If it hasn't happened yet, just wait,
it will. You will be asked to deliver a speech
and today we will talk about the very basics of speech
presentations and how to develop them. Specifically, we're going to talk about
the types of presentations,
the basic organizational structure of the speech,
and then finally some key ideas to succeed when you
have to do a speech. Scholars tend to divide
presentations into three types: informative,
persuasive, and then everything else gets lumped into what we would call special
occasion speeches:
a toast, a eulogy, a speech of nomination, an acceptance speech,
and an after-dinner speech where, after somebody has
eaten a meal, then you usually have a humorous speaker or keynote speaker.
There are some scholars who believe that instead of three main types of
presentations,
there are really only two--that every special occasion speech can be
thought of as either informative or persuasive. If you are
giving a eulogy at a funeral, you might be informing
the mourners who this person was. If you are
nominating somebody for a position, in your speech
nomination, you would be persuading the audience to accept the nomination.
One way to think about your speech is that you are essentially making
an argument--even if it is an informative rather than a persuasive
speech.
You are essentially making a claim--that's
the main point of your speech--then you would support your claim
with your main points. Let's say you're doing a speech
of introduction and you're introducing a person
and you want to prove to your audience that this person
is well-read. Your claim might be here's a person who loves to read.
Your main points might be that this person has been reading for his or her
entire life,
this person enjoys reading a variety of books,
and this person enjoys reading to other people.
Those three points would support your claim that this person
is a reader. You would then be supporting
each of those main points with examples, with evidence,
and with reasoning. And then finally you would reiterate the claim--restate the
claim--
or argument, when you conclude the speech. There's a basic organization of a
speech that really only has three parts. We have what's called the beginning,
the middle, and the end, and every speech goes through these three parts. If you're
telling a story,
there's an introduction to the story, there's this story itself,
and then, when you end the story, the audience knows that the story
has concluded. Starting at the very beginning, in a speech we would that an
introduction,
and the basic purpose of the introduction is to attract your
audience's attention
in a way that is related to the subject. A simple way to think about it
is you want an AVI
introduction, or Attention Value
Introduction. You want to catch the audience's Attention,
the introduction needs to be of Value to the speech, and
it also needs to introduce the speech topic.
What you would include in an introduction:
you want to open with impact. You want to get your audience's attention--that's the
A part of the AVI. You want to provide some information that is a value to the
presentation.
Your audience is often asking, "Why am I here listening to you tell me about this?",
so you explain to your audience how it relates to them--how it's relevant.
I often will use the word "significance." What's the significance of
this speech or this topic to me? Your audience wants to feel comfortable with
you would develop rapport.
And then you would also want to establish your credibility as the
speaker; the audience wants to know
that they can trust what you are saying. Now there are five bullets that show up
here, which implies that maybe you have five sentences to an introduction,
but that's not necessarily true. Oftentimes,
you can achieve multiple criteria with one or two sentences.
Let's say you're going to do a speech on epilepsy. You might say,
"One in 10 people will experience an epileptic seizure
at some point in their life." Well, that's probably going to get your audiences
attention,
so you open with impact. That information it would be of value to the presentation
on
epilepsy, and I think it would also give your audience a reason to listen--
that they might know somebody or that they might have epileptic seizure.
You would end your introduction with the thesis or the preview
statement,
and then you would transition to the body. So, now let's transition
to the body of the speech. This is the reason you are giving the speech--this is
the heavy
content here. This must be organized. You shouldn't have a series of statements
that don't relate to each other.
Remember: You are building an argument. You're going to
organize your body into between two in five main points.
Most of the time, people will organize it into three main points--that's what we are
most used to as an audience, and that's what you probably should strive for,
particularly as a beginning speaker. But you could actually have as few as two
main points--
as long as they are well-developed--but not more than four or five main points,
because audiences have a hard time remembering
each one of those distinct points once you get above a certain number.
You would develop those points, so you're making
claims to support your major argument, and then you would support those claims
with more arguments: examples, reasoning,
evidence. Now it's time to think about ending the speech.
In the conclusion, your basic purpose is to provide your audience with the
sense of logical
and emotional closure. We need to feel as if the speech has
ended. The main functions here are to signal closure, probably with the
transition.
You'll often summarize your key points we might call it
summary statement, reiterating the thesis
for the central idea. because, remember, you've made an argument
now it's time to bring the argument home.
You can challenger audience to respond and reiterate the relevance
of the topic, or the value to the audience.
Even in an informative speech, you can challenge the audience to use the
information you've just provided them
in a beneficial way. And then
you want to end with impact--that's the way you're going to have your
audience feel that sense of logical and emotional
closure. The third part of this presentation today
focuses on how you might succeed in speeches overall.
The importance of the good topic selection, audience analysis,
and then you have to be able to deliver what you have prepared.
For topic selection, avoid topics were you don't sound credible.
If you are not a scientist, it's very hard to do a very scientific
topic. You might want to choose something else. If you're using an everyday topic,
see if you can give it a new perspective
a new way to look at it--there are some topics we've heard over and
over again. Try to give us something unique--
again, something of more value to us
make the topic relevant to your audience. Sometimes a statistic will do, sometimes
a relation to something in current events might help,
but your audience needs to feel like what you're telling them about
is important to them. You also want to make sure that you know the time limit
and what you need to have for
your presentation--the topic that fits the time limit--you don't want to cover
all the causes the World War II, for example, if you've got a three-minute
speech.
Resources would include visual aids, research that you might be able to cite
in your speech
and, if you're doing a persuasive speech a policy or sales speech,
try to avoid topics that have no solution or no
way for the audience to do something to solve the problem that you're talking
about.
The audience is the main reason you are doing a presentation.
As such, they need to be the center of it. They're going to drive everything,
including your topic selection. So you want to ask yourself, "What are your
audience's needs and values?"
With that in mind, what appeals would work best for them? Are they going to be
served best by logical appeals? or appeals to emotion? might stories work
better for this group?
What are their predispositions? Why are they here?
Are they here because they want to be here listening to your speech?
Are they negative about you or are they negative about the topic
or the occasion, or are they positive about it? What do they expect?
What information and sources would they find credible?
--that would be helpful to know as you design your speech.
And, finally--especially if it's a persuasive speech--
with this audience, is it appropriate to mention
opposing viewpoints? Now you've prepared a speech,
it's time to deliver it, and you need to develop a credible delivery--which
doesn't happen overnight.
You must sound like you know what you're talking about, so your delivery should be
confident,
natural, credible, and sincere.
It's amazing when you practice in front of yourself,
and only yourself, you are very fluent, but when you speak
in front of a group for people, all of a sudden that fluency is gone.
You need to sound practiced, but you can't sound
too practiced--you still need to sound natural.
Finally, you want to cite credible and relevant
references--that's going to make you sound like you've done your research and
that you know your topic.
It's Quiz Time: Some things to think about...
Can you identify the criteria for effective introductions and conclusions?
How important is audience analysis in selecting a topic?
And, finally, can you explain how an informative speech
is like an argument? Now it's time for you
to start thinking about putting your first speech together.