understand the speech structure of a problem-solution speech. Understanding how to approach a speech script can have an effect on the topic you pick. Oftentimes, we are confident we can speak about a subject but once we begin the draft, we realize we don’t actually have that much to say.

So take a good look at what elements you need to include in your problem/solution speech:

Introduction:

The introduction is a key part of any speech. This is where you will try to grab the audience’s attention, establish the problem statement, and highlight your key points. It is in your introduction that you will need to explain why the presented issue is an issue. The objective is to convince the audience that the problem at hand is one that requires attention.

If you need help with effective attention-grabbers, you can browse our article on 12 Effective Attention-Grabbers for your speech .

Thesis Statement:

The thesis statement is where you will present the problem you are about to tackle. Typically the problem is laid out in the form of a question. You will also be talking about your stance on the presented problem.

Cause/Effect:

Before you launch into giving solutions after highlighting the problem, you need to explain the gravity of the problem at hand. You can do so by explaining what negative consequences occur due to said problem. The more you personalize the effects, the more likely you are to capture their attention.

Solution:

Once you talk about all the negative impacts of the presented problem, it is time to give the audience the solutions. Explain all the solutions step-by-step and talk about the evidence why the said solution will work. Make sure not to give solutions that are too vague. If there are common misconceptions about the solutions, address them as well. Discuss both pros and cons of the proposed solutions and explain why the pros outweigh the cons.

Call to Action:

The most important part of a problem/solution type speech is the call to action. This is when you encourage the audience to take the necessary steps to solve the problem. You can do so by painting a picture of the expected results of your proposed solutions. Don’t end on a vague note that sounds like “Together, we can.” Instead, give actionable steps, such as “I encourage each and every one of you to go home and separate your recycling trash.”

Problem/Solution Presentation Techniques

There is more than one way to present a problem/solution model. You might want to look into these techniques to switch up your speaking style.

The classic take is best used for taking a stance against a social or current issue. In such a case, you will highlight a known issue and suggest probable solutions for it. You can approach this method by informing the audience about the issue, a brief history, all geared to explain why the topic is a problem in the first place.

Follow that up by describing an ideal condition without the said issue. Once you create a tempting picture, offer up more than one solution that is applicable to the situation. Explain the hurdles and how they can be overcome. Make sure it is clear that you’ve thought about the problem from both sides of the issue.

Comparative advantage models are useful when tackling a problem that seems to be at an impasse. It is when an issue is well known and has multiple fixes with their own group of supporters. Here, you can take a comparative approach to show the pros and cons of all the different solutions. The key difference is that the general consensus is already there about the importance of tackling the problem, but only the correct solution needs to be selected.

Problem-Solution Speech Topics

Here is our extensive list of problem/solution speech topics:

Adopting dogs is more ethical than getting a new puppy.
How education can solve generational poverty.
Tackling anxiety by adopting a pet.
Ebooks over books to save the environment.
One-child policy: unethical but effective.
Donating as a solution to fight global poverty.
Do your part, go vegan to fight world hunger.
Keep wikipedia alive for free information with donations.
Kindness can begin with a compliment.
What can we do to ensure government sanctions against companies using child labor?
Sorting out your waste and what it can do for the environment.
The necessary switch to bicycles to tackle pollution.
Why encouraging volunteering at an early age can produce better citizens.
High time to make the switch to solar and wind energy.
Self-driving cars are the future of road safety.
Bike lanes and bike laws enhance traffic safety.
Effective gun sales management can help reduce reckless deaths.
Normalize selling colored dolls in all shapes and sizes to promote confidence in children.
How data became the new oil?
How to stay private in an increasingly social world?
Why is high-speed internet still not considered a basic need for rural areas?
Ethical hacking and why is there a draw to it?
Digital payments and how to guarantee security.
Change your passwords. Why your data is in danger!
Self-driving vehicles, should we handover 100% of the control?
Have lithium batteries on mobile phones already reached their peak?
How can technology promote the use of renewable energy?
How to keep up with the overwhelming news cycle?
How can we destigmatize video game addiction?
How can we shift education to a virtual platform?
How to smoothen the transition from home-schooling to college.
What are some new methods to tackle the rampant cheating on exams?
How can we reduce the illiteracy rate?
It’s high time to end bullying in schools.
How to normalize homesickness as a problem and tackle it?
Education is not enough, students need life management skills.
Is accessibility to quality education sufficient currently?
How can we guarantee sufficient pay for quality teachers?
How can problem-solving be taught in schools?
Is detention an effective solution for disruptive students?
How you can help your suicidal friend.
Are we doing enough to improve standardized test score results?
Effective ways to increase attention in class.
How can we make sex education mandatory in public schools?
Creative ways to get students to love maths.
Does looking at the stars stimulate brain activity?
How can we tackle the growing obesity epidemic?
How spending time outdoors can boost your mood.
The Pomodoro Technique and why it works for productivity.
Can meditation be the answer to growing stress?
Can we incentivize smokers to give up smoking?
How to increase responsibility for fatal hospital errors?
Fitness apps and how it can benefit health.
How augmented reality glasses can be a gamechanger for people with disabilities.
How does taking baths reduce stress and anxiety?
Burnout: the need to go offline.
Better posture to tackle back pain.
Does reading out loud help improve critical thinking?
Child obesity: a preventable evil.
Encouraging more greens to help children improve their memory.
How global pollution can be tackled locally.
Climate change. Why it is too late and what can still be done.
Does lower room temperature really help reduce energy consumption?
How to do our part in preserving natural resources?
Is it time to stop depending on fossil fuels?
How to preserve wildlife from going extinct?
Are current environmental laws sufficient to keep it protected?
Improving public transport to reduce the number of private cars.
How can we upgrade our transportation to be more sustainable?
Why hunting should be illegal in any circumstances.
It is high time to replace plastic. What are our options?
Is it enough to make alternative energy affordable?
Signs of a toxic relationship.
How to pull yourself out of an emotionally abusive relationship.
Should parents be allowed to control teens’ social media accounts?
How to manage expectations in a relationship?
Recognize negative people and take active steps to avoid them.
How to help domestic violence victims?
Why it is pointless to try changing someone.
How to say “no” in a way that they listen?
How to maintain a work-life balance in today’s world.
Why couples counseling needs to stop being taboo.
Is it possible to bridge the gap across different races and cultures?
How technology is capitalizing on the growing need for human contact.
Long-distance relationships. Can you make it work?
Modern-day relationships and how expectations have changed.

A problem/solution speech is a great topic as it falls under the informational category. As such, it is much easier to capture the audience’s attention. In terms of delivery, make sure you sell the problem before handing out the solution. Following the above outline and tips paired with your amazing content, we are sure you will be able to win over any audience with ease. Make sure you do your research well and triple-check your sources. All that is left to do is practice. See you on the stage!

Problem Solution Speech Topics, Outline & Examples

The problem solution speech is a type of informative speech that enumerates various problems and provides possible solutions to those problems.

If you have been asked to give such a speech, your goal should be to explain the problem and provide realistic and achievable suggestions to address it. In most cases, problem solution speeches are given with the hope that the audience will be inspired to do something about the problems that they are facing.

There are many pressing issues in society today that could be considered ripe material for a problem solution speech. For example, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and ageism are all major social problems that need to be addressed.

Of course, you can’t just pick any old problem and start talking about it – you need to make sure that your topic is something that your audience will actually care about and be interested in hearing.

Problem-Solution Speech Outline

The key to delivering an effective problem-solution speech is to develop an outline and a step-by-step plan that will help focus on different parts of your speech.

Here is a basic outline that you can use for your problem-solution speech:

Introduction

Introduce yourself and give a brief overview of the problem that you will be discussing. This is also where you will need to state your thesis – that is, what solution you think is best for the problem.

Make sure that you are concise and to the point – you don’t want to give your audience too much information, as they will likely tune out if you do.

Thesis/Statement of the problem

Explain what the problem is that you will be discussing. This is where you will need to do your research and really dig into the details of the issue so it is interesting and your speech has gravity.

Also, make sure that your problem is something that can actually be solved – there is no point in discussing a problem if there is no possible solution.

Cause/Effect

Discuss the causes of the problem and the effects that it has on different people or groups. This is where you will really start to get into the nitty-gritty of your topic and show your audience that you understand the issue at hand.

Make sure to back up any claims that you make with research or data so that your speech is credible. Use attention getters to hook your audience and keep them interested.

Potential solutions

This is the meat of your problem-solution speech. Discuss different potential solutions to the problem and explain why you think they would be effective.

Again, make sure to back up your claims with research or data so that your audience knows that you have thoughtfully considered the issue and possible solutions. Keep it realistic – don’t propose a solution that is impossible to achieve.

Call to action

You have now armed your audience with the knowledge of the problem and potential solutions – now what? You will need to challenge your audience to actually do something about the issue.

This could be something as simple as signing a petition or donating to a cause, or it could be something more ambitious like starting a new organization or campaign. Whatever you choose, make sure it is achievable and that your audience knows how they can take action.

Use the outline above to tailor the specifics of your speech to fit your particular audience and situation and deliver an effective problem-solution speech.

Problem-Solution Presentation Techniques

Once you have your outline ready, it’s time to start working on your delivery. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you prepare your problem-solution speech:

Be passionate : This is not the time for a dry, academic approach. You need to be enthusiastic about the issue at hand and really sell your audience on why they should care.
Be clear : Make sure that your audience understands the problem and potential solutions. Use straightforward language and avoid jargon.
Be concise : Remember, you only have a limited amount of time to make your case. Get to the point and don’t ramble.
Use stories : A personal story or anecdote can be a powerful way to connect with your audience and make your speech more relatable.
Use visuals : Visual aids can be a great way to engage your audience and break up your speech. Just make sure that they are clear and easy to understand.
Practice, practice, practice : The only way to get comfortable with delivering a problem-solution speech is to practice it as much as you can. So get in front of a mirror, or even better, ask a friend or family member to listen to you and give feedback. The more you practice, the more confident you will be and overcome your fear of public speaking .

Problem-Solution Speech Topics

1. How can we make sure that all animals are treated humanely?

2. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to animal welfare?

3. How can we make sure that all animals have access to proper care and shelter?

4. Why should we care about animal rights?

5. Why is wildlife conservation important?

6. Why animal testing is cruel?

7. Why should the exotic pet trade be stopped?

9. What can we do about the food industry and mass animal killing?

1. How can we make sure that our technology is accessible to everyone?

2. What are the most important things to keep in mind when using social media?

3. How can we make sure that our online information is safe and secure?

4. What should we do about cyberbullying?

6. How can we make sure that our technology is sustainable?

7. What are the most important things to keep in mind when using new technology?

8. How can we make sure that our technology is user-friendly?

9. What should we do about outdated technology?

10. How can we make sure that our technology is accessible to people with disabilities?

11. What are the most important things to keep in mind when using technology in the classroom?

12. How can we make sure that our technology is used for good and not for evil?

13. What should we do about the digital divide?

14. How can we make sure that our technology is used responsibly?

15. What should we do about the growing problem of e-waste?

16. What are the most important things to keep in mind when using technology in the workplace?

17. What should we do about the increasing dependence on technology?

Relationships

1. How can we improve communication in relationships?

2. What are the biggest problems faced by long-distance relationships?

3. How can we make sure that our relationships are built on trust?

4. What causes jealousy in relationships and how can it be overcome?

5. When is it time to end a relationship?

6. How can we deal with infidelity in a relationship?

7. How can we make sure that our relationships are healthy and balanced?

8. What causes arguments in relationships and how can they be resolved?

9. What are the most important things to keep in mind when raising a family?

10. How can single parents make sure that their children are getting the attention they need?

11. What effect does social media have on relationships?

12. How can we make sure that our relationship with our parents is healthy and supportive?

13. What should we do when our friends or family get into a toxic relationship?

14. How can we deal with envy or jealousy within our friendships?

15. How can we deal with a friend or family member who is going through a tough break-up?

16. How can new relationships be started off on the right foot?

17. What are the most important things to keep in mind when moving in with a partner?

18. What should we do when our relationship starts to fizzle out?

19. How can we deal with the death of a loved one?

20. How can therapy help us improve our relationships?

Social Issues

1. How can we make sure that everyone has access to clean water?

2. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to food security?

3. How can we make sure that all children have access to education?

4. What are the most effective ways of helping people who are homeless?

5. How can we make sure that everyone has access to healthcare?

6. What are the most effective ways of combating climate change?

7. How can we make sure that our cities are sustainable?

8. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to transportation?

9. How can we make sure that our economy is fair and just?

10. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to social inequality?

11. How can we make sure that our government is effective and efficient?

12. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to voting?

13. How can we make sure that our media is responsible and ethical?

14. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to privacy?

15. How can we make sure that our technology is used responsibly?

16. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to security?

17. How can we make sure that our world is peaceful?

18. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to human rights?

19. How can we make sure that our world is sustainable?

20. What are the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to the environment?

Problem Solution Speech Topics Ideas

Problem solution speech topics ideas should be aimed at fulfilling two aims of problem-solving:

To convey a specific problem you have chosen to reflect on;
To provide persuasive solutions to it.

How to Choose a Problem and Make the Essay Interesting

The matter of selecting a problem for discussion and critical analysis directly depends on the type of target audience you will present a paper. For instance, if the audience consists of people belonging to a specific profession or research area, then, before designing a problem-solution speech outline, it would be logical to come up with a topic connected with their area of research or the scope of their interest. There are also cases when the audience selects the topic of presentation or speech for you beforehand. If it is a general audience, then it is prudent to select topics that are controversial, appealing to the general public, or that are rather challenging, such as environmental concerns and threats, ethical dilemmas, financial aspects, crime rates in the community, international problems and challenges, and so on. With these tips in mind, you will definitely provide the best proposal speech ever.

Another method to come up with the right entertainment speech ideas is to ask the event organizer to gather ideas from the audience regarding what topics they would love to hear about and further discuss.

On the whole, whatever method of topic selection you choose, the most important thing is to make sure you have sufficient evidence and clear illustrative examples to reflect on the topic in-depth and provide convincing arguments. In any case, if you are lost among the ideas for the topic discussion, opt for one of your personal experience speech ideas.

Whatever method you use to select your problem topic, ensure that you have clear examples, convincing facts, or credible data that supports your position on the matter.

How to Find Solutions

The solutions and recommendations that you put forward should be practical and resourceful. Besides, it should be clear how exactly they can be applied to the real case you are discussing. As you are contemplating how the solution will be effective, keep in mind that your audience will be involved in their own reflection on the topic as well. So, make sure you are persuasive enough.

How to Provide Proper Support for Your Argument

Supporting examples can be related to your personal experience with the help of which you can make the argument stronger and more convincing. When critically analyzing the topic, make sure you know how much the audience knows about it. If much information is left to be explained, interpreted, and so on, make sure you do it. If there is a need to provide background information to make everything clear, then do it as well.

On the contrary, if the audience comprises experts in the scope of research you have focused on, they will surely expect more originality and novelty from you. Therefore, make sure you provide adequate problem-solving examples for your proposal paper. Generally known standard information won’t be the best option.

If the listeners are complete novices to the topic, then try to introduce them to the topic gradually. When it comes to solutions, make sure they are more related to tried and tested principles and approaches. If you are delivering a speech to an audience that is not well-versed in the topic of your proposal essay, then it is recommended to provide a detailed and clear discussion wherein you provide a solution right after each problem you mention.

Problem-solution articles can also have such a structure where you provide the causes of the issue prior to the discussion of solutions. This strategy comes in handy as concentrating on the underlying cause assists in providing more solid support for the explanations, thus providing more reliability and credibility to the solutions.

Moreover, your personal viewpoint on the central issue should be presented in the process of proposing a solution. This way, your speech will be more convincing in that you will share your experience with the people who listen to you.

Concluding your problem/solution speech, make sure you provide a brief synopsis of the core issues, particularly solutions as your audience should remember them particularly well.

The Best Problem Solution Speech Topics for College Students

Professors frequently assign problem-solution speech topics for college students either for written assignments or oral presentations. Regardless of the type of speech topics for college that you have been assigned, you need to select a topic that is of particular interest to you and your target audience. Only when you demonstrate originality in the choice of your topic will you stand out as an original speaker/ writer and will thus be more appreciated by your professor and the audience. When you want just to provide an overview of the problem, then you have to search among the list of good informative speech topics for college students. Still, when you need to demonstrate your skills in critical and analytical writing, it is recommended to organize the essay as a persuasive one.

From the persuasive writing prompts enlisted below, try to select the one that you are well versed in and that aroused the greatest deal of interest in you. Only with these two basic criteria kept in mind will you be able to provide a successfully written problem-solution persuasive paper.

A List of Problem Cause Solution Persuasive Speech Topics for College Students

The list of problem-cause solution persuasive speech topics provided below will help you come up with interesting research ideas for your speech. Take a look at the numerous options for social issues and other problems in society to write about.

The problem of spying and media leaks in international and domestic communications.
How to ensure local food movement support? Will it have a positive impact on the local entrepreneurship?
The restrictions on the exploitation of the Antarctic resources should be maintained and the Antarctic should be viewed as a preserved place merely devoted to science.
Media marketed for youths and teens convey immoral and unethical ideas.
The FBI should keep the self-proclaimed militia under scrutiny.
Tax incentives should be introduced for adopting children internationally.
Foreign help to dictatorships should be eradicated by the government.
Online learning can be equaled to classroom education in terms of its effectiveness and accessibility.
In-vitro fertilization should be prohibited.
The issue of minors getting tattoos should be more controlled by legal institutions: minors should either be accompanied by their guardians or be given written consent from them.
Dependence on ACT and SAT scores during admissions should be abolished.
Surveillance cameras should record all trials in court.
Student-athletes representing their educational establishment in competitions should be given scholarships to cover at least partial college expenses.
All students should be encouraged to enroll in foreign language courses and speaking clubs.
Usage of technological advancement in teaching.
Beauty contests in schools and colleges should be banned.
Staffed flights into space are far more expensive than unstaffed research missions.
Students should not be harshly encouraged or pushed to participate in sports competitions.
The federal government should adopt a law that standardizes trunk release systems in new transport.
Race, ethnicity, and gender equality should be supported in politics.
Mobile phone usage, texting, and Internet use in the classroom prevent students from being involved in the studying process and lower their attention span.
The usage of paperback textbooks should be eradicated and changed into e-book usage.
College students should be more cautious and prudent when posting controversial or personal information online.
The acute immigration problem will hardly ever be solved by constructing the border fence.
Cyber-attacks pose threats internationally.
Recycling should be encouraged worldwide.
The contemporary taxation system does not fairly treat lower-income and middle-income population groups.
Media advertisements targeted at children population should be banned by the government.
Oil companies should get disaster control before engaging in offshore drilling.
Feminists’ standpoint devalues family and motherhood.
The problem of identity theft is extremely aggravated and the community should pay attention to it.
Girls should be prohibited from participating in football and wrestling competitions.
Social networks do not interfere with school education.
Networks in educational establishments should have special filters to prevent students from accessing inappropriate material.
The pressing need for school system reform.
Advertisements engaging children should be restricted at the government level.
Fast food restaurants should initiate the campaign of publicly displaying calories next to each meal.
The government should release churches from tax incentives.
Patients suffering from chronic mental diseases should be preserved in “halfway houses” instead of mental hospitals.
The government should not allow the allocation of billboards on interstate highways.
Weapons should not be sold internationally across the countries.
Marriage should not be allowed before school graduation.
The role of the United Nations internationally.
The role of art and music therapy in patients’ rehabilitation.
Educated people should work as tutors of literacy on a voluntary basis in third-world countries.
People molesting children should be restricted from the right to adopt.
Psychologists and psychiatrists should witness and testify in the court of law representing the non-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity.
Security should be increased in motels and hotels as a means to guarantee security for all its residents regardless of their income.
The National Health Insurance Program is supposed to provide basic health care for all US citizens independent of their income.
The construction and building of venues before the Olympic Games should be banned by UNESCO as it harms a lot.

Evidently, the argument topics list entails current issues that are taking place in the contemporary world. To submit a successful paper, make sure to conduct in-depth research on your selected topic and create an impressive paper that will last in memory for a long.

Problem Solution Speech on the Topic of Policy Advocacy

The question of policy persuasive speech topics remains extremely acute for students because frequently they do not know where to start after they have read numerous essay samples. Particularly, students may be confused about the way of organizing information for a speech. To ease the task of writing a properly structured speech paper, check out the following recommended way of paper organization for a policy advocacy speech.

I. Introduction

Attention-grabber: you might provide some controversial fact, relate to personal experience, provide shocking/ impressive statistics, use a rhetorical question or a dramatic quote, etc. (all these devices are used for capturing attention from the target audience);

Relation to the audience: Pinpoint to how the issue under discussion relates to the target audience. Do it either implicitly or explicitly, but regardless of the option you choose, make sure the listeners understand their relation to the topic. If you have chosen to focus on a problem seriously affecting people, express your point of view on how exactly the problem influences the audience.

Credibility of the problem: Emphasize the problem’s significance and why it is worth others’ attention. Provide one or more reasons to make the audience understand why you have decided to speak on this subject area.

Preview: Provide a brief synopsis (overview) of the paper. You need to provide sufficient background information on the topic, especially if the audience is not well-versed in it. For example, you might briefly describe the problem in a few words and then switch over to focusing on the possible solutions.

II. Body: The Problem Identification and Solution Proposal

Identify the problem: Develop a paragraph where you provide an overview of the central problem. Appeal to ratio and emotion, as it is preferable to engage the reader both on an intellectual and emotional level. There are two recommended ways of problem identification and development – qualitative and quantitative.

According to the qualitative approach, you have to present argumentation for the claims that answer the following questions:

What makes me indifferent about the problem? Or why should I actually care?
How am I affected by the problem?
How serious is the issue under discussion?

To help readers understand the problem in depth, make sure to provide examples from your personal experience or provide real-life examples related to other people. This data will not make the statistics too narrow but will add more appealing details to demonstrate how serious the issue is.

According to the quantitative approach, the arguments and support you provide should be related to such questions:

How large is the problem?
How much is it widespread and what is the problem scope?

When a writer investigates the scope of the problem, the larger it is – the less detailed evidence is required.

Focus on the causes: The causes of the problem should be closely examined: provide ample evidence, examples, and recent study results. Keep in mind that not every topic requires developing the problem’s causes. Still, if you think that the causes you provide will make the audience more susceptible to trusting your viewpoint. Such an approach is used when there exist multiple opinions on causes.

Put forward the solution: When investigating the possible solution(s), make sure to organize the information in the following way:

Provide a plan: First and foremost, pinpoint the exact change in policy, law, or campaign you are suggesting. Briefly describe the step (the introduction of the new law, implementation of the new program, short synopsis of the program, etc.). The main aim at this point is to make the audience understand the kind of change you are suggesting.
Provide supporting argumentation and evidence for the suggested solutions: You should clearly pinpoint how the solution will eliminate the ongoing risks or threats caused by the pending problem. Make sure that you link supporting evidence to the plan.

Provide credible expert evidence that clearly highlights the ways the solution would reduce the burning issue: When citing outside sources and specific examples/ materials researched by scholars, make sure you tell the audience about the credentials of the researchers. Your target audience should be sure that the information you rely on can be trusted and that is it believable overall. If you provide information that even you don’t know by whom it was put forward, then your paper will have no expert value.

Results of the study: If the research included some experimental study that aimed at supporting your solution, make sure you discuss the results and interpret them properly. Provide a brief synopsis of how many people took part in the experiment/ interview/ sociological study and what the results indicate.

Empirical evidence and pilot studies: With the help of such supporting evidence, you will emphasize that the problem has solutions related to real-life events and experiences. You might also pinpoint how small changes in the localities might affect the problem in a large-scale area. Such supporting evidence is really beneficial as it indicates that the effects happened in real surroundings with real people rather than in a laboratory environment.

Personal or peer testimony: It is not recommended to use this evidence as a priority as it is rather weak on its own. Still, if you add this evidence together with the other aforementioned types, it can significantly add up to the paper’s credibility.

Address general disadvantages: When coming up with a policy change, keep in mind that it can solve the existing problem as well as create a new one. Therefore, it is advisable to outline the potential disadvantages of the problem after you have discussed its benefits and positive effects. To make your position strong, make sure to refute the counter-arguments because when you just ignore the negative aspects, the audience will not accept or perceive your solution.

III. Conclusion

Provide a short review of the persisting problem and suggested ways out. Make sure you provide a call for action at the end of the conclusive paragraph, where you provide encouraging information that will make the audience remember your paper.

Review of the problem and solution
Closing thought to encourage the audience to remember the speech.

Problem Solution Topics for Your Perfect Speech

The problem solution speech topics that you will find below will help you choose, identify, and organize the way of presenting your essay. As you select the topic, you will research it properly in order to persuade the audience that a particular problem exists and that it is possible to come up with solutions to it. Moreover, you will learn how to convince the audience and make them accept your viewpoint and maybe even change their previously existing biases regarding the issue. Before you start the topic selection process, make sure you are well aware of the core elements that are necessary in such a type of writing. Check them out:

Indicate the problem and mention specifically what factors make it an actual problem. Provide sufficient background information, pinpoint to the problem’s significance, and let the audience understand the scope of the problem and its overall effect. Make sure you appeal to reasoning and emotion: let the audience understand the needs so that it is convinced by the information you provide.
Advocate for a solution and provide a detailed plan on how it can be applied in practice.
Visualize the practical aspect of your solution. Demonstrate how the solutions will come in handy in improving the situation. Emphasize on their practical aspect and general effectiveness. Pay attention to a brief discussion of alternatives with which you do not agree. State how they are impractical and problematic. To put it briefly, you need to highlight the counterarguments and refute them.
Call to action. Convince the audience to accept your position on the change implementation of the proposed policy or campaign. Or provide an implicit call to action, wherein you make a hint on the policy change.

How to Choose a Proper Problem Solution Speech Topic

If you have been invited to deliver a speech to the public, first of all, find out who your target audience comprises in terms of professional and personal interests. Despite the solid experience you might have about the research area, the audience may not find interest in your topic if it is not adjacent to their scope of interest. Therefore, be cautious when coming up with the topic of your speech or presentation. If the type of your speech has to be structured in the form of a problem-solution paper, then make sure to identify the burning issue, investigate questions and opinions concerning it, and also identify the controversy behind the issue.

When thinking of which topic might be interested in writing about, ask yourself the following questions:

What would you like to talk about (here choose more than one option).
How do you think – will your potential audience like the topic of your choice? Explain your viewpoint.
How long do you plan to talk? Is your chosen topic sufficient for this type of presentation?
What are your personal opinions and biases regarding the problem?
Which topic are you most interested in? Which topic would be easy to talk about?
After you have explored the professional realms of your listeners, think of the most topical problems pertaining to the topic.
Think of whether you can provide personal experience examples or share your personal goals.

List of Speech Topics for Problem-Solution Presentation

Business area: work surroundings; career goals; bankruptcy; corporate ethics; abuse in marketing.

Teaching and education: peer pressure at school; cheating during exams; online learning versus classroom learning; education at home; sex education at school; internship opportunities.

Environmental aspects: climate change; global warming; alternative sources of energy; depletion of natural resources.

Nourishment and health: food labeling; diets and how to maintain healthy eating; problems of mentally ill people; health care in third-world countries; being vegetarian.

Politics and global issues: spying; international threats; problems with overpopulation.

Legislation and issues in the court of law: punishment for child molesters; drunk driving; frequency of juvenile aggression and delinquency; immigration and fence borders; tax incentives on church property.

Social problems: dealing with the homeless; sexual abuse; domestic violence; the effect of divorce on families; peer pressure; bullying; self-esteem; wage levels; teen drinking; gambling; discrimination on racial, ethnic, and gender backgrounds.

So far, you have a brief list of possible problem-solving essay topics. You may choose some of them for discussion or maybe they will inspire you to choose some other topic to reflect on. To properly develop the topics, make sure to examine them more closely and find some adjacent areas to them. Also thoroughly examine the dimensions of each topic investigation.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What aspects of the problem have already been researched? Why have some been omitted?
How could one describe the existing obstacles to solving the problem?
How long does the problem persist?
What are the costs needed for problem-solving?
Will the problem aggravate if no measures are taken?
Should the problem be immediately addressed?
Has your target audience in particular been affected by your selected problem? In what way?
What supporting evidence could you provide to emphasize the importance of the problem?
What argumentation can you provide to demonstrate that your solutions are right and worth attention?
What facts/ figures/ supporting evidence could help the target audience understand the issue more comprehensively?

Working on the Solution

Write down all potential and alternative solutions. Keep in mind various aspects, merits, and features that could convince the audience to accept your standpoint. Investigate figures and facts; provide illustrations and real-life examples as support for your solutions. Do it consistently, step-by-step for each of the proposed solutions.
Choose the most important and effective solution to the existing problem. Pinpoint to how your solution plan can be applied in practice. Refer to outside sources; cite credible sources; consult sources written by experts in their field of study.
Devise a step-by-step implementation plan for each of the suggested solutions. Recommend specific procedures. Investigate the cost, effect, and necessary actions.
Call to action; time and place.
Other required constituents for the implementation of the plan.

If your listeners comprise people from different educational backgrounds or various professional spheres, then the decisive factor for choosing the topic should lie in choosing the topic that is most topical for the majority. Another option is to come up with a topic that presumably meets the needs of the bulk of the audience. If all of your listeners are well aware of the problem, then pay more attention to the fact of how much the topic is workable and reasonable. If you want to provide counter-arguments for the change policy campaign, then focus on the probable limitations and drawbacks of the policy.

How to Provide an Outline for a Problem Solution Speech

Below you will find the most appropriate methods for developing problem-solution topics:

Problem Solution Method

This strategy is advisable if you have chosen a contemporary social problem and have to convince the audience that your solution is the best one among those that have been previously provided. As such, provide a proper introduction where you entail sufficient background information in order to pinpoint the problem’s significance. Afterward, list the most appropriate situations and conditions that might serve as supporting evidence for justifying your position. Present a clearly defined plan for solving the problem.

Problem Cause Solution Method

This strategy is the most appropriate for solution topics. Here you need to single out the problem and investigate its causes. Further, you have to provide a critical analysis of the causes and put forward adequate solutions.

Problem Cause-Effect Method

This strategy comes in handy when outlining the aftermath of your problem-cause topic.

Comparative Advantage Method

You need to compare and contrast the identified solutions to the problem outlined.

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10.2 Using Common Organizing Patterns

Learning objectives.

Differentiate among the common speech organizational patterns: categorical/topical, comparison/contrast, spatial, chronological, biographical, causal, problem-cause-solution, and psychological.
Understand how to choose the best organizational pattern, or combination of patterns, for a specific speech.

A motivational poster of water running over rocks. The caption says

Twentyfour Students – Organization makes you flow – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Previously in this chapter we discussed how to make your main points flow logically. This section is going to provide you with a number of organization patterns to help you create a logically organized speech. The first organization pattern we’ll discuss is categorical/topical.

Categorical/Topical

By far the most common pattern for organizing a speech is by categories or topics. The categories function as a way to help the speaker organize the message in a consistent fashion. The goal of a categorical/topical speech pattern is to create categories (or chunks) of information that go together to help support your original specific purpose. Let’s look at an example.

In this case, we have a speaker trying to persuade a group of high school juniors to apply to attend Generic University. To persuade this group, the speaker has divided the information into three basic categories: what it’s like to live in the dorms, what classes are like, and what life is like on campus. Almost anyone could take this basic speech and specifically tailor the speech to fit her or his own university or college. The main points in this example could be rearranged and the organizational pattern would still be effective because there is no inherent logic to the sequence of points. Let’s look at a second example.

In this speech, the speaker is talking about how to find others online and date them. Specifically, the speaker starts by explaining what Internet dating is; then the speaker talks about how to make Internet dating better for her or his audience members; and finally, the speaker ends by discussing some negative aspects of Internet dating. Again, notice that the information is chunked into three categories or topics and that the second and third could be reversed and still provide a logical structure for your speech

Comparison/Contrast

Another method for organizing main points is the comparison/contrast speech pattern . While this pattern clearly lends itself easily to two main points, you can also create a third point by giving basic information about what is being compared and what is being contrasted. Let’s look at two examples; the first one will be a two-point example and the second a three-point example.

If you were using the comparison/contrast pattern for persuasive purposes, in the preceding examples, you’d want to make sure that when you show how Drug X and Drug Y differ, you clearly state why Drug X is clearly the better choice for physicians to adopt. In essence, you’d want to make sure that when you compare the two drugs, you show that Drug X has all the benefits of Drug Y, but when you contrast the two drugs, you show how Drug X is superior to Drug Y in some way.

The spatial speech pattern organizes information according to how things fit together in physical space. This pattern is best used when your main points are oriented to different locations that can exist independently. The basic reason to choose this format is to show that the main points have clear locations. We’ll look at two examples here, one involving physical geography and one involving a different spatial order.

If you look at a basic map of the United States, you’ll notice that these groupings of states were created because of their geographic location to one another. In essence, the states create three spatial territories to explain.

Now let’s look at a spatial speech unrelated to geography.

In this example, we still have three basic spatial areas. If you look at a model of the urinary system, the first step is the kidney, which then takes waste through the ureters to the bladder, which then relies on the sphincter muscle to excrete waste through the urethra. All we’ve done in this example is create a spatial speech order for discussing how waste is removed from the human body through the urinary system. It is spatial because the organization pattern is determined by the physical location of each body part in relation to the others discussed.

Chronological

The chronological speech pattern places the main idea in the time order in which items appear—whether backward or forward. Here’s a simple example.

In this example, we’re looking at the writings of Winston Churchill in relation to World War II (before, during, and after). By placing his writings into these three categories, we develop a system for understanding this material based on Churchill’s own life. Note that you could also use reverse chronological order and start with Churchill’s writings after World War II, progressing backward to his earliest writings.

Biographical

As you might guess, the biographical speech pattern is generally used when a speaker wants to describe a person’s life—either a speaker’s own life, the life of someone they know personally, or the life of a famous person. By the nature of this speech organizational pattern, these speeches tend to be informative or entertaining; they are usually not persuasive. Let’s look at an example.

In this example, we see how Brian Warner, through three major periods of his life, ultimately became the musician known as Marilyn Manson.

In this example, these three stages are presented in chronological order, but the biographical pattern does not have to be chronological. For example, it could compare and contrast different periods of the subject’s life, or it could focus topically on the subject’s different accomplishments.

The causal speech pattern is used to explain cause-and-effect relationships. When you use a causal speech pattern, your speech will have two basic main points: cause and effect. In the first main point, typically you will talk about the causes of a phenomenon, and in the second main point you will then show how the causes lead to either a specific effect or a small set of effects. Let’s look at an example.

In this case, the first main point is about the history and prevalence of drinking alcohol among Native Americans (the cause). The second point then examines the effects of Native American alcohol consumption and how it differs from other population groups.

However, a causal organizational pattern can also begin with an effect and then explore one or more causes. In the following example, the effect is the number of arrests for domestic violence.

In this example, the possible causes for the difference might include stricter law enforcement, greater likelihood of neighbors reporting an incident, and police training that emphasizes arrests as opposed to other outcomes. Examining these possible causes may suggest that despite the arrest statistic, the actual number of domestic violence incidents in your city may not be greater than in other cities of similar size.

Problem-Cause-Solution

Another format for organizing distinct main points in a clear manner is the problem-cause-solution speech pattern . In this format you describe a problem, identify what you believe is causing the problem, and then recommend a solution to correct the problem.

In this speech, the speaker wants to persuade people to pass a new curfew for people under eighteen. To help persuade the civic group members, the speaker first shows that vandalism and violence are problems in the community. Once the speaker has shown the problem, the speaker then explains to the audience that the cause of this problem is youth outside after 10:00 p.m. Lastly, the speaker provides the mandatory 10:00 p.m. curfew as a solution to the vandalism and violence problem within the community. The problem-cause-solution format for speeches generally lends itself to persuasive topics because the speaker is asking an audience to believe in and adopt a specific solution.

Psychological

A further way to organize your main ideas within a speech is through a psychological speech pattern in which “a” leads to “b” and “b” leads to “c.” This speech format is designed to follow a logical argument, so this format lends itself to persuasive speeches very easily. Let’s look at an example.

In this speech, the speaker starts by discussing how humor affects the body. If a patient is exposed to humor (a), then the patient’s body actually physiologically responds in ways that help healing (b—e.g., reduces stress, decreases blood pressure, bolsters one’s immune system, etc.). Because of these benefits, nurses should engage in humor use that helps with healing (c).

Selecting an Organizational Pattern

Each of the preceding organizational patterns is potentially useful for organizing the main points of your speech. However, not all organizational patterns work for all speeches. For example, as we mentioned earlier, the biographical pattern is useful when you are telling the story of someone’s life. Some other patterns, particularly comparison/contrast, problem-cause-solution, and psychological, are well suited for persuasive speaking. Your challenge is to choose the best pattern for the particular speech you are giving.

You will want to be aware that it is also possible to combine two or more organizational patterns to meet the goals of a specific speech. For example, you might wish to discuss a problem and then compare/contrast several different possible solutions for the audience. Such a speech would thus be combining elements of the comparison/contrast and problem-cause-solution patterns. When considering which organizational pattern to use, you need to keep in mind your specific purpose as well as your audience and the actual speech material itself to decide which pattern you think will work best.

Key Takeaway

Speakers can use a variety of different organizational patterns, including categorical/topical, comparison/contrast, spatial, chronological, biographical, causal, problem-cause-solution, and psychological. Ultimately, speakers must really think about which organizational pattern best suits a specific speech topic.
Imagine that you are giving an informative speech about your favorite book. Which organizational pattern do you think would be most useful? Why? Would your answer be different if your speech goal were persuasive? Why or why not?
Working on your own or with a partner, develop three main points for a speech designed to persuade college students to attend your university. Work through the preceding organizational patterns and see which ones would be possible choices for your speech. Which organizational pattern seems to be the best choice? Why?
Use one of the common organizational patterns to create three main points for your next speech.

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Problem Solution Speech Topics

When working with problem solution speech topics there are two main objectives to consider:

to articulate clearly a particular problem, and
to present convincing solutions.

The requirement to fix the problem defines the problem-solution speech as a persuasive presentation. You may consider any of the persuasive speech topics that you have a proposal or a plan as a question for a problem-solution speech.

Selecting Problems

Deciding on what problem or issue you want to discuss may depend on the type of audience you'll be addressing.

If they comprise people from a particular profession, industry or social group, then it's quite natural to select an issue from their field. The audience might even have selected your topic for you beforehand.

For a generic audience, matters of public interest are a good place to pick subjects, such as national challenges, community crime, environmental concerns or personal finances.

Another method is to ask the event facilitator ahead of time to get ideas from the audience as to issues they might want you to discuss. This way you'll be addressing concerns specific to the audience.

A slightly more complex approach is taking a generally accepted issue, proposing a contrary view and presenting alternative viewpoints.

For example, 'beer is healthy for you' or that 'animal-derived clothing textiles are better for the environment than synthetics'. This can only be pulled off if you are very well versed in the matter, have strong supporting evidence and fairly good speaking skills because you'll be a minority in the face of a majority audience with opposing opinions.

Whatever method you use to select your problem topic ensure that you have clear examples, convincing facts or credible data that supports your position on the matter.

Finding Solutions

The alternatives that you offer should be practical and applicable. Remember that as you are explaining the solution, your listeners will be thinking to themselves how possible it is to apply what you are saying.

Therefore, relating real life solutions, using various props and incorporating valid statistics can be really useful in supporting your argument.

Keep in mind how acquainted the audience is with the topic. If they are experts in the field, they will be expecting you to present novel ideas or innovative solutions that are over and above the standard procedures.

Handling Multiple-Aspect Problem Solution Speech Topics

When discussing several problems in one speech, organize your speech such that you present a solution after each problem you mention. This way the audience follows your argument well and doesn't get muddled about which answer is for what problem.

Problem solution speech topics can also include the causes of the problem before you give the solutions. Identifying the underlying causes help support your explanation and gives your solution more credibility.

Additionally, your personal opinion on the matter should be in line with the solutions you are presenting because your passion for the topic will come through in the delivery.

If you have bought into the solution, then your speech will be more persuasive and you will be in a better position to swing the audience to your viewpoint.

At the conclusion of the speech, summarize the issues, especially the solutions, as this is what you want your audience to remember best.

If you are having to work on problem solution speech topics in a classroom environment then you were probably given the subject you are to talk on. Keep everything above in mind when you write your speech up and you'll do great!

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Problem/Solution Speech Topics

Kori morgan.

A problem/solution presentation is a type of persuasive speech that not only identifies an issue and its causes, but also gives you the chance to propose a way to solve it. To give a successful speech, you must select a topic that is both significant and manageable enough to create a potential solution. You can select a meaningful, significant topic for your problem/solution speech by considering issues of safety, health and recreation that affect you and your peers.

Explore this article

A Deadly Driving Distraction
Stamping Out School Violence
School Sports Safety
Double Click for Addiction

1 A Deadly Driving Distraction

In 2014 the National Safety Council estimated that cell phone use while driving resulted in 26 percent of all car accidents. A problem/solution speech on this topic might begin by discussing the causes and effects of this issue, such as what makes drivers obey the compulsion to use phones in the car. Beware of potential solutions that don't really help the problem. Hands-free devices or car systems are seen by some as a better alternative, but a review in the Journal of Safety Research in 2009 found that "performance while using a hands-free phone was rarely found to be better than when using a handheld phone." Some possible solutions you might describe and research could include banning all cell phone use in traffic or encouraging parents to set a good example by putting their phones away in the car.

2 Stamping Out School Violence

In 1940, disrespectful speech, gum chewing, running in the halls and littering were among the biggest discipline problems in public schools. Today, teachers and administrators are more concerned with school shootings, knife violence, bullying and assault. Your problem/solution speech can address violence in schools, its consequences and what's caused this dangerous behavior. To create a solution, you might consider options like incentive systems that reward good behavior, parental involvement and peer mediation training, as well as traditional methods like disciplinary measures and increased school security.

3 School Sports Safety

Football, basketball and other sports may be enjoyable physical activities for students, but serious injuries like concussions can quickly end the fun. Approximately 173,285 children and teens are treated for traumatic brain injuries per year, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Use your problem/solution speech to not just offer a way to solve this issue, but teach your classmates about an important sports safety topic. You might address solution ideas like mandatory safety training for student athletes or a program for elementary school students to teach them about traumatic brain injuries early in life.

4 Double Click for Addiction

Social media, online role-playing games and YouTube videos can be fun in moderation, but for a growing number of people the Internet has become much more than that. Internet addiction is a condition that causes preoccupation with games and social connections to the point that it harms your job, grades, relationships and other responsibilities. Your speech can address these serious causes of Internet addiction, as well as how society's increased dependence on technology has fueled this problem. You might consider discussing solutions like an increased emphasis on the arts in schools and apps that log time spent on various Internet sites.

1 National Safety Council: Annual Estimate of Cell Phone Crashes 2014
2 National Public Radio: Working to Stop Teens Texting Behind the Wheel
3 Policy Study: Strategies to Keep Schools Safe
4 University of Michigan: School Violence
5 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Concussions in Sports and Play
6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Injury Prevention and Control: Traumatic Brain Injury
7 Journal of Safety Research: Is a Hands-Free Phone Safer Than a Handheld Phone?

About the Author

Kori Morgan holds a Bachelor of Arts in professional writing and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing and has been crafting online and print educational materials since 2006. She taught creative writing and composition at West Virginia University and the University of Akron and her fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals.

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17.3 Organizing Persuasive Speeches

Learning objectives.

Understand three common organizational patterns for persuasive speeches.
Explain the steps utilized in Monroe’s motivated sequence.
Explain the parts of a problem-cause-solution speech.
Explain the process utilized in a comparative advantage persuasive speech.

Previously in this text we discussed general guidelines for organizing speeches. In this section, we are going to look at three organizational patterns ideally suited for persuasive speeches: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantages.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

One of the most commonly cited and discussed organizational patterns for persuasive speeches is Alan H. Monroe’s motivated sequence. The purpose of Monroe’s motivated sequence is to help speakers “sequence supporting materials and motivational appeals to form a useful organizational pattern for speeches as a whole.” German, K. M., Gronbeck, B. E., Ehninger, D., & Monroe, A. H. (2010). Principles of public speaking (17th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 236.

While Monroe’s motivated sequence is commonly discussed in most public speaking textbooks, we do want to provide one minor caution. Thus far, almost no research has been conducted that has demonstrated that Monroe’s motivated sequence is any more persuasive than other structural patterns. In the only study conducted experimentally examining Monroe’s motivated sequence, the researchers did not find the method more persuasive, but did note that audience members found the pattern more organized than other methods. Micciche, T., Pryor, B., & Butler, J. (2000). A test of Monroe’s motivated sequence for its effects on ratings of message organization and attitude change. Psychological Reports, 86 , 1135–1138. We wanted to add this sidenote because we don’t want you to think that Monroe’s motivated sequence is a kind of magic persuasive bullet; the research simply doesn’t support this notion. At the same time, research does support that organized messages are perceived as more persuasive as a whole, so using Monroe’s motivated sequence to think through one’s persuasive argument could still be very beneficial.

Table 17.1 "Monroe’s Motivated Sequence" lists the basic steps of Monroe’s motivated sequence and the subsequent reaction a speaker desires from his or her audience.

Table 17.1 Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

The first step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the attention step First step in Monroe’s motivated sequence where a speaker attempts to get his or her audience’s attention. , in which a speaker attempts to get the audience’s attention. To gain an audience’s attention, we recommend that you think through three specific parts of the attention step. First, you need to have a strong attention-getting device. As previously discussed in Chapter 9 "Introductions Matter: How to Begin a Speech Effectively" , a strong attention getter at the beginning of your speech is very important. Second, you need to make sure you introduce your topic clearly. If your audience doesn’t know what your topic is quickly, they are more likely to stop listening. Lastly, you need to explain to your audience why they should care about your topic.

In the need step Second step in Monroe’s motivated sequence where a speaker establishes that there is a specific need or problem. of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the speaker establishes that there is a specific need or problem. In Monroe’s conceptualization of need, he talks about four specific parts of the need: statement, illustration, ramification, and pointing. First, a speaker needs to give a clear and concise statement of the problem. This part of a speech should be crystal clear for an audience. Second, the speaker needs to provide one or more examples to illustrate the need. The illustration is an attempt to make the problem concrete for the audience. Next, a speaker needs to provide some kind of evidence (e.g., statistics, examples, testimony) that shows the ramifications or consequences of the problem. Lastly, a speaker needs to point to the audience and show exactly how the problem relates to them personally.

Satisfaction

In the third step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the satisfaction step Third step in Monroe’s motivated sequence where a speaker sets out to satisfy the need or solve the problem. , the speaker sets out to satisfy the need or solve the problem. Within this step, Monroe (1935) proposed a five-step plan for satisfying a need:

Explanation
Theoretical demonstration
Reference to practical experience
Meeting objections

First, you need to clearly state the attitude, value, belief, or action you want your audience to accept. The purpose of this statement is to clearly tell your audience what your ultimate goal is.

Second, you want to make sure that you clearly explain to your audience why they should accept the attitude, value, belief, or action you proposed. Just telling your audience they should do something isn’t strong enough to actually get them to change. Instead, you really need to provide a solid argument for why they should accept your proposed solution.

Third, you need to show how the solution you have proposed meets the need or problem. Monroe calls this link between your solution and the need a theoretical demonstration because you cannot prove that your solution will work. Instead, you theorize based on research and good judgment that your solution will meet the need or solve the problem.

Fourth, to help with this theoretical demonstration, you need to reference practical experience, which should include examples demonstrating that your proposal has worked elsewhere. Research, statistics, and expert testimony are all great ways of referencing practical experience.

Lastly, Monroe recommends that a speaker respond to possible objections. As a persuasive speaker, one of your jobs is to think through your speech and see what counterarguments could be made against your speech and then rebut those arguments within your speech. When you offer rebuttals for arguments against your speech, it shows your audience that you’ve done your homework and educated yourself about multiple sides of the issue.

Visualization

The next step of Monroe’s motivated sequence is the visualization step Fourth step in Monroe’s motivated sequence where a speaker asks his or her audience to visualize a future where the need has been met or the problem solved. , in which you ask the audience to visualize a future where the need has been met or the problem solved. In essence, the visualization stage is where a speaker can show the audience why accepting a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior can positively affect the future. When helping people to picture the future, the more concrete your visualization is, the easier it will be for your audience to see the possible future and be persuaded by it. You also need to make sure that you clearly show how accepting your solution will directly benefit your audience.

According to Monroe, visualization can be conducted in one of three ways: positive, negative, or contrast. Monroe, A. H. (1935). Principles and types of speech . Chicago, IL: Scott Foresman. The positive method of visualization is where a speaker shows how adopting a proposal leads to a better future (e.g., recycle, and we’ll have a cleaner and safer planet). Conversely, the negative method of visualization is where a speaker shows how not adopting the proposal will lead to a worse future (e.g., don’t recycle, and our world will become polluted and uninhabitable). Monroe also acknowledged that visualization can include a combination of both positive and negative visualization. In essence, you show your audience both possible outcomes and have them decide which one they would rather have.

The final step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the action step Fifth step in Monroe’s motivated sequence where a speaker asks for an audience to approve the speaker’s proposal. , in which a speaker asks an audience to approve the speaker’s proposal. For understanding purposes, we break action into two distinct parts: audience action and approval. Audience action refers to direct physical behaviors a speaker wants from an audience (e.g., flossing their teeth twice a day, signing a petition, wearing seat belts). Approval, on the other hand, involves an audience’s consent or agreement with a speaker’s proposed attitude, value, or belief.

When preparing an action step, it is important to make sure that the action, whether audience action or approval, is realistic for your audience. Asking your peers in a college classroom to donate one thousand dollars to charity isn’t realistic. Asking your peers to donate one dollar is considerably more realistic. In a persuasive speech based on Monroe’s motivated sequence, the action step will end with the speech’s concluding device. As discussed elsewhere in this text, you need to make sure that you conclude in a vivid way so that the speech ends on a high point and the audience has a sense of energy as well as a sense of closure.

Now that we’ve walked through Monroe’s motivated sequence, let’s look at how you could use Monroe’s motivated sequence to outline a persuasive speech:

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that the United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments.

Main Points:

Attention: Want to make nine thousand dollars for just three weeks of work lying around and not doing much? Then be a human guinea pig. Admittedly, you’ll have to have a tube down your throat most of those three weeks, but you’ll earn three thousand dollars a week.
Need: Every day many uneducated and lower socioeconomic-status citizens are preyed on by medical and pharmaceutical companies for use in for-profit medical and drug experiments. Do you want one of your family members to fall prey to this evil scheme?
Satisfaction: The United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments to ensure that uneducated and lower-socioeconomic-status citizens are protected.
Visualization: If we enact tougher experiment oversight, we can ensure that medical and pharmaceutical research is conducted in a way that adheres to basic values of American decency. If we do not enact tougher experiment oversight, we could find ourselves in a world where the lines between research subject, guinea pig, and patient become increasingly blurred.
Action: In order to prevent the atrocities associated with for-profit medical and pharmaceutical experiments, please sign this petition asking the US Department of Health and Human Services to pass stricter regulations on this preying industry that is out of control.

This example shows how you can take a basic speech topic and use Monroe’s motivated sequence to clearly and easily outline your speech efficiently and effectively.

Table 17.2 "Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Checklist" also contains a simple checklist to help you make sure you hit all the important components of Monroe’s motivated sequence.

Table 17.2 Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Checklist

Problem-Cause-Solution

Another format for organizing a persuasive speech is the problem-cause-solution format. In this specific format, you discuss what a problem is, what you believe is causing the problem, and then what the solution should be to correct the problem.

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that our campus should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech.

Demonstrate that there is distrust among different groups on campus that has led to unnecessary confrontations and violence.
Show that the confrontations and violence are a result of hate speech that occurred prior to the events.
Explain how instituting a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy against hate speech could stop the unnecessary confrontations and violence.

In this speech, you want to persuade people to support a new campus-wide policy calling for zero-tolerance 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-cause-solution.

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.

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.
The Nook has a color-touch screen, while the Kindle’s screen is black and grey and noninteractive.
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.

Key Takeaways

There are three common patterns that persuaders can utilize to help organize their speeches effectively: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantage. Each of these patterns can effectively help a speaker think through his or her thoughts and organize them in a manner that will be more likely to persuade an audience.
Alan H. Monroe’s (1935) motivated sequence is a commonly used speech format that is used by many people to effectively organize persuasive messages. The pattern consists of five basic stages: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. In the first stage, a speaker gets an audience’s attention. In the second stage, the speaker shows an audience that a need exists. In the third stage, the speaker shows how his or her persuasive proposal could satisfy the need. The fourth stage shows how the future could be if the persuasive proposal is or is not adopted. Lastly, the speaker urges the audience to take some kind of action to help enact the speaker’s persuasive proposal.
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
The comparative advantages speech format is utilized when a speaker is comparing two or more things or ideas and shows why one of the things or ideas has more advantages than the other(s).
Create a speech using Monroe’s motivated sequence to persuade people to recycle.
Create a speech using the problem-cause-solution method for a problem you see on your college or university campus.
Create a comparative advantages speech comparing two brands of toothpaste.

Speech Time Fun: Speech and Language Activities

Teaching Problem and Solution in Speech

Determining problem and solution is one of those skills that is addressed in just about every grade over the course of each year. Beginning in 4th grade, students are expected to “Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.” CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.4.5. This concept is extended to finding the problem and solution within 2 texts in 5th grade, and continues to be addressed throughout a student’s school career.

Problems and solutions within texts are sometimes explicitly stated, and sometimes they have to be inferred. Making inferences is a skill that many students struggle with, and some students even struggle with identifying problems that have been stated explicitly. Fortunately, there are many ways that we can help our speech students with problem and solution, all while working on speech goals!

Why Teach Problem and Solution?

We teach problem and solution because it helps students dig deeper into the text. They can put themselves in a character’s shoes and think about what they would do or how they would feel if they were in that character’s position. This helps students to not only read the words on the page but to gain a better understanding of the situations happening in the story.

Finding the Problem

If the problem in a text is not explicitly stated, there are some questions that you can ask your students to help them find the problem. These include:

What made the character or characters upset?
How did the story change for the characters?
What went wrong in the story? How did this make the character or characters feel?
Could the problem have not happened? How or why?

By using these questions, you can work on speech goals in several areas. Asking these questions aloud and letting the student answer orally can help them to work on articulation, answering “wh” questions, voice, pragmatics, narrative development, and fluency.

Finding the Solution

Once the student has found the problem in a passage, then they must find the solution or solutions that are given. One way to do this is to ask questions like the following:

What did the character or characters do to solve the problem?
How did they solve the problem?
How would you have solved the problem if you were in this story?
Did they try any solutions that did not work? If so, why did these not work?

When determining the solution or solutions to the problem in the text, students can work on the following speech skills:

Articulation by answering these questions and talking through the solutions orally.
Receptive language skills like answering questions by writing down, highlighting, or circling the solutions to the problem.
Completing a sort of problems and solutions can work on expressive language and pragmatic goals like inferencing.

Determining Pros and Cons

Sometimes, more than one solution to a problem is presented in a story. The student may have to determine the best solution or decide what they would do in a character’s situation. To do this, the student can list or discuss the possible solutions and decide what the pros and cons of each solution are. This discussion or writing activity can address goals in the areas of expressive language, articulation, conversation, and narrative development. Then, the student can decide what solution is the best one for the problem presented in the story.

I hope you found this helpful and if you need more ideas on how to teach problem and solution in speech, then check out my no-prep problem-and-solution stories for the year!

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16.3: Organizing Persuasive Speeches

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Learning Objectives

Understand three common organizational patterns for persuasive speeches.
Explain the steps utilized in Monroe’s motivated sequence.
Explain the parts of a problem-cause-solution speech.
Explain the process utilized in a comparative advantage persuasive speech.

Steven Lilley – Engaged – CC BY-SA 2.0.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

While Monroe’s motivated sequence is commonly discussed in most public speaking textbooks, we do want to provide one minor caution. Thus far, almost no research has been conducted that has demonstrated that Monroe’s motivated sequence is any more persuasive than other structural patterns. In the only study conducted experimentally examining Monroe’s motivated sequence, the researchers did not find the method more persuasive, but did note that audience members found the pattern more organized than other methods (Micciche, Pryor, & Butler, 2000). We wanted to add this sidenote because we don’t want you to think that Monroe’s motivated sequence is a kind of magic persuasive bullet; the research simply doesn’t support this notion. At the same time, research does support that organized messages are perceived as more persuasive as a whole, so using Monroe’s motivated sequence to think through one’s persuasive argument could still be very beneficial.

Table 16.1 “Monroe’s Motivated Sequence” lists the basic steps of Monroe’s motivated sequence and the subsequent reaction a speaker desires from his or her audience.

Table 16.1 Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

The first step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the attention step , in which a speaker attempts to get the audience’s attention. To gain an audience’s attention, we recommend that you think through three specific parts of the attention step. First, you need to have a strong attention-getting device. As previously discussed in Chapter 9 “Introductions Matter: How to Begin a Speech Effectively”, a strong attention getter at the beginning of your speech is very important. Second, you need to make sure you introduce your topic clearly. If your audience doesn’t know what your topic is quickly, they are more likely to stop listening. Lastly, you need to explain to your audience why they should care about your topic.

In the need step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the speaker establishes that there is a specific need or problem. In Monroe’s conceptualization of need, he talks about four specific parts of the need: statement, illustration, ramification, and pointing. First, a speaker needs to give a clear and concise statement of the problem. This part of a speech should be crystal clear for an audience. Second, the speaker needs to provide one or more examples to illustrate the need. The illustration is an attempt to make the problem concrete for the audience. Next, a speaker needs to provide some kind of evidence (e.g., statistics, examples, testimony) that shows the ramifications or consequences of the problem. Lastly, a speaker needs to point to the audience and show exactly how the problem relates to them personally.

Satisfaction

In the third step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the satisfaction step , the speaker sets out to satisfy the need or solve the problem. Within this step, Monroe (1935) proposed a five-step plan for satisfying a need:

Explanation
Theoretical demonstration
Reference to practical experience
Meeting objections

First, you need to clearly state the attitude, value, belief, or action you want your audience to accept. The purpose of this statement is to clearly tell your audience what your ultimate goal is.

Visualization

The next step of Monroe’s motivated sequence is the visualization step , in which you ask the audience to visualize a future where the need has been met or the problem solved. In essence, the visualization stage is where a speaker can show the audience why accepting a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior can positively affect the future. When helping people to picture the future, the more concrete your visualization is, the easier it will be for your audience to see the possible future and be persuaded by it. You also need to make sure that you clearly show how accepting your solution will directly benefit your audience.

According to Monroe, visualization can be conducted in one of three ways: positive, negative, or contrast (Monroe, 1935). The positive method of visualization is where a speaker shows how adopting a proposal leads to a better future (e.g., recycle, and we’ll have a cleaner and safer planet). Conversely, the negative method of visualization is where a speaker shows how not adopting the proposal will lead to a worse future (e.g., don’t recycle, and our world will become polluted and uninhabitable). Monroe also acknowledged that visualization can include a combination of both positive and negative visualization. In essence, you show your audience both possible outcomes and have them decide which one they would rather have.

The final step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the action step, in which a speaker asks an audience to approve the speaker’s proposal. For understanding purposes, we break action into two distinct parts: audience action and approval. Audience action refers to direct physical behaviors a speaker wants from an audience (e.g., flossing their teeth twice a day, signing a petition, wearing seat belts). Approval, on the other hand, involves an audience’s consent or agreement with a speaker’s proposed attitude, value, or belief.

Now that we’ve walked through Monroe’s motivated sequence, let’s look at how you could use Monroe’s motivated sequence to outline a persuasive speech:

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that the United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments.

Main Points:

Attention: Want to make nine thousand dollars for just three weeks of work lying around and not doing much? Then be a human guinea pig. Admittedly, you’ll have to have a tube down your throat most of those three weeks, but you’ll earn three thousand dollars a week.
Need: Every day many uneducated and lower socioeconomic-status citizens are preyed on by medical and pharmaceutical companies for use in for-profit medical and drug experiments. Do you want one of your family members to fall prey to this evil scheme?
Satisfaction: The United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments to ensure that uneducated and lower-socioeconomic-status citizens are protected.
Visualization: If we enact tougher experiment oversight, we can ensure that medical and pharmaceutical research is conducted in a way that adheres to basic values of American decency. If we do not enact tougher experiment oversight, we could find ourselves in a world where the lines between research subject, guinea pig, and patient become increasingly blurred.
Action: In order to prevent the atrocities associated with for-profit medical and pharmaceutical experiments, please sign this petition asking the US Department of Health and Human Services to pass stricter regulations on this preying industry that is out of control.

This example shows how you can take a basic speech topic and use Monroe’s motivated sequence to clearly and easily outline your speech efficiently and effectively.

Table 16.2 “Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Checklist” also contains a simple checklist to help you make sure you hit all the important components of Monroe’s motivated sequence.

Table 16.2 Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Checklist

Problem-Cause-Solution

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that our campus should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech.

Demonstrate that there is distrust among different groups on campus that has led to unnecessary confrontations and violence.
Show that the confrontations and violence are a result of hate speech that occurred prior to the events.
Explain how instituting a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy against hate speech could stop the unnecessary confrontations and violence.

Comparative Advantages

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that the Nook is more advantageous than the Kindle.

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.
The Nook has a color-touch screen, while the Kindle’s screen is black and grey and noninteractive.
The Nook’s memory can be expanded through microSD, while the Kindle’s memory cannot be upgraded.

Key Takeaways

There are three common patterns that persuaders can utilize to help organize their speeches effectively: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantage. Each of these patterns can effectively help a speaker think through his or her thoughts and organize them in a manner that will be more likely to persuade an audience.
Alan H. Monroe’s (1935) motivated sequence is a commonly used speech format that is used by many people to effectively organize persuasive messages. The pattern consists of five basic stages: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. In the first stage, a speaker gets an audience’s attention. In the second stage, the speaker shows an audience that a need exists. In the third stage, the speaker shows how his or her persuasive proposal could satisfy the need. The fourth stage shows how the future could be if the persuasive proposal is or is not adopted. Lastly, the speaker urges the audience to take some kind of action to help enact the speaker’s persuasive proposal.
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
The comparative advantages speech format is utilized when a speaker is comparing two or more things or ideas and shows why one of the things or ideas has more advantages than the other(s).
Create a speech using Monroe’s motivated sequence to persuade people to recycle.
Create a speech using the problem-cause-solution method for a problem you see on your college or university campus.
Create a comparative advantages speech comparing two brands of toothpaste.

German, K. M., Gronbeck, B. E., Ehninger, D., & Monroe, A. H. (2010). Principles of public speaking (17th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 236.

Micciche, T., Pryor, B., & Butler, J. (2000). A test of Monroe’s motivated sequence for its effects on ratings of message organization and attitude change. Psychological Reports, 86 , 1135–1138.

Monroe, A. H. (1935). Principles and types of speech . Chicago, IL: Scott Foresman.

Module 10: Persuasive Speaking

Organizing persuasive messages.

Once you have selected your topic, know who your audience is, and have settled on an end goal for your persuasive speech, you can begin drafting your speech. Outlines are organized according to the particular speech, and the following organizational patterns are used routinely for persuasive speeches.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence is an organizational pattern that attempts to convince the audience to respond to a need that is delineated in the speech. [1] Five separate steps characterize the Motivated Sequence organization style:

1. The attention step should get the audience’s attention as well as describe your goals and preview the speech.

2. The need step should provide a description of the problem as well as the consequences that may result if the problem goes unresolved. In this step, the speaker should also alert audience members to their role in mitigating the issue.

3. The satisfaction step is used to outline your solutions to the problems you have previously outlined as well as deal with any objections that may arise.

4. In the visualization step , audience members are asked to visualize what will happen if your solutions are implemented and what will happen if they do not come to fruition. Visualizations should be rich with detail.

5. The action appeal step should be used to make a direct appeal for action. In this step, you should describe precisely how the audience should react to your speech and how they should carry out these actions. As the final step, you should also offer a concluding comment. See Figure 16.1 to see this method of arrangement illustrated.

Direct Method Pattern

“Roman Rackwitz Presentation” by Romrack. CC-BY-SA .

If your goal is to convince your audience to adopt a particular idea, you might prefer the direct method pattern as a way of organizing your speech. This pattern consists of a claim and a list of reasons to support it. Every piece of support in the speech directly supports the central claim you wish to make. As Jaffe points out, “It’s a good pattern to use when listeners are apathetic or neutral, either mildly favoring or mildly opposing your claim.” [2] The outline for a speech on vegetarianism in Figure 16.2 provides three reasons that vegetarianism provides useful health benefits for people struggling with obesity.

History creates comprehensibility primarily by arranging facts meaningfully and only in a very limited sense by establishing strict causal connections. – Johan Huizinga

Causal Pattern

Similar to a problem-solution speech, which was covered in Chapter 8, a causal speech describes a general cause and a specific effect. In other words, a causal pattern first addresses some cause and then shares what effects resulted. A causal speech can be particularly effective when the speaker wants to convince their audience of the relationship between two things. With sound causal reasoning, a speech of this sort can be used to convince the audience of something they were previously opposed to believing.

As the example in Figure 16.3 illustrates, the basic components of the causal speech are the cause and the effect. Such an organizational style is useful when a speaker needs to share the results of a new program, discuss how one act led to another, or discuss the positive/negative outcomes of taking some action. Through this pattern, the speaker can convince audiences to adopt a new belief about a particular phenomenon.

Refutation Pattern

“Jeanette Chong-Aruldoss” by Terence Lee. CC-BY .

Sometimes an occasion will arise when your audience is already opposed to your argument. In this case, a refutation pattern can be engaged to persuade audience members that your side of the argument is better or more accurate. In a refutation speech, the speaker must anticipate the audience’s opposition, then bring attention to the tensions between the two sides, and finally refute them using evidential support. Refutation patterns are frequently seen in debates, where speakers are fundamentally opposed to one another’s arguments. Refutation generally happens through a set of four steps: (1) signaling the argument to which you are responding, (2) stating your own argument, (3) providing justification or evidence for your side of the argument, and (4) summarizing your response. An advocate of reusing as opposed to recycling might present the argument in Figure 16.4 to respond to someone who believes recycling is the best way to individually work on environmental stewardship. As this example illustrates, a refutation speech should clearly delineate where the audience is perceived to stand on an issue, why their view is in disagreement with the speaker’s, and why the audience should adopt the speaker’s position. Moreover, the speaker should be sure to highlight the importance of the debate, which will clue the audience into why they should spend their time listening to a speaker who clearly disagrees with them. An example of this pattern can be found on the next page in Figure 16.4.

Neither irony nor sarcasm is argument. – Samuel Butler

Monroe, A. H. (1949). Principles and types of speech . Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company. ↵
Jaffe, C. (2004). Public speaking: Concepts and skills for a diverse society (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ↵
Chapter 16 Organizing Persuasive Messages. Authored by : Sarah Stone Watt, Ph.D. and Joshua Trey Barnett. Provided by : Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA and Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. Located at : http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html . Project : The Public Speaking Project. License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Roman Rackwitz Presentation. Authored by : Romrack. Located at : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roman_Rackwitz_Presentation.jpg . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
Jeanette Chong-Aruldoss at a Reform Party rally, Speakers' Corner, Singapore - 20110115. Authored by : Terence Lee. Provided by : NewNation.sg. Located at : http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeanette_Chong-Aruldoss_at_a_Reform_Party_rally,_Speakers%27_Corner,_Singapore_-_20110115.jpg . License : CC BY: Attribution

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Do You Understand the Problem You’re Trying to Solve?

To solve tough problems at work, first ask these questions.

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Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem without taking time to really understand the dilemma we face, according to Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg , an expert in innovation and the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for just one root cause can be misleading.

Key episode topics include: leadership, decision making and problem solving, power and influence, business management.

HBR On Leadership curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock the best in those around you. New episodes every week.

Listen to the original HBR IdeaCast episode: The Secret to Better Problem Solving (2016)
Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR on Leadership , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock the best in those around you.

Problem solving skills are invaluable in any job. But even the most experienced among us can fall into the trap of solving the wrong problem.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg says that all too often, we jump to find solutions to a problem – without taking time to really understand what we’re facing.

He’s an expert in innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

In this episode, you’ll learn how to reframe tough problems, by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that contribute to the situation. You’ll also learn why searching for one root cause can be misleading. And you’ll learn how to use experimentation and rapid prototyping as problem-solving tools.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in December 2016. Here it is.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael.

Problem solving is popular. People put it on their resumes. Managers believe they excel at it. Companies count it as a key proficiency. We solve customers’ problems.

The problem is we often solve the wrong problems. Albert Einstein and Peter Drucker alike have discussed the difficulty of effective diagnosis. There are great frameworks for getting teams to attack true problems, but they’re often hard to do daily and on the fly. That’s where our guest comes in.

Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is a consultant who helps companies and managers reframe their problems so they can come up with an effective solution faster. He asks the question “Are You Solving The Right Problems?” in the January-February 2017 issue of Harvard Business Review. Thomas, thank you so much for coming on the HBR IdeaCast .

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thanks for inviting me.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I thought maybe we could start by talking about the problem of talking about problem reframing. What is that exactly?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Basically, when people face a problem, they tend to jump into solution mode to rapidly, and very often that means that they don’t really understand, necessarily, the problem they’re trying to solve. And so, reframing is really a– at heart, it’s a method that helps you avoid that by taking a second to go in and ask two questions, basically saying, first of all, wait. What is the problem we’re trying to solve? And then crucially asking, is there a different way to think about what the problem actually is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, I feel like so often when this comes up in meetings, you know, someone says that, and maybe they throw out the Einstein quote about you spend an hour of problem solving, you spend 55 minutes to find the problem. And then everyone else in the room kind of gets irritated. So, maybe just give us an example of maybe how this would work in practice in a way that would not, sort of, set people’s teeth on edge, like oh, here Sarah goes again, reframing the whole problem instead of just solving it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I mean, you’re bringing up something that’s, I think is crucial, which is to create legitimacy for the method. So, one of the reasons why I put out the article is to give people a tool to say actually, this thing is still important, and we need to do it. But I think the really critical thing in order to make this work in a meeting is actually to learn how to do it fast, because if you have the idea that you need to spend 30 minutes in a meeting delving deeply into the problem, I mean, that’s going to be uphill for most problems. So, the critical thing here is really to try to make it a practice you can implement very, very rapidly.

There’s an example that I would suggest memorizing. This is the example that I use to explain very rapidly what it is. And it’s basically, I call it the slow elevator problem. You imagine that you are the owner of an office building, and that your tenants are complaining that the elevator’s slow.

Now, if you take that problem framing for granted, you’re going to start thinking creatively around how do we make the elevator faster. Do we install a new motor? Do we have to buy a new lift somewhere?

The thing is, though, if you ask people who actually work with facilities management, well, they’re going to have a different solution for you, which is put up a mirror next to the elevator. That’s what happens is, of course, that people go oh, I’m busy. I’m busy. I’m– oh, a mirror. Oh, that’s beautiful.

And then they forget time. What’s interesting about that example is that the idea with a mirror is actually a solution to a different problem than the one you first proposed. And so, the whole idea here is once you get good at using reframing, you can quickly identify other aspects of the problem that might be much better to try to solve than the original one you found. It’s not necessarily that the first one is wrong. It’s just that there might be better problems out there to attack that we can, means we can do things much faster, cheaper, or better.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, in that example, I can understand how A, it’s probably expensive to make the elevator faster, so it’s much cheaper just to put up a mirror. And B, maybe the real problem people are actually feeling, even though they’re not articulating it right, is like, I hate waiting for the elevator. But if you let them sort of fix their hair or check their teeth, they’re suddenly distracted and don’t notice.

But if you have, this is sort of a pedestrian example, but say you have a roommate or a spouse who doesn’t clean up the kitchen. Facing that problem and not having your elegant solution already there to highlight the contrast between the perceived problem and the real problem, how would you take a problem like that and attack it using this method so that you can see what some of the other options might be?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right. So, I mean, let’s say it’s you who have that problem. I would go in and say, first of all, what would you say the problem is? Like, if you were to describe your view of the problem, what would that be?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I hate cleaning the kitchen, and I want someone else to clean it up.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: OK. So, my first observation, you know, that somebody else might not necessarily be your spouse. So, already there, there’s an inbuilt assumption in your question around oh, it has to be my husband who does the cleaning. So, it might actually be worth, already there to say, is that really the only problem you have? That you hate cleaning the kitchen, and you want to avoid it? Or might there be something around, as well, getting a better relationship in terms of how you solve problems in general or establishing a better way to handle small problems when dealing with your spouse?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Or maybe, now that I’m thinking that, maybe the problem is that you just can’t find the stuff in the kitchen when you need to find it.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Right, and so that’s an example of a reframing, that actually why is it a problem that the kitchen is not clean? Is it only because you hate the act of cleaning, or does it actually mean that it just takes you a lot longer and gets a lot messier to actually use the kitchen, which is a different problem. The way you describe this problem now, is there anything that’s missing from that description?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That is a really good question.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Other, basically asking other factors that we are not talking about right now, and I say those because people tend to, when given a problem, they tend to delve deeper into the detail. What often is missing is actually an element outside of the initial description of the problem that might be really relevant to what’s going on. Like, why does the kitchen get messy in the first place? Is it something about the way you use it or your cooking habits? Is it because the neighbor’s kids, kind of, use it all the time?

There might, very often, there might be issues that you’re not really thinking about when you first describe the problem that actually has a big effect on it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I think at this point it would be helpful to maybe get another business example, and I’m wondering if you could tell us the story of the dog adoption problem.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Yeah. This is a big problem in the US. If you work in the shelter industry, basically because dogs are so popular, more than 3 million dogs every year enter a shelter, and currently only about half of those actually find a new home and get adopted. And so, this is a problem that has persisted. It’s been, like, a structural problem for decades in this space. In the last three years, where people found new ways to address it.

So a woman called Lori Weise who runs a rescue organization in South LA, and she actually went in and challenged the very idea of what we were trying to do. She said, no, no. The problem we’re trying to solve is not about how to get more people to adopt dogs. It is about keeping the dogs with their first family so they never enter the shelter system in the first place.

In 2013, she started what’s called a Shelter Intervention Program that basically works like this. If a family comes and wants to hand over their dog, these are called owner surrenders. It’s about 30% of all dogs that come into a shelter. All they would do is go up and ask, if you could, would you like to keep your animal? And if they said yes, they would try to fix whatever helped them fix the problem, but that made them turn over this.

And sometimes that might be that they moved into a new building. The landlord required a deposit, and they simply didn’t have the money to put down a deposit. Or the dog might need a $10 rabies shot, but they didn’t know how to get access to a vet.

And so, by instigating that program, just in the first year, she took her, basically the amount of dollars they spent per animal they helped went from something like $85 down to around $60. Just an immediate impact, and her program now is being rolled out, is being supported by the ASPCA, which is one of the big animal welfare stations, and it’s being rolled out to various other places.

And I think what really struck me with that example was this was not dependent on having the internet. This was not, oh, we needed to have everybody mobile before we could come up with this. This, conceivably, we could have done 20 years ago. Only, it only happened when somebody, like in this case Lori, went in and actually rethought what the problem they were trying to solve was in the first place.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, what I also think is so interesting about that example is that when you talk about it, it doesn’t sound like the kind of thing that would have been thought of through other kinds of problem solving methods. There wasn’t necessarily an After Action Review or a 5 Whys exercise or a Six Sigma type intervention. I don’t want to throw those other methods under the bus, but how can you get such powerful results with such a very simple way of thinking about something?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That was something that struck me as well. This, in a way, reframing and the idea of the problem diagnosis is important is something we’ve known for a long, long time. And we’ve actually have built some tools to help out. If you worked with us professionally, you are familiar with, like, Six Sigma, TRIZ, and so on. You mentioned 5 Whys. A root cause analysis is another one that a lot of people are familiar with.

Those are our good tools, and they’re definitely better than nothing. But what I notice when I work with the companies applying those was those tools tend to make you dig deeper into the first understanding of the problem we have. If it’s the elevator example, people start asking, well, is that the cable strength, or is the capacity of the elevator? That they kind of get caught by the details.

That, in a way, is a bad way to work on problems because it really assumes that there’s like a, you can almost hear it, a root cause. That you have to dig down and find the one true problem, and everything else was just symptoms. That’s a bad way to think about problems because problems tend to be multicausal.

There tend to be lots of causes or levers you can potentially press to address a problem. And if you think there’s only one, if that’s the right problem, that’s actually a dangerous way. And so I think that’s why, that this is a method I’ve worked with over the last five years, trying to basically refine how to make people better at this, and the key tends to be this thing about shifting out and saying, is there a totally different way of thinking about the problem versus getting too caught up in the mechanistic details of what happens.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What about experimentation? Because that’s another method that’s become really popular with the rise of Lean Startup and lots of other innovation methodologies. Why wouldn’t it have worked to, say, experiment with many different types of fixing the dog adoption problem, and then just pick the one that works the best?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: You could say in the dog space, that’s what’s been going on. I mean, there is, in this industry and a lot of, it’s largely volunteer driven. People have experimented, and they found different ways of trying to cope. And that has definitely made the problem better. So, I wouldn’t say that experimentation is bad, quite the contrary. Rapid prototyping, quickly putting something out into the world and learning from it, that’s a fantastic way to learn more and to move forward.

My point is, though, that I feel we’ve come to rely too much on that. There’s like, if you look at the start up space, the wisdom is now just to put something quickly into the market, and then if it doesn’t work, pivot and just do more stuff. What reframing really is, I think of it as the cognitive counterpoint to prototyping. So, this is really a way of seeing very quickly, like not just working on the solution, but also working on our understanding of the problem and trying to see is there a different way to think about that.

If you only stick with experimentation, again, you tend to sometimes stay too much in the same space trying minute variations of something instead of taking a step back and saying, wait a minute. What is this telling us about what the real issue is?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, to go back to something that we touched on earlier, when we were talking about the completely hypothetical example of a spouse who does not clean the kitchen–

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Completely, completely hypothetical.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yes. For the record, my husband is a great kitchen cleaner.

You started asking me some questions that I could see immediately were helping me rethink that problem. Is that kind of the key, just having a checklist of questions to ask yourself? How do you really start to put this into practice?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I think there are two steps in that. The first one is just to make yourself better at the method. Yes, you should kind of work with a checklist. In the article, I kind of outlined seven practices that you can use to do this.

But importantly, I would say you have to consider that as, basically, a set of training wheels. I think there’s a big, big danger in getting caught in a checklist. This is something I work with.

My co-author Paddy Miller, it’s one of his insights. That if you start giving people a checklist for things like this, they start following it. And that’s actually a problem, because what you really want them to do is start challenging their thinking.

So the way to handle this is to get some practice using it. Do use the checklist initially, but then try to step away from it and try to see if you can organically make– it’s almost a habit of mind. When you run into a colleague in the hallway and she has a problem and you have five minutes, like, delving in and just starting asking some of those questions and using your intuition to say, wait, how is she talking about this problem? And is there a question or two I can ask her about the problem that can help her rethink it?

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, that is also just a very different approach, because I think in that situation, most of us can’t go 30 seconds without jumping in and offering solutions.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Very true. The drive toward solutions is very strong. And to be clear, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that if the solutions work. So, many problems are just solved by oh, you know, oh, here’s the way to do that. Great.

But this is really a powerful method for those problems where either it’s something we’ve been banging our heads against tons of times without making progress, or when you need to come up with a really creative solution. When you’re facing a competitor with a much bigger budget, and you know, if you solve the same problem later, you’re not going to win. So, that basic idea of taking that approach to problems can often help you move forward in a different way than just like, oh, I have a solution.

I would say there’s also, there’s some interesting psychological stuff going on, right? Where you may have tried this, but if somebody tries to serve up a solution to a problem I have, I’m often resistant towards them. Kind if like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That solution is not going to work in my world. Whereas if you get them to discuss and analyze what the problem really is, you might actually dig something up.

Let’s go back to the kitchen example. One powerful question is just to say, what’s your own part in creating this problem? It’s very often, like, people, they describe problems as if it’s something that’s inflicted upon them from the external world, and they are innocent bystanders in that.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right, or crazy customers with unreasonable demands.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Exactly, right. I don’t think I’ve ever met an agency or consultancy that didn’t, like, gossip about their customers. Oh, my god, they’re horrible. That, you know, classic thing, why don’t they want to take more risk? Well, risk is bad.

It’s their business that’s on the line, not the consultancy’s, right? So, absolutely, that’s one of the things when you step into a different mindset and kind of, wait. Oh yeah, maybe I actually am part of creating this problem in a sense, as well. That tends to open some new doors for you to move forward, in a way, with stuff that you may have been struggling with for years.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, we’ve surfaced a couple of questions that are useful. I’m curious to know, what are some of the other questions that you find yourself asking in these situations, given that you have made this sort of mental habit that you do? What are the questions that people seem to find really useful?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: One easy one is just to ask if there are any positive exceptions to the problem. So, was there day where your kitchen was actually spotlessly clean? And then asking, what was different about that day? Like, what happened there that didn’t happen the other days? That can very often point people towards a factor that they hadn’t considered previously.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: We got take-out.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: S,o that is your solution. Take-out from [INAUDIBLE]. That might have other problems.

Another good question, and this is a little bit more high level. It’s actually more making an observation about labeling how that person thinks about the problem. And what I mean with that is, we have problem categories in our head. So, if I say, let’s say that you describe a problem to me and say, well, we have a really great product and are, it’s much better than our previous product, but people aren’t buying it. I think we need to put more marketing dollars into this.

Now you can go in and say, that’s interesting. This sounds like you’re thinking of this as a communications problem. Is there a different way of thinking about that? Because you can almost tell how, when the second you say communications, there are some ideas about how do you solve a communications problem. Typically with more communication.

And what you might do is go in and suggest, well, have you considered that it might be, say, an incentive problem? Are there incentives on behalf of the purchasing manager at your clients that are obstructing you? Might there be incentive issues with your own sales force that makes them want to sell the old product instead of the new one?

So literally, just identifying what type of problem does this person think about, and is there different potential way of thinking about it? Might it be an emotional problem, a timing problem, an expectations management problem? Thinking about what label of what type of problem that person is kind of thinking as it of.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: That’s really interesting, too, because I think so many of us get requests for advice that we’re really not qualified to give. So, maybe the next time that happens, instead of muddying my way through, I will just ask some of those questions that we talked about instead.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: That sounds like a good idea.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, Thomas, this has really helped me reframe the way I think about a couple of problems in my own life, and I’m just wondering. I know you do this professionally, but is there a problem in your life that thinking this way has helped you solve?

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: I’ve, of course, I’ve been swallowing my own medicine on this, too, and I think I have, well, maybe two different examples, and in one case somebody else did the reframing for me. But in one case, when I was younger, I often kind of struggled a little bit. I mean, this is my teenage years, kind of hanging out with my parents. I thought they were pretty annoying people. That’s not really fair, because they’re quite wonderful, but that’s what life is when you’re a teenager.

And one of the things that struck me, suddenly, and this was kind of the positive exception was, there was actually an evening where we really had a good time, and there wasn’t a conflict. And the core thing was, I wasn’t just seeing them in their old house where I grew up. It was, actually, we were at a restaurant. And it suddenly struck me that so much of the sometimes, kind of, a little bit, you love them but they’re annoying kind of dynamic, is tied to the place, is tied to the setting you are in.

And of course, if– you know, I live abroad now, if I visit my parents and I stay in my old bedroom, you know, my mother comes in and wants to wake me up in the morning. Stuff like that, right? And it just struck me so, so clearly that it’s– when I change this setting, if I go out and have dinner with them at a different place, that the dynamic, just that dynamic disappears.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Well, Thomas, this has been really, really helpful. Thank you for talking with me today.

THOMAS WEDELL-WEDELLSBORG: Thank you, Sarah.

HANNAH BATES: That was Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg in conversation with Sarah Green Carmichael on the HBR IdeaCast. He’s an expert in problem solving and innovation, and he’s the author of the book, What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve .

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about leadership from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

We’re a production of Harvard Business Review. If you want more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR dot org.

This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Music by Coma Media. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener.

See you next week.

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The Morning

America’s affordable housing crisis.

The housing crisis is likely to be solved in cities and states, not Washington.

A row of similar-looking homes with cars parked in driveways.

By Conor Dougherty

President Biden worries about high housing costs. So do Republicans in Congress. The consensus reflects a major problem: Tens of millions of families, across red and blue states, struggle with rent and home prices. The reason is a longstanding housing shortage.

But action in Washington won’t make a huge difference. America’s affordable housing crisis is likely to be solved in cities and states. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how many are already doing so in bipartisan fashion.

Local laboratories

Home prices are up about 60 percent over the past decade, adjusted for inflation. About a quarter of renters — some 12 million households — spend more than half their income on housing, far in excess of the one-third level that is considered healthy. Homeless camps have expanded, and “ super commuters ” — who drive for 90 minutes or longer to work — have migrated well beyond the expensive coasts to smaller cities like Spokane , Wash., and fast-growing metropolitan areas like Dallas and Phoenix.

Generally, Republican-led states have been more affordable than Democratic-led ones. They tend to have fewer construction and environmental rules, which allows the housing supply to expand faster. But as rent and home prices climb beyond middle-income budgets in more places, states are racing to add housing.

The legislation in each state varies. But in general it removes permitting and design barriers so new construction can be approved faster. States are also trying to alter zoning rules to allow a greater diversity of units in more neighborhoods.

One way is to allow more backyard homes — known as granny flats. That way, homeowners can build a space for a renter or family member. Another is to shrink lot sizes so several smaller cottages can be built on parcels currently reserved for only one larger home. Cities and states are also altering zoning rules so duplexes and triplexes can be built in neighborhoods that are currently designated for single-family homes. All these methods aim to increase density within a city’s existing footprint.

Already, Democrats and Republicans in Montana and Arizona have united for housing legislation. A similar coalition has taken shape in other states, including Texas, Minnesota and North Carolina . Even in California and Oregon, whose governments are both dominated by Democrats, Republican votes have helped pass housing bills.

“Some issues become a horseshoe,” said Cody Vasut, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives who wants to drastically restrict abortion — but also liberalize land use laws. “We have different views of government, but sometimes we arrive at the same conclusion.”

These coalitions are not always successful. Last week, for instance, the Arizona governor, Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that would have allowed smaller homes and lot sizes. She called it “a step too far.”

Most of these laws are too new for us to know their ultimate outcomes. But there’s ample evidence that building more housing reduces prices. In Austin, Texas, for instance, a surge in rent and home prices during the pandemic led to a boom in construction. Now prices are falling, and landlords offer months of free rent to fill empty units.

New coalitions

Why can political parties cooperate on this issue but so little else? Housing politics are hyperlocal and don’t hew to neat ideological lines. Neither party has a hard position that members feel beholden too.

One thing most people agree on is that America has too few homes. According to Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giant, the nation is short about four million units . The deficit is particularly acute in both low-cost rentals and the entry-level starter homes favored by first-time buyers.

Economists say much of the blame falls on local governments. City councils hold most of the power over where and what types of housing get built, but they are beholden to homeowners who often pack meetings to complain that new developments would destroy nature and snarl traffic.

This is called NIMBYism, short for “Not in my backyard.” The remedy, in both red and blue states, has been to pass laws that strip cities’ power to say no.

State legislatures are close enough to voters to share their concerns about rising housing costs — but far enough that they don’t have to answer for every new local development. They are the Goldilocks level of government for housing reform.

Related: I want to hear from readers about their housing situations. You can submit stories here .

THE LATEST NEWS

Baltimore bridge collapse.

The cargo ship that collided with the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore lost power shortly before the crash, officials said. See how the bridge collapsed .

After the ship put out a distress call, workers stopped cars from driving across the bridge. “These people are heroes,” Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, said.

The Coast Guard is searching for the bodies of six of the eight construction workers who were on the bridge. Two were found alive; the others are presumed dead, an official said.

Biden said that the collision appeared to have been an accident and that he wanted the federal government to rebuild the bridge.

Several automakers said that they would reroute their shipments.

Supreme Court

Most of the Supreme Court justices sounded inclined to reject a bid to restrict nationwide access to an abortion pill , mifepristone, during arguments.

Several justices seemed skeptical that the plaintiffs, doctors who don’t prescribe abortion pills, had a right to challenge the F.D.A.’s approval of the drug. Read more takeaways .

The female justices had candid exchanges about women’s health, The Washington Post reports.

2024 Election

The Biden campaign joined TikTok to try to reach younger voters. The videos have prompted jokes and criticism.

Barack Obama regularly calls top Biden aides to strategize about Biden’s re-election campaign .

More on Politics

NBC News cut ties with Ronna McDaniel , the former Republican Party chairwoman, after hosts criticized the network for hiring her as a commentator. A Times review found that she had helped Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election .

Trump’s social media company surged on its first day of trading on the Nasdaq, adding billions to his wealth .

The judge overseeing Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial imposed a gag order prohibiting Trump from attacking witnesses or prosecutors.

Trump posted a video urging his supporters to buy the “God Bless the USA Bible,” priced at around $60. Trump gets royalties from sales .

A new law in Florida will prohibit children under 14 from having social media accounts, The A.P. reports. It is set to take effect next year.

Israel-Hamas War

An Israeli hostage said she had been sexually assaulted and tortured in Gaza. Read her story .

Hezbollah and Israel fired at each other across the border with Lebanon. At least one person died in Israel and seven were reported killed in Lebanon.

Top Israeli and U.S. defense officials met to discuss Israel’s plan to invade Rafah .

Israel is deploying facial recognition to conduct surveillance in Gaza, according to Israeli military and intelligence officials.

The authorities in Gaza said 12 people drowned while trying to retrieve airdropped aid that had fallen into the Mediterranean.

MORNING READS

Holi: The Indian festival is becoming more popular worldwide. Read about the tradition .

Scams: A woman posed as a down-on-her-luck Irish heiress. The man she conned out of thousands started a podcast to track her down .

The Great Read: A legal pot pioneer was busted in Idaho. He has a plan .

Lives Lived: Lee Berry was one of the Panther 21, members of the Black Panther Party who were prosecuted in New York in 1970. His account of abuse in jail was a catalyst for Leonard Bernstein’s Park Avenue fund-raising party that Tom Wolfe satirized in a withering magazine takedown. Berry died at 78 .

N.F.L.: League owners approved significant changes to kickoff rules, which will go into effect this season.

College basketball: Iowa and West Virginia drew an average of 4.9 million viewers for their second-round women’s N.C.A.A. tournament game, a pre-Final Four record.

ARTS AND IDEAS

French identity: Aya Nakamura, one of France’s most popular singers, might perform at the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics. The choice has become a flashpoint in the nation’s culture wars. Nakamura was born in Mali and raised in a Parisian suburb, and her music mixes French lyrics with Arabic and West African dialects.

“In a country often ill at ease with its changing population,” Roger Cohen and Aurelien Breeden write , “she stands on a fault line.”

More on culture

Beyoncé’s coming album, “Cowboy Carter,” is an extension of the artist’s exploration of how Black creativity fuels all corners of popular music. Read Jon Caramanica’s essay .

Stephen King’s “Carrie” was published in 1974. Margaret Atwood explains its enduring appeal.

“Trump is mashing together the Bible and the Constitution like it’s a Pizza Hut-Taco Bell”: The late-night hosts discussed Trump’s latest business venture .

THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …

Stir together a one-pot crisp gnocchi with sausage and peas.

Prepare kids for puberty with these items .

Clean your oven .

Here is today’s Spelling Bee . Yesterday’s pangram was adjourn .

And here are today’s Mini Crossword , Wordle , Sudoku and Connections .

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.

Conor Dougherty covers housing and development, focusing on the rising costs of homeownership. He is based in Los Angeles. More about Conor Dougherty

48 Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, Problem-Solution, Comparative Advantages

Learning objectives.

Understand three common organizational patterns for persuasive speeches.
Explain the steps utilized in Monroe’s motivated sequence.
Explain the parts of a problem-cause-solution speech.
Explain the process utilized in a comparative advantage persuasive speech.

Organizing Persuasive Speeches

Previously in this text, we discussed general guidelines for organizing speeches. In this section, we are going to look at three organizational patterns ideally suited for persuasive speeches: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantages.

Monroe’s Motivated Sequence

While Monroe’s motivated sequence is commonly discussed in most public speaking textbooks, we do want to provide one minor caution. Thus far, almost no research has been conducted that has demonstrated that Monroe’s motivated sequence is any more persuasive than other structural patterns. In the only study conducted experimentally examining Monroe’s motivated sequence, the researchers did not find the method more persuasive but did note that audience members found the pattern more organized than other methods (Micciche, Pryor, & Butler, 2000). We wanted to add this sidenote because we don’t want you to think that Monroe’s motivated sequence is a kind of magic persuasive bullet; the research simply doesn’t support this notion. At the same time, research does support that organized messages are perceived as more persuasive as a whole, so using Monroe’s motivated sequence to think through one’s persuasive argument could still be very beneficial.

Below are the basic steps of Monroe’s motivated sequence and the subsequent reaction a speaker desires from his or her audience.

The first step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the attention step , in which a speaker attempts to get the audience’s attention. To gain an audience’s attention, we recommend that you think through three specific parts of the attention step. First, you need to have a strong attention-getting device. As previously discussed, a strong attention getter at the beginning of your speech is very important. Second, you need to make sure you introduce your topic clearly. If your audience doesn’t know what your topic is quickly, they are more likely to stop listening. Lastly, you need to explain to your audience why they should care about your topic. If this sounds familiar, it should! The attention step uses the same elements as an introduction for any speech: The attention getter, relevance, credibility, thesis statement, and preview.

In the need step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the speaker establishes that there is a specific need or problem. This will be your first main point. In Monroe’s conceptualization of need, he talks about four specific parts of the need: statement, illustration, ramification, and pointing. First, a speaker needs to give a clear and concise statement of the problem. This part of a speech should be crystal clear for an audience. Second, the speaker needs to provide one or more examples to illustrate the need. The illustration is an attempt to make the problem concrete for the audience. Next, a speaker needs to provide some kind of evidence (e.g., statistics, examples, testimony) that shows the ramifications or consequences of the problem. Lastly, a speaker needs to point to the audience and show exactly how the problem relates to them personally.

Satisfaction

In the third step of Monroe’s motivated sequence, the satisfaction step , the speaker sets out to satisfy the need or solve the problem. This will be your second main point. Within this step, Monroe (1935) proposed a five-step plan for satisfying a need:

Explanation
Theoretical demonstration
Reference to practical experience
Meeting objections

First, you need to clearly state the attitude, value, belief, or action you want your audience to accept. The purpose of this statement is to clearly tell your audience what your ultimate goal is.

Lastly, Monroe recommends that a speaker responds to possible objections. As a persuasive speaker, one of your jobs is to think through your speech and see what counterarguments could be made against your speech and then rebut those arguments within your speech. When you offer rebuttals for arguments against your speech, it shows your audience that you’ve done your homework and educated yourself about multiple sides of the issue.

Visualization

The next step of Monroe’s motivated sequence is the visualization step , in which you ask the audience to visualize a future where the need has been met or the problem solved. This will be your third main point. In essence, the visualization stage is where a speaker can show the audience why accepting a specific attitude, value, belief, or behavior can positively affect the future. When helping people to picture the future, the more concrete your visualization is, the easier it will be for your audience to see the possible future and be persuaded by it. You also need to make sure that you clearly show how accepting your solution will directly benefit your audience.

The final step in Monroe’s motivated sequence is the action step , in which a speaker asks an audience to approve the speaker’s proposal. For understanding purposes, we break the action into two distinct parts: audience action and approval. Audience action refers to direct physical behaviors a speaker wants from an audience (e.g., flossing their teeth twice a day, signing a petition, wearing seat belts). Approval, on the other hand, involves an audience’s consent or agreement with a speaker’s proposed attitude, value, or belief.

This step will be your conclusion. Again, it will have the same elements as a conclusion you would use for any speech.

Application

Now that we’ve walked through Monroe’s motivated sequence, let’s look at how you could use Monroe’s motivated sequence to outline a persuasive speech:

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that the United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments.

Main Points:

Attention: Want to make nine thousand dollars for just three weeks of work lying around and not doing much? Then be a human guinea pig. Admittedly, you’ll have to have a tube down your throat most of those three weeks, but you’ll earn three thousand dollars a week.
Need: Every day many uneducated and lower socioeconomic-status citizens are preyed on by medical and pharmaceutical companies for use in for-profit medical and drug experiments. Do you want one of your family members to fall prey to this evil scheme?
Satisfaction: The United States should have stronger laws governing the use of for-profit medical experiments to ensure that uneducated and lower-socioeconomic-status citizens are protected.
Visualization: If we enact tougher experiment oversight, we can ensure that medical and pharmaceutical research is conducted in a way that adheres to basic values of American decency. If we do not enact tougher experiment oversight, we could find ourselves in a world where the lines between research subject, guinea pig, and patient become increasingly blurred.
Action: In order to prevent the atrocities associated with for-profit medical and pharmaceutical experiments, please sign this petition asking the US Department of Health and Human Services to pass stricter regulations on this preying industry that is out of control.

This example shows how you can take a basic speech topic and use Monroe’s motivated sequence to clearly and easily outline your speech efficiently and effectively.

Below is a checklist that contains a simple checklist to help you make sure you hit all the important components of Monroe’s motivated sequence.

The following video further details Monroe’s Motivated Sequence outlining each component and providing examples to provide an in-depth understanding of the organizational pattern.

For Future Reference | How to organize this in an outline |

Introduction: Attention Step

Main Point #1: Need Step

Main Point #2: Satisfaction Step

Main Point #3: Visualization Step

Conclusoin: Action Step

Problem-Cause-Solution

Specific Purpose: To persuade my classroom peers that our campus should adopt a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech.

Demonstrate that there is distrust among different groups on campus that has led to unnecessary confrontations and violence.
Show that the confrontations and violence are a result of hate speech that occurred prior to the events.
Explain how instituting a campus-wide zero-tolerance policy against hate speech could stop the unnecessary confrontations and violence.

Comparative Advantages

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that the Nook is more advantageous than the Kindle.

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.
The Nook has a color-touch screen, while the Kindle’s screen is black and grey and noninteractive.
The Nook’s memory can be expanded through microSD, while the Kindle’s memory cannot be upgraded.

Key Takeaways

There are three common patterns that persuaders can utilize to help organize their speeches effectively: Monroe’s motivated sequence, problem-cause-solution, and comparative advantage. Each of these patterns can effectively help a speaker think through his or her thoughts and organize them in a manner that will be more likely to persuade an audience.
Alan H. Monroe’s (1935) motivated sequence is a commonly used speech format that is used by many people to effectively organize persuasive messages. The pattern consists of five basic stages: attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. In the first stage, a speaker gets an audience’s attention. In the second stage, the speaker shows an audience that a need exists. In the third stage, the speaker shows how his or her persuasive proposal could satisfy the need. The fourth stage shows how the future could be if the persuasive proposal is or is not adopted. Lastly, the speaker urges the audience to take some kind of action to help enact the speaker’s persuasive proposal.
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
The comparative advantages speech format is utilized when a speaker is comparing two or more things or ideas and shows why one of the things or ideas has more advantages than the other(s).

German, K. M., Gronbeck, B. E., Ehninger, D., & Monroe, A. H. (2010). Principles of public speaking (17th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 236.

Micciche, T., Pryor, B., & Butler, J. (2000). A test of Monroe’s motivated sequence for its effects on ratings of message organization and attitude change. Psychological Reports, 86 , 1135–1138.

Monroe, A. H. (1935). Principles and types of speech . Chicago, IL: Scott Foresman.

Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Optimized Sigmoid Functions for Speech Presence Probability and Gain Function in Speech Enhancement

Dam, Hai Huyen
Nordholm, Sven
Yong, Pei Chee
Low, Siow Yong

Speech presence probability (SPP) and gain functions such as Wiener filter or MMSE estimators require an estimate of the a-priori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, the estimation of the a-priori SNR is computationally involved and sensitive to noise variations. This paper proposes to approximate the SPP and the overall gain function of a speech enhancement system by using sigmoid functions to reduce the need of estimating the a-prior SNR. By applying an approximation via the sigmoid functions it is shown that only the a-posteriori estimate of SNR is needed, resulting in a low complexity system. The sigmoid function is designed with an optimization algorithm to optimize its parameters with respect to speech quality measures. The optimization algorithm is based on the idea that the solution obtained for a given problem should move towards the best solution and avoid the worst solution. The proposed algorithm requires minimal control parameters and does not require any algorithm specific parameters. Simulation results show that the proposed sigmoid functions achieve good results in terms of speech quality measures when compared with existing methods while providing significantly lower complexity for implementation.

Single channel speech enhancement;
A-priori SNR estimation;
Decision directed approach;
Optimization

IMAGES

PROBLEM-SOLUTION SPEECH
How to Write a Problem Solution Essay
Problem-Solution Speech Outline By: Phillip Baucom General
Problem-Solution Speech [Definition, Topics, Structure]
Giving a Problem Solution Speech
Problem Solution Speech Topics, Outline & Examples

VIDEO

Problem and Solution Speech
Soban Attari Podcast ep7: How to Control Overthinking
Problem & Solution Speech
IPS Problem-Solution Speech
Problem-Solution Speech
Problem/Solution Speech SCOM345: The Effects of Mental Illness Stigma

COMMENTS

Problem-Solution Speech [Topics, Outline, Examples]
Thesis Statement: The thesis typically lays out the problem and solution in the form of a question and answer. See examples below. Solution: Explain the solution clearly and in detail, your problem-solving strategy, and reasons why your solution will work.In this section, be sure to answer common objections, such as "there is a better solution," "your solution is too costly," and ...
80+ Problem Solution Speech Topics
A problem/solution speech takes the approach of highlighting an issue with the intent to provide solutions. It is a two-phase approach where first the speaker lays out the problem and explains the importance. Secondly, a variety of solutions are provided to tackle the said issue. The best solutions are those that can be actively applied.
Problem Solution Speech Topics, Outline & Examples
The problem solution speech is a type of informative speech that enumerates various problems and provides possible solutions to those problems. If you have been asked to give such a speech, your goal should be to explain the problem and provide realistic and achievable suggestions to address it.
17.3 Organizing Persuasive Speeches
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
Problem Solution Speech Topics Ideas: Guide to Successful Writing
Problem Solution Speech on the Topic of Policy Advocacy. The question of policy persuasive speech topics remains extremely acute for students because frequently they do not know where to start after they have read numerous essay samples. Particularly, students may be confused about the way of organizing information for a speech. ...
70 Custom Problem Solution Speech Topics On Each Subject
Problem solution speech requires comprehensive preparation. You should create an outline, pick up a relevant topic, and rehearse it. Follow our step-by-step guide to find a suitable topic and improve your speech. Keep in mind we have other articles on how to write different types of essays or texts for speech. Stay self-confident, and you will ...
8.3: Organizational Styles
The problem-solution speech is especially appropriate when the speaker desires to promote a particular solution as this offers audience members a way to become involved. Whether you are able to offer a specific solution or not, key to the problem-solution speech is a clear description of both the problem and the solution with clear links drawn ...
PDF PROBLEM-SOLUTION SPEECH TEMPLATE Title
PROBLEM-SOLUTION SPEECH TEMPLATE Title: Topic: General Purpose: "To Inform", "To Persuade", "To Entertain", etc … as assigned Specific Purpose: A single statement that combines your general purpose, your audience, and your intended outcome (the outcome or behavior you want your audience to experience or adopt after
10.2 Using Common Organizing Patterns
Problem-Cause-Solution. Another format for organizing distinct main points in a clear manner is the problem-cause-solution speech pattern. In this format you describe a problem, identify what you believe is causing the problem, and then recommend a solution to correct the problem.
Problem Solution Speech Topics
Problem Solution Speech Topics. When working with problem solution speech topics there are two main objectives to consider: to present convincing solutions. The requirement to fix the problem defines the problem-solution speech as a persuasive presentation. You may consider any of the persuasive speech topics that you have a proposal or a plan ...
How to Persuade Your Audience with Problem-Solution Speeches
A successful speech influences or persuades others to take action or to adopt an idea. The problem-solution structure is a simple and logical framework you can adopt to raise awareness to a ...
12.3: Organizing Persuasive Speeches
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
Problem/Solution Speech Topics
A problem/solution presentation is a type of persuasive speech that not only identifies an issue and its causes, but also gives you the chance to propose a way to solve it. To give a successful speech, you must select a topic that is both significant and manageable enough to create a potential solution. You can select ...
Organizational Styles
The problem-solution speech is especially appropriate when the speaker desires to promote a particular solution as this offers audience members a way to become involved. Whether you are able to offer a specific solution or not, key to the problem-solution speech is a clear description of both the problem and the solution with clear links drawn ...
Problem & Solution Persuasive Speech Styles
Problem & Solution Persuasive Speech Styles. Part of the series: Persuasive Speaking Tips. There are many ways to give persuasive speeches. Learn about the p...
80+ Problem Solution Speech Topics
A problem/solution speech takes the approaching of highlighting an issue with the intent to provide solutions. It is a two-phase get where first the speaker lays out who problem and declared the importance. Secondly, a variety of solve are provided the undertake the said matter. The supreme solutions are those that can be actives applied.
Organizing Persuasive Speeches
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
How to Use the Problem-Solution Technique for Motivational Speeches
Powered by AI and the LinkedIn community. 1. Identify the problem. 2. Explain the problem. 3. Propose the solution. 4. Call to action.
Teaching Problem and Solution in Speech
When determining the solution or solutions to the problem in the text, students can work on the following speech skills: Articulation by answering these questions and talking through the solutions orally. Receptive language skills like answering questions by writing down, highlighting, or circling the solutions to the problem.
16.3: Organizing Persuasive Speeches
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
Problem-Solution vs Cause-Effect Speeches: How to Choose
A problem-solution speech is a speech that identifies a specific problem and proposes a feasible solution to it. The problem-solution speech has two main parts: the problem and the solution.
Organizing Persuasive Messages
Similar to a problem-solution speech, which was covered in Chapter 8, a causal speech describes a general cause and a specific effect. In other words, a causal pattern first addresses some cause and then shares what effects resulted. A causal speech can be particularly effective when the speaker wants to convince their audience of the ...
Do You Understand the Problem You're Trying to Solve?
To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve. In this episode, you'll learn how to reframe tough problems by asking questions that reveal all the factors and assumptions that ...
America's Affordable Housing Crisis
The consensus reflects a major problem: Tens of millions of families, across red and blue states, struggle with rent and home prices. The reason is a longstanding housing shortage. But action in ...
Monroe's Motivated Sequence, Problem-Solution, Comparative Advantages
The problem-cause-solution proposal is a three-pronged speech pattern. The speaker starts by explaining the problem the speaker sees. The speaker then explains what he or she sees as the underlying causes of the problem. Lastly, the speaker proposes a solution to the problem that corrects the underlying causes.
Optimized Sigmoid Functions for Speech Presence Probability and Gain
Speech presence probability (SPP) and gain functions such as Wiener filter or MMSE estimators require an estimate of the a-priori signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, the estimation of the a-priori SNR is computationally involved and sensitive to noise variations. This paper proposes to approximate the SPP and the overall gain function of a speech enhancement system by using sigmoid functions ...

Problem-Solution Speech [Topics, Outline, Examples]

Problem-Solution Outline

Problem-Solution Topics for Essays and Papers

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80+ Problem Solution Speech Topics

Problem Solution Method

Introduction:

Thesis Statement:

Cause/Effect:

Solution:

Call to Action:

Problem/Solution Presentation Techniques

Problem-Solution Speech Topics

Problem Solution Speech Topics, Outline & Examples

Problem-Solution Speech Outline

Introduction

Thesis/Statement of the problem

Cause/Effect

Potential solutions

Call to action

Problem-Solution Presentation Techniques

Problem-Solution Speech Topics

Relationships

Social Issues

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Problem Solution Speech Topics Ideas

How to Choose a Problem and Make the Essay Interesting

How to Find Solutions

How to Provide Proper Support for Your Argument

The Best Problem Solution Speech Topics for College Students

A List of Problem Cause Solution Persuasive Speech Topics for College Students

Problem Solution Speech on the Topic of Policy Advocacy

I. Introduction

II. Body: The Problem Identification and Solution Proposal

III. Conclusion

Problem Solution Topics for Your Perfect Speech

How to Choose a Proper Problem Solution Speech Topic

List of Speech Topics for Problem-Solution Presentation

Working on the Solution

How to Provide an Outline for a Problem Solution Speech

10.2 Using Common Organizing Patterns

Categorical/Topical

Comparison/Contrast

Chronological

Biographical

Problem-Cause-Solution

Psychological

Selecting an Organizational Pattern

Key Takeaway

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Selecting Problems

Finding Solutions

Handling Multiple-Aspect Problem Solution Speech Topics

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