How to Structure a Speech
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Writing good speech is all about planning. Planning decreases stress and increases the effective delivery of your message.
Speech Structure
INTRODUCTION
- Goals: Get the attention and interest of your audience, set the tone, reveal the topic, establish credibility and good will, and preview the speech.
- narrative
- humor
- quotation
- rhetorical question
- startling statement
- arouse curiosity
- reference to audience, occasion, or current events, previous speech
- presentation aids (visual/audio)
- Create desire on the part of the audience to listen. Answer the questions: “Why should I care?” and “How does this topic relate to me?”
- Show the scope of the issue, the degree of importance, and the ramifications.
Establish credibility and good will with the audience.
Preview the body of the speech.
BODY
(Signposts throughout speech)
Main points (2-5)
- Choose your organizational pattern based on the topic and your approach.
- State your main ideas as complete sentences and a single idea.
- Parallel the main ideas grammatically if possible.
- Your audience should be able to recognize and remember your main points.
- chronological
- spatial
- topical
- causal (both informative and persuasive
- logical reasons
- problem/solution
- problem/cause/solution
- comparative advantages
- Monroe’s motivated sequence
- refutation
Use a variety of support (facts/statistics, testimony, examples), picked for your particular audience.
Make sure each point is developed completely before going on to the next.
If needed, summarize the point before making a transition to the next point.
Document your sources to add credibility. Use recent, credible sources and cite them in your speech when necessary.
Factors of attention, understanding and remembering need to be used.
- humor
- relevance
- intensity
- repetition
- novelty
- compare/contrast
- visuals
- narratives
- examples
Summarize
Close with impact
- quotation
- narrative
- appeal to action
- return to opening theme
