One student, one five-minute speech, one page with all four elements on it. Topic, purpose and thesis are meshed parts: move one and the other two have to be re-cut. Swap the pieces below until all five checks mesh and the gears turn — every failure tells you its symptom and its fix.
The situation. A student writes one line from her inventory: “I work night shift at a rehab facility.” Laddered: the drive home after a twelve is the scariest part of the job → half this class works overnights and drives to campus. Five minutes. Now build the speech — and audit it.
General purpose
Specific purpose — written for her
Thesis — spoken to the room
Main points, in order
What the research actually came back with
Checks meshed0/5
Check four is the one that fails after you have already done the work. You wrote a thesis, spent three hours reading, and the evidence turned out to say something adjacent to your claim. The honest move is to revise the thesis. The dishonest move — and it is dishonest, not merely sloppy — is to keep the thesis and stretch the sources to fit it.