Determine Your Purpose
General Purpose
1. to inform: teach, illustrate, elaborate
2. to persuade: ads, sales pitches, sermons
3. to entertain: after dinner speeches, comic monologues
Specific Purpose
Concise statement indicating what you want your listeners to do after the speech
Develop Your Central Idea
• Identifies the essence of your speech
• One sentence summary of the speech
Organize Your Main Idea
1. Chronologically
a. Organize by time, from earliest to most recent, or most recent to back in history
i. How to explanations
b. Recency: the event discussed last is usually the one the audience will remember best
2. Topically
a. Use if your speech has natural divisions, often have equal importance
i. Recency (most important last) , primancy (most important first), complexity (simple to
more complex)
3. Spatially
a. Arranged in accordance with location and direction (Lewis and Clark)
4. Cause and Effect
a. Shows a situation and then what caused it (effectcause) or a cause that led to a situation (cause
effect)
5. ProblemSolution
a. Similar to a cause and effect except shows problemsolution or solutionproblem
Organize Your Supporting Material
1. Primacy or Recency
a. Primacy : most important first
b. Recency: most important last
2. Specificity
a. Sometimes range from specific to more general overviews
3. Complexity
a. Moving from simple to complex, in most cases it makes sense to start with the simplest ideas
4. Soft to Hard Evidence
a. Soft: opinion or inference
b. Hard: factual examples and statistics
Develop Signposts
Words and gestures that allow you to move from one point to another
1. Previews : a statement of what is to come
a. Initial: what the main ideas of the speech will be
b. Internal Preview: used at various points throughout the speech, preview ideas that will be
developed as the speech progresses
2. Summaries : provide additional exposure to a speaker’s ideas and help ensure the audience will
remember them
a. Final summary: just before the end of the speech (transition between body+conclusion) [Type text] [Type text] [Type text]
b. Internal summary: occurs within and throughout a speech, used after multiple points to
reiterate them and help them remain fresh
Purpose of Introductions
1. Get the audience’s attention: gain favorable attention (illustration, startling fact, a quotation, humor,
a question, anecdote)
2. Introduce the subject: present your central idea
3. Give the audience a reason to listen: tell your listeners how the topic directly affects them, proximity,
make it affect them directly
4. Establish your credibility: offer your credentials, appear confident (why do you care, how invested
are you in the topic)
5. Preview your main ideas: tell you audience what you are going to tell them
Purpose of Conclusions
1. Summarize your speech: use as your last chance to repeat main ideas
2. Reemphasize the main idea in a memorable way : well worded closing phrase/illustration
3. Motivate the audience to respond : urge the audience to think about the topic or to research it further,
action step in motivation sequence
4. Provide closure: let audience know the speech is ending, achieve closure
Prep Vs. Delivery
Prep Delivery
Use complete sentences Use sing words and bullet points
Write out full intro and conclusion Write first and last sentences
Add blueprint, all signposts
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