writing speech structure

Speech Structure: The Complete OBC Guide

What makes a great speech? The content, of course, but also the structure. All great speakers overlay their content on a well-known structure. 

Your speech structure is the glue that binds your points together. Without it, you cannot really have the impact you desire to have on the audience.

The beauty of this is that a good structure is so subtle it is almost invisible. Its effectiveness is only evident in its impact.

Speech writing can be intimidating for some, however, we have incorporated plenty of speech examples to get a complete understanding. We aim to explain a proper structure that can be applied to any of your speeches.

There are four things you need to keep in mind about this:

Table of Contents

What is the purpose of your speech?

Can too much content be harmful, who is the audience, informative speech, persuasive speech, argumentative speech, demonstration speech, humorous speech, strong statement, visual prop or demonstration, personal anecdote, problem or strong statement, summary on writing your introduction:, credibility, cause and effect:, problems and solutions:, lucky number three, summary on writing your body:, call to action, inspirational, key takeaway, summary of writing your conclusion:, meta description:, picking the right topic.

The content of a speech can largely determine how the audience receives it. For this, you will need to accurately assess who is going to be listening to your speech. There are some questions you need to ask before sitting down to write this speech.

Do you intend to introduce a concept or argue on a controversial topic? Is your purpose of imparting knowledge or guiding the audience through a demonstration? It is essential to have your intentions cleared; otherwise, you can risk creating a speech with no direction.

We understand that as daunting as speaking can be, it is, at the same time, fascinating. When you pick a topic that you are passionate about, it is easy to find yourself packing the speech with all kinds of information. However, in doing so, you can overwhelm your audience.

There is such a thing as too much information. You need to make sure that whatever information you do include is impactful and influential. Aim for something short but memorable. Pick one takeaway message and gear your speech towards that objective.

While it is vital to pick a topic that interests you, it is equally important to make sure that it can grab the audience’s attention. What is the target demographic for your speech? What is the setting for this speech? Is it a particularly controversial topic?

This is important because as humans, most people are likely to be more interested in your presentation if it benefits them somehow. At the same time, you have to consider the setting.

For instance: an office setting would not be the right setting for a controversial social speech. If your speech includes demonstration and requires volunteers, you need to ensure that this is an audience willing to participate.  

Do you understand the various types of speeches?

Before you pen down your presentation, stop to wonder whether you understand the different types of speeches. Understanding what kind of speech you are going for can help you better structure it for maximum efficiency:

An informative speech intends to explain complex topics to your audience by providing engaging information. This can include objects, events, procedures, and more. It is better if you pick a topic that you are interested in so that your enthusiasm shines through.

When you give an informative speech, you are merely trying to educate your audiences about a particular topic. You refrain from becoming too argumentative as it might come across too strong for your listeners. If this is the type of speech you intend to give, you can check out 100 Informative Speech Topics and Ideas to make your job easier. 

A persuasive speech intends to convince the audiences of your viewpoint. It uses compelling points to sway the listener’s opinions. The primary purpose of this type of speech is to affect the audiences’ thought process and persuade them to think about changing how they feel about a topic.

Some examples of a persuasive speech can be a politician’s speech, an animal activist’s speech, and so on. As you can see, the goal here is to persuade and obtain something ultimately. A politician might want to sway your vote in their favor, whereas ani activist has a cause that they’d like to advocate for.

If this is the type of speech you intend to give, you can check out 237 Easy Persuasive Speech Topics and Guide to better plan your speech.

An argumentative speech is more or less a persuasive speech. However, a persuasive speech does not always have to be argumentative. The purpose of an argumentative is to alter how the audience views a subject. 

Changing the audience’s opinion is not an easy job. This is why you need to not only pick a persuasive topic but also believe in it. You need a strong claim along with irrefutable points to support it. 

The best argumentative speeches utilize issues relating to current events. You can see this in the media in the form of mostly social, ethical, political, or religious arguments. Your arguments should make use of logic and realistic examples. Some examples of this type of speech can be: Dress codes shouldn’t be mandatory, Space exploration is a waste of money, etc.

If you’d like to see more topic ideas for an argumentative speech, you can browse the 200 Argumentative Speech Topics and ideas: A Complete Guide . 

A demonstration speech, true to its name, demonstrates to the audience how something works. This type of presentation is more common for high school or college students. It makes use of props and useful body language to properly guide the audience through an activity.

This type of speech can fall under informative speech as you are informing the listeners on a task. While this type of speech is considered a basic speech, it is an excellent way to practice your expository speaking.

If this is the type of speech you’d like to give, here’s a list of 279 Demonstration Speech Topics and Ideas: A Complete Guide , so that you can better perfect your speech.

A humorous speech is the perfect light-hearted solution for adding a fun twist to your speech. This type of presentation aims to entertain the audience. A humorous speech can incorporate any of the above examples. It is, thus, very versatile. And what’s more? You get to have just as much fun delivering it!  

The thing to keep in mind with this kind of speech is that you need to pick a proper topic. You intend to garner a joyful response to its best not to pick a sensitive topic. To help you out, you can browse the 300 Funny Speech Topics to Tickle Some Funny Bones! to structure your humorous speech.

Writing the Introduction (Opening)

The introduction of your speech is vital to the success of your speech. It is what sets the tone of your entire speech. It determines whether or not you grab the attention of the listeners. You will get only one chance to charm your audience and make sure they follow the rest of your speech.

So, how can you make this happen? There are a few different ways you can approach this:

Asking a question is an excellent way to grab your audience’s attention. It piques their curiosity and ensures that they will listen to get an answer to said question. The question can be either rhetorical or literal. For instance, “Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to live in a world without technology?” or “Have you ever felt broken-hearted?”.

Either the audience resonates with your question, or it generates curiosity. This is also a great way to get some audience participation. If you say, “With a show of hands, how many of us here have tried to change our habits and failed?” you can not only garner interest but also physically get the audience invested in your speech.

A question is a great way to get your listeners thinking about your topic while introducing your topic, all in a matter of seconds!

A strong statement is also an excellent way to create a compelling introduction. You must know Martin Luther King’s iconic, “I have a dream.” The intensity that radiates from that sentence immediately captures an audiences’ attention and creates a commanding presence.

Similarly, an excellent example of this type of opening is from Larry Smith’s speech. “I want to discuss with you this afternoon why you’re going to fail to have a great career.” This immediately generates intrigue and curiosity. That’s what you’re going for.

This statement does not have to just be cold facts. It can be a part of a personal story as well. For instance, the statement “Last week, I found out that my childhood friend got in a car accident” is bound to create a powerful silence. If your speech has such a strong emotive statement, you can use it in your introduction to engage your audience better.

Another helpful tip that goes with a strong statement in silence. Give your listener’s a chance to absorb the statement that you have put in front of them with a couple of seconds of silence before diving in further.

A prop can be a fantastic addition to your speech. Not only does it help emphasize your point, but it also helps the audience stay focused on your speech. Props are especially good for a demonstrative speech. Or you can simply incorporate demonstrations as part of your speech.

Body language speaks much louder than words can for us humans. This is why using colorful bags, a deck of cards, colored papers, etc. can be so effective as an opener for your speech. Once, I attended a speech where the speaker brought a heavy bag and simply set it on the table, talking about the bag. The audience was hooked, waiting eagerly till the end to find out what was in the bag.

A quotation can be the perfect way to capture your audience’s attention. It also helps set a tone for the speech that is to come. The quote you pick can be a well-known saying such as “They say all that glitters is not gold, well I beg to differ.” Doing so, you can ignite curiosity.

Similarly, you can also quote a person or a publication and tie it to your speech. For instance, for a motivational speech, you can take the example of someone like Bill Gates- “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” When you use a quote from a big name, you will definitely get people wanting to hear and learn more.

Humor is always a great tool to have in your arsenal. A good icebreaker can warm the listeners up to you and make them more receptive to the rest of your speech. Humor is a very endearing trait for a skilled speaker. Some ideas for your opening can be:

“It’s the funniest thing. As I was coming up to the stage, I began thinking we actually have quite a lot in common. None of us have a clue about what I’m going to say!”

“I know we are all busy, and I want to honor your time. So I will make sure to be accurate and brief, no matter long it takes me.”

The great thing about using humor is that it works on your audience subconsciously. You seem at ease with yourself and radiate confidence. You have to remember that for humor to be effective; it has to be effortless. If you seem unsure about your lines, the audience is sure to pick up on it.

A strong statistic will always add validity to your speeches. Presenting the audience with irrefutable facts backed up by a strong source is a surefire way to gain credibility. It can also add gravity to the scale of the issue that you want to draw attention to. 

However, it is easy to overdo things when it comes to numbers. It can be tempting to add strong statistics to the rest of your speech as well. But remember, the strongest points are ones that linger in an audience’s mind. If you give them too many numbers, none of them will stick out in their heads, and they are bound to feel lost.

Some examples can be: “Look to your right. Now, look to your left. One in three women and one in four women are known to have suffered physical violence. A statement like this not only ignites awareness but also physically makes your listener feel involved in your speech.

An anecdote is a short story taken from your life itself. The story usually adds to the theme of your story. Short and light-hearted anecdotes can add a lot of enthusiasm and charm to your speech. However, you don’t have to make them humorous. Even more, touching stories can be equally, if not more engaging.

When used correctly, a personal anecdote makes for the perfect introduction that draws your listeners towards your central message. Not only does it create empathy, but it also sparks interest. If you don’t have a personal anecdote itself, you can go for a third-person anecdote that speaks to you as well.

Opening with a problem can make for a strong opening. This method generates interest and keeps the audience listening with the promise of an upcoming solution. Try to aim for a problem that caters to a wider demographic for a higher relatability.

Problems that relate to current events can have a better draw. For instance: “Why should remote working be implemented even after quarantine?”

In a similar vein, a powerful statement can be an excellent way to capture your audience’s attention. A statement, when paired with silence, can make for an effective tool. Example: “The top 20% of our society makes 80% of all the money. Would you like to be part of this 20%? If so, I’m going to give you some pointers on how you can align yourself in that direction. Does that sound like something you might be interested in?”

• Your opening plays a big role in whether or not you can grab your listener’s attention straight off the bat.
• Give your audience a reason to pay attention by clearly stating the purpose of your speech.
• If you are giving a speech regarding a field you have some experience with, remember to establish credibility early on.
• Give a short highlight reel of your main points.
• Quotations or powerful statements are a great way to catch the audience’s attention.
• Including current events or statistics will make your speech seem more relevant to a wider range of listeners.
• Asking a question will get your audience more involved and add intrigue to the rest of your presentation.

Structuring your content (Body)

The body of your speech will hold all of your main points. Since this is the longest section of your speech, you need to ensure that it is interesting enough to keep everyone’s attention. Depending on the objective of your speech, you will need to add examples, opinions, and facts to back up your points. What helps during this time is proper organization.

Here are some things you want to keep in mind while drafting the body of your speech:

No matter how much you believe in your point, you still need to give your audience a credible reason to take your word for it. This can be done by adding examples, detailed descriptions, statistics, and so on. Always remember to credit the source when using a statistic. You can also add a strong testimonial to add a touch of personalized support if that applies to your objective.

Transitions

When you have a lot of content packed into your speech, transitions become vital to the effectiveness of your speech. You can consider these as points of a refresh in your speech. Here, the audience can reengage and follow along more attentively. 

The best transitions are always invisible. They can seamlessly add flow to your speech without giving any indication of such to your audience. There are many ways to incorporate this into your speech. 

Some examples can be:

A connective transition is where you reiterate a previous point and introduce a connecting point. The way this method works is that it rehashes an important aspect while relating it to what’s next.

The most effective way to use this is in a problem/solution module. This is where you begin by stating a problem and transition towards a solution.

Example: Now that we’ve understood the various negative effects of junk food, let me tell you how we can plan a better diet to combat obesity.

When you do this, you are providing a summary of the problem and swiftly leading them towards a solution. If you jump straight to the next section, it can feel rushed. Besides, pauses are another important element of speech delivery.

Keywords, as the name suggests, have a certain draw to them. These are words that are central to the theme of your speech. Repetition is a very effective tool in conveying your message. 

For instance: If your speech is about the scarcity of running water in rural communities, you can draw attention by repeating the factors that cause this issue. Doing so will also let you explain in better detail these factors while keeping your audience hooked to the main theme.

Content Approach

Depending on your speech, there are various ways to approach how you frame your content. We all know that content is king; however, without the right approach, it’s easy for your message to get lost along the way. This is why it’s so important to keep your subject matter relevant and interesting. Make sure the content is as compact and concise as you can make it. Some of the methods by which you can ensure this is as follows:

Cause and effect is a great way to present your ideas. This method works best for explaining events and consequences or results. Make sure to include all the appropriate details to add emphasis. The element of ‘what’s next’ is what keeps the audience hooked to your speech. As you unfold a cause and follow it with the effects, it will feel both interesting as well as rewarding to your audience.  

Problem and solution is a speech method as old as time. But it is so because of its reliability. This approach works best for a motivational speech. This type of speech intends to address a problem and offer a systematic solution that benefits the listeners. It is also a common approach for pushing an audience to buy into a service or product. You pose a problem and then offer a solution, including a whole package. Make sure the solution you offer is versatile so that it applies to a wider range of people, thereby increasing appeal.

A narrative approach is excellent for anybody who wants to sharpen their storytelling skills. The important ingredients for a narrative speech are chronology and a simple organization pattern. Typically, any story will have a beginning, middle, and end. Going in order, with smooth transitions will make your story easy to follow. 

This type of speech is most effective for presenting events, life lessons, experiences, rituals, and personal beliefs. Try to stick to the core of the story without too many unnecessary details. Just because a narrative includes storytelling does not mean it can’t have an end goal. For instance: a personal experience of failure might be a great story of caution for the listeners.

The most important thing for a successful narrative speech is build-up. You want your audience to be invested, to care about what comes next, to raise the stakes so that when you provide the conclusion, it is that much more effective. You must always ask yourself, “What do I want the audience to remember after this speech?”.

The best way to write this would be to outline a sketch of events that are relevant to your narrative. After that, you can think about the best way to escalate the stakes. Remember that eye contact is an important visual medium in a narrative speech. It will help your audience connect better to your story.

The number three is impactful. Even the general structure of a speech is divided into three parts: Opening, Body, and Conclusion. When you want to make a point that people remember, you should consider splitting it into three, where the first two act as a build-up while your final point brings the unexpected impact.

The best thing about this method is that you can apply it to just about any kind of speech. This, in fact, adds more structure to your speech and makes it more easily digestible. The key ingredient here becomes balance and transition. Make sure you focus on all three elements of your story equally, so it does not feel rushed. Add in a seamless transition to make your story structure seem effortless.  

• Make sure you have designed your content to suit your audience.
• Divide your body into easily digestible sections so that your main points come across clearly.
• Stress on keywords and clever repetitions to drive your point home.
• Work on your transitions to establish clear sections but a seamless switch to keep your listeners hooked.
• When using facts or statistics, always back it up with a credible source.

Closing your speech (Conclusion)

The conclusion is vital to the success of your speech. This is the parting thought that you will be leaving your audience with, so you have to make sure that it’s a good one. The conclusion is where you reiterate your key point. This is why there is so much importance put on a conclusion to be powerful enough to stay in your memory.

Here are some possible ways you can approach your conclusion:

A call-to-action refers to a statement or material that intends to encourage the listener or viewer to take the initiative. It can also be considered as instruction as it usually directs the audience towards something. 

The most effective way to approach this is to manage both your energy as well as your tempo. While it is essential to maintain a clear and well-enunciated speech throughout, when you reach a conclusion, you are going to want to speed up just a little bit. 

What this does is add a sense of urgency to the message that you are giving. Similarly, higher energy makes the audience resonate and respond equally. They will associate this high energy with your message and remember your speech for longer.

Some examples of this can be: “As we can see, the effects of depression can be life-threatening. So I encourage each and every one of you to go home today and reach out to your friends, talk to them and open up a platform where they know they can come to talk to you for anything. Because you’d rather hear their problems than hear about their death.”

For speeches that are over 5-6 minutes long, the audience can sometimes lose track of the earlier points. This is why it is necessary to summarize your main points before you leave the stage. You don’t have to take them through the entire story, but make sure you include the keywords that trigger in them the memory of that portion. 

You can do this by saying something along the lines of “Let me briefly run you through what we discussed” or “So, we talked about three main things today.” This not only does a great job of reiterating and reconfirming your main points but also signals to the audience that you are drawing towards the end of your presentation.

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

Even though you might be well familiarized with your speech, it is safe to assume that most of the audience is hearing it for the first time. For this reason, you need to drive your point home by essentially drilling it into their minds. Now, you can’t simply repeat the central theme over and over as that isn’t an effective strategy. But there can be an art to repetition as well.

You should aim to rephrase and reinforce your central idea as you conclude your speech. Don’t go for a word-for-word repetition, but aim to reframe your key themes and arguments. Paraphrasing, in this way, makes sure that you capture the essence of your speech without running the risk of boring your listeners with identical sentences.

We don’t even need to look too far for examples of this method. In Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial, he used this method of repetition paired with a rising momentum to create impact. Repetition works best when it is subtle and works on the listeners subconsciously.

Ending your speech on a light note is a great way to brighten moods and make sure the audience remembers your message. Your joke can also be a good way to repeat your central message. If you do decide to end with a humorous story, remember to carve out more time for it. Make sure your conclusion doesn’t distract from your main message.

Some people tend to get too excited and give away the upcoming punchline. Remember that the most effective humor approach is one you don’t see coming. How you can add the subtlety to your conclusion is by following this formula:

Set up – pause – Build up – pause – Punchline

Motivational conclusions are always an upbeat way to close your speech. You will be leaving the stage on high energy that is sure to be contagious. This also ensures that your audience will be taking a piece of your conclusion with them, making sure that it is not only memorable but also useful.

There are many ways to approach an inspirational closing. You can go with an anecdote, a quote, a poem, and so on. The purpose is to give a push, to add strength, to ignite a can-do attitude. 

The trick to a powerful inspirational speech is emotion. Humans are excellent at empathizing. If you can adequately emote throughout your story, adding drama into your storytelling, then it is bound to have a more substantial effect. Vocal variety can also be an excellent element for this. Alter your tempo to weave excitement into your story. You can also use smart pauses to add more intrigue. 

Your facial expressions play a significant role in how the audience receives your speech. Whether it is a sad or happy story, make sure that your face conveys it. It can be addictive to have the audience’s attention like this, but don’t get too greedy. Remember to end on your highest note, leaving a lasting impression. 

There are many types of speeches out there. For instance: you might think that a humorous speech is just that: humorous. But think again. All the best speeches have at least one key takeaway.

A takeaway message is quite similar to an inspirational conclusion. The question you have to ask yourself is this: What is the purpose of my speech? Even if you’ve got a fantastic anecdotal story to share, you have to remember that the audience will always wonder what they are getting from the speech. That will be your takeaway.

For an effective conclusion, you have to step back and overview your speech. From your introduction to the body, what is the message you are trying to convey? Make sure your conclusion reflects it. For example: if your speech is about a drowning story, you can probably try to include what you could’ve done and how the audience can avoid being in a similar situation.

A call-back is a fun twist to add to your conclusion. There is a reason why a circle is one of the most pleasing shapes; it gives you a sense of completion. Even if you aren’t aware of it, it works on your mind subliminally. An effective way to conduct this method is to find a way to tie your ending to your introduction.

You can understand a call-back as a reference. It doesn’t have to be limited to just the introduction; you can reference the body of your speech as well. This not only makes for a great repetition tool but also adds a feeling of completion into your presentation.

However, you should pick something that the audience can connect to. This helps create a special and unique bond as if it were an inside joke just between you two. 

• Signal your audience when you’re drawing to your conclusion.
• Add trigger transitions like “In conclusion,” “In summary,” “That brings us towards the end,” and so on.
• Try to end on a high note with something memorable.
• Write your conclusion last so that it complements your introduction.
• Try to paraphrase your words without repeating the same words over and over.
• Your audience is more likely to remember your speech if you end with something useful to them or with a call to action.
• Leave on an attention-grabbing note. 

Wrapping Up:

A speech typically has one of four purposes: to inform, to entertain, to instruct, or to persuade. To deliver an effective speech, you need to first make sure you understand what your objective is. Then, you can follow our guidelines to construct a solid structure and deliver a well-rounded and impactful presentation. Now that you know how to create an effective speech structure, you are ready to dominate the stage!  

The best speech structures are invisible and effective. Learn the tips and tricks to deliver the perfect opening, body, and conclusion and wow the stage.

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How to write a speech that your audience remembers

Whether in a work meeting or at an investor panel, you might give a speech at some point. And no matter how excited you are about the opportunity, the experience can be nerve-wracking . 

But feeling butterflies doesn’t mean you can’t give a great speech. With the proper preparation and a clear outline, apprehensive public speakers and natural wordsmiths alike can write and present a compelling message. Here’s how to write a good speech you’ll be proud to deliver.

What is good speech writing?

Good speech writing is the art of crafting words and ideas into a compelling, coherent, and memorable message that resonates with the audience. Here are some key elements of great speech writing:

• It begins with clearly understanding the speech's purpose and the audience it seeks to engage. 
• A well-written speech clearly conveys its central message, ensuring that the audience understands and retains the key points. 
• It is structured thoughtfully, with a captivating opening, a well-organized body, and a conclusion that reinforces the main message. 
• Good speech writing embraces the power of engaging content, weaving in stories, examples, and relatable anecdotes to connect with the audience on both intellectual and emotional levels. 

Ultimately, it is the combination of these elements, along with the authenticity and delivery of the speaker , that transforms words on a page into a powerful and impactful spoken narrative.

What makes a good speech?

A great speech includes several key qualities, but three fundamental elements make a speech truly effective:

Clarity and purpose

Remembering the audience, cohesive structure.

While other important factors make a speech a home run, these three elements are essential for writing an effective speech.

The main elements of a good speech

The main elements of a speech typically include:

• Introduction: The introduction sets the stage for your speech and grabs the audience's attention. It should include a hook or attention-grabbing opening, introduce the topic, and provide an overview of what will be covered.
• Opening/captivating statement: This is a strong statement that immediately engages the audience and creates curiosity about the speech topics.
• Thesis statement/central idea: The thesis statement or central idea is a concise statement that summarizes the main point or argument of your speech. It serves as a roadmap for the audience to understand what your speech is about.
• Body: The body of the speech is where you elaborate on your main points or arguments. Each point is typically supported by evidence, examples, statistics, or anecdotes. The body should be organized logically and coherently, with smooth transitions between the main points.
• Supporting evidence: This includes facts, data, research findings, expert opinions, or personal stories that support and strengthen your main points. Well-chosen and credible evidence enhances the persuasive power of your speech.
• Transitions: Transitions are phrases or statements that connect different parts of your speech, guiding the audience from one idea to the next. Effective transitions signal the shifts in topics or ideas and help maintain a smooth flow throughout the speech.
• Counterarguments and rebuttals (if applicable): If your speech involves addressing opposing viewpoints or counterarguments, you should acknowledge and address them. Presenting counterarguments makes your speech more persuasive and demonstrates critical thinking.
• Conclusion: The conclusion is the final part of your speech and should bring your message to a satisfying close. Summarize your main points, restate your thesis statement, and leave the audience with a memorable closing thought or call to action.
• Closing statement: This is the final statement that leaves a lasting impression and reinforces the main message of your speech. It can be a call to action, a thought-provoking question, a powerful quote, or a memorable anecdote.
• Delivery and presentation: How you deliver your speech is also an essential element to consider. Pay attention to your tone, body language, eye contact , voice modulation, and timing. Practice and rehearse your speech, and try using the 7-38-55 rule to ensure confident and effective delivery.

While the order and emphasis of these elements may vary depending on the type of speech and audience, these elements provide a framework for organizing and delivering a successful speech.

How to structure a good speech

You know what message you want to transmit, who you’re delivering it to, and even how you want to say it. But you need to know how to start, develop, and close a speech before writing it. 

Think of a speech like an essay. It should have an introduction, conclusion, and body sections in between. This places ideas in a logical order that the audience can better understand and follow them. Learning how to make a speech with an outline gives your storytelling the scaffolding it needs to get its point across.

Here’s a general speech structure to guide your writing process:

• Explanation 1
• Explanation 2
• Explanation 3

How to write a compelling speech opener

Some research shows that engaged audiences pay attention for only 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Other estimates are even lower, citing that people stop listening intently in fewer than 10 minutes . If you make a good first impression at the beginning of your speech, you have a better chance of interesting your audience through the middle when attention spans fade. 

Implementing the INTRO model can help grab and keep your audience’s attention as soon as you start speaking. This acronym stands for interest, need, timing, roadmap, and objectives, and it represents the key points you should hit in an opening. 

Here’s what to include for each of these points: 

• Interest : Introduce yourself or your topic concisely and speak with confidence . Write a compelling opening statement using relevant data or an anecdote that the audience can relate to.
• Needs : The audience is listening to you because they have something to learn. If you’re pitching a new app idea to a panel of investors, those potential partners want to discover more about your product and what they can earn from it. Read the room and gently remind them of the purpose of your speech. 
• Timing : When appropriate, let your audience know how long you’ll speak. This lets listeners set expectations and keep tabs on their own attention span. If a weary audience member knows you’ll talk for 40 minutes, they can better manage their energy as that time goes on. 
• Routemap : Give a brief overview of the three main points you’ll cover in your speech. If an audience member’s attention starts to drop off and they miss a few sentences, they can more easily get their bearings if they know the general outline of the presentation.
• Objectives : Tell the audience what you hope to achieve, encouraging them to listen to the end for the payout. 

Writing the middle of a speech

The body of your speech is the most information-dense section. Facts, visual aids, PowerPoints — all this information meets an audience with a waning attention span. Sticking to the speech structure gives your message focus and keeps you from going off track, making everything you say as useful as possible.

Limit the middle of your speech to three points, and support them with no more than three explanations. Following this model organizes your thoughts and prevents you from offering more information than the audience can retain. 

Using this section of the speech to make your presentation interactive can add interest and engage your audience. Try including a video or demonstration to break the monotony. A quick poll or survey also keeps the audience on their toes. 

Wrapping the speech up

To you, restating your points at the end can feel repetitive and dull. You’ve practiced countless times and heard it all before. But repetition aids memory and learning , helping your audience retain what you’ve told them. Use your speech’s conclusion to summarize the main points with a few short sentences.

Try to end on a memorable note, like posing a motivational quote or a thoughtful question the audience can contemplate once they leave. In proposal or pitch-style speeches, consider landing on a call to action (CTA) that invites your audience to take the next step.

How to write a good speech

If public speaking gives you the jitters, you’re not alone. Roughly 80% of the population feels nervous before giving a speech, and another 10% percent experiences intense anxiety and sometimes even panic. 

The fear of failure can cause procrastination and can cause you to put off your speechwriting process until the last minute. Finding the right words takes time and preparation, and if you’re already feeling nervous, starting from a blank page might seem even harder.

But putting in the effort despite your stress is worth it. Presenting a speech you worked hard on fosters authenticity and connects you to the subject matter, which can help your audience understand your points better. Human connection is all about honesty and vulnerability, and if you want to connect to the people you’re speaking to, they should see that in you.

1. Identify your objectives and target audience

Before diving into the writing process, find healthy coping strategies to help you stop worrying . Then you can define your speech’s purpose, think about your target audience, and start identifying your objectives. Here are some questions to ask yourself and ground your thinking : 

• What purpose do I want my speech to achieve? 
• What would it mean to me if I achieved the speech’s purpose?
• What audience am I writing for? 
• What do I know about my audience? 
• What values do I want to transmit? 
• If the audience remembers one take-home message, what should it be? 
• What do I want my audience to feel, think, or do after I finish speaking? 
• What parts of my message could be confusing and require further explanation?

2. Know your audience

Understanding your audience is crucial for tailoring your speech effectively. Consider the demographics of your audience, their interests, and their expectations. For instance, if you're addressing a group of healthcare professionals, you'll want to use medical terminology and data that resonate with them. Conversely, if your audience is a group of young students, you'd adjust your content to be more relatable to their experiences and interests. 

3. Choose a clear message

Your message should be the central idea that you want your audience to take away from your speech. Let's say you're giving a speech on climate change. Your clear message might be something like, "Individual actions can make a significant impact on mitigating climate change." Throughout your speech, all your points and examples should support this central message, reinforcing it for your audience.

4. Structure your speech

Organizing your speech properly keeps your audience engaged and helps them follow your ideas. The introduction should grab your audience's attention and introduce the topic. For example, if you're discussing space exploration, you could start with a fascinating fact about a recent space mission. In the body, you'd present your main points logically, such as the history of space exploration, its scientific significance, and future prospects. Finally, in the conclusion, you'd summarize your key points and reiterate the importance of space exploration in advancing human knowledge.

5. Use engaging content for clarity

Engaging content includes stories, anecdotes, statistics, and examples that illustrate your main points. For instance, if you're giving a speech about the importance of reading, you might share a personal story about how a particular book changed your perspective. You could also include statistics on the benefits of reading, such as improved cognitive abilities and empathy.

6. Maintain clarity and simplicity

It's essential to communicate your ideas clearly. Avoid using overly technical jargon or complex language that might confuse your audience. For example, if you're discussing a medical breakthrough with a non-medical audience, explain complex terms in simple, understandable language.

7. Practice and rehearse

Practice is key to delivering a great speech. Rehearse multiple times to refine your delivery, timing, and tone. Consider using a mirror or recording yourself to observe your body language and gestures. For instance, if you're giving a motivational speech, practice your gestures and expressions to convey enthusiasm and confidence.

8. Consider nonverbal communication

Your body language, tone of voice, and gestures should align with your message . If you're delivering a speech on leadership, maintain strong eye contact to convey authority and connection with your audience. A steady pace and varied tone can also enhance your speech's impact.

9. Engage your audience

Engaging your audience keeps them interested and attentive. Encourage interaction by asking thought-provoking questions or sharing relatable anecdotes. If you're giving a speech on teamwork, ask the audience to recall a time when teamwork led to a successful outcome, fostering engagement and connection.

10. Prepare for Q&A

Anticipate potential questions or objections your audience might have and prepare concise, well-informed responses. If you're delivering a speech on a controversial topic, such as healthcare reform, be ready to address common concerns, like the impact on healthcare costs or access to services, during the Q&A session.

By following these steps and incorporating examples that align with your specific speech topic and purpose, you can craft and deliver a compelling and impactful speech that resonates with your audience.

Tools for writing a great speech

There are several helpful tools available for speechwriting, both technological and communication-related. Here are a few examples:

• Word processing software: Tools like Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or other word processors provide a user-friendly environment for writing and editing speeches. They offer features like spell-checking, grammar correction, formatting options, and easy revision tracking.
• Presentation software: Software such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides is useful when creating visual aids to accompany your speech. These tools allow you to create engaging slideshows with text, images, charts, and videos to enhance your presentation.
• Speechwriting Templates: Online platforms or software offer pre-designed templates specifically for speechwriting. These templates provide guidance on structuring your speech and may include prompts for different sections like introductions, main points, and conclusions.
• Rhetorical devices and figures of speech: Rhetorical tools such as metaphors, similes, alliteration, and parallelism can add impact and persuasion to your speech. Resources like books, websites, or academic papers detailing various rhetorical devices can help you incorporate them effectively.
• Speechwriting apps: Mobile apps designed specifically for speechwriting can be helpful in organizing your thoughts, creating outlines, and composing a speech. These apps often provide features like voice recording, note-taking, and virtual prompts to keep you on track.
• Grammar and style checkers: Online tools or plugins like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor help improve the clarity and readability of your speech by checking for grammar, spelling, and style errors. They provide suggestions for sentence structure, word choice, and overall tone.
• Thesaurus and dictionary: Online or offline resources such as thesauruses and dictionaries help expand your vocabulary and find alternative words or phrases to express your ideas more effectively. They can also clarify meanings or provide context for unfamiliar terms.
• Online speechwriting communities: Joining online forums or communities focused on speechwriting can be beneficial for getting feedback, sharing ideas, and learning from experienced speechwriters. It's an opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and improve your public speaking skills through collaboration.

Remember, while these tools can assist in the speechwriting process, it's essential to use them thoughtfully and adapt them to your specific needs and style. The most important aspect of speechwriting remains the creativity, authenticity, and connection with your audience that you bring to your speech.

5 tips for writing a speech

Behind every great speech is an excellent idea and a speaker who refined it. But a successful speech is about more than the initial words on the page, and there are a few more things you can do to help it land.

Here are five more tips for writing and practicing your speech:

1. Structure first, write second

If you start the writing process before organizing your thoughts, you may have to re-order, cut, and scrap the sentences you worked hard on. Save yourself some time by using a speech structure, like the one above, to order your talking points first. This can also help you identify unclear points or moments that disrupt your flow.

2. Do your homework

Data strengthens your argument with a scientific edge. Research your topic with an eye for attention-grabbing statistics, or look for findings you can use to support each point. If you’re pitching a product or service, pull information from company metrics that demonstrate past or potential successes. 

Audience members will likely have questions, so learn all talking points inside and out. If you tell investors that your product will provide 12% returns, for example, come prepared with projections that support that statement.

3. Sound like yourself

Memorable speakers have distinct voices. Think of Martin Luther King Jr’s urgent, inspiring timbre or Oprah’s empathetic, personal tone . Establish your voice — one that aligns with your personality and values — and stick with it. If you’re a motivational speaker, keep your tone upbeat to inspire your audience . If you’re the CEO of a startup, try sounding assured but approachable. 

4. Practice

As you practice a speech, you become more confident , gain a better handle on the material, and learn the outline so well that unexpected questions are less likely to trip you up. Practice in front of a colleague or friend for honest feedback about what you could change, and speak in front of the mirror to tweak your nonverbal communication and body language .

5. Remember to breathe

When you’re stressed, you breathe more rapidly . It can be challenging to talk normally when you can’t regulate your breath. Before your presentation, try some mindful breathing exercises so that when the day comes, you already have strategies that will calm you down and remain present . This can also help you control your voice and avoid speaking too quickly.

How to ghostwrite a great speech for someone else

Ghostwriting a speech requires a unique set of skills, as you're essentially writing a piece that will be delivered by someone else. Here are some tips on how to effectively ghostwrite a speech:

• Understand the speaker's voice and style : Begin by thoroughly understanding the speaker's personality, speaking style, and preferences. This includes their tone, humor, and any personal anecdotes they may want to include.
• Interview the speaker : Have a detailed conversation with the speaker to gather information about their speech's purpose, target audience, key messages, and any specific points they want to emphasize. Ask for personal stories or examples they may want to include.
• Research thoroughly : Research the topic to ensure you have a strong foundation of knowledge. This helps you craft a well-informed and credible speech.
• Create an outline : Develop a clear outline that includes the introduction, main points, supporting evidence, and a conclusion. Share this outline with the speaker for their input and approval.
• Write in the speaker's voice : While crafting the speech, maintain the speaker's voice and style. Use language and phrasing that feel natural to them. If they have a particular way of expressing ideas, incorporate that into the speech.
• Craft a captivating opening : Begin the speech with a compelling opening that grabs the audience's attention. This could be a relevant quote, an interesting fact, a personal anecdote, or a thought-provoking question.
• Organize content logically : Ensure the speech flows logically, with each point building on the previous one. Use transitions to guide the audience from one idea to the next smoothly.
• Incorporate engaging stories and examples : Include anecdotes, stories, and real-life examples that illustrate key points and make the speech relatable and memorable.
• Edit and revise : Edit the speech carefully for clarity, grammar, and coherence. Ensure the speech is the right length and aligns with the speaker's time constraints.
• Seek feedback : Share drafts of the speech with the speaker for their feedback and revisions. They may have specific changes or additions they'd like to make.
• Practice delivery : If possible, work with the speaker on their delivery. Practice the speech together, allowing the speaker to become familiar with the content and your writing style.
• Maintain confidentiality : As a ghostwriter, it's essential to respect the confidentiality and anonymity of the work. Do not disclose that you wrote the speech unless you have the speaker's permission to do so.
• Be flexible : Be open to making changes and revisions as per the speaker's preferences. Your goal is to make them look good and effectively convey their message.
• Meet deadlines : Stick to agreed-upon deadlines for drafts and revisions. Punctuality and reliability are essential in ghostwriting.
• Provide support : Support the speaker during their preparation and rehearsal process. This can include helping with cue cards, speech notes, or any other materials they need.

Remember that successful ghostwriting is about capturing the essence of the speaker while delivering a well-structured and engaging speech. Collaboration, communication, and adaptability are key to achieving this.

Give your best speech yet

Learn how to make a speech that’ll hold an audience’s attention by structuring your thoughts and practicing frequently. Put the effort into writing and preparing your content, and aim to improve your breathing, eye contact , and body language as you practice. The more you work on your speech, the more confident you’ll become.

The energy you invest in writing an effective speech will help your audience remember and connect to every concept. Remember: some life-changing philosophies have come from good speeches, so give your words a chance to resonate with others. You might even change their thinking.

Elevate your communication skills

Unlock the power of clear and persuasive communication. Our coaches can guide you to build strong relationships and succeed in both personal and professional life.

Elizabeth Perry, ACC

Elizabeth Perry is a Coach Community Manager at BetterUp. She uses strategic engagement strategies to cultivate a learning community across a global network of Coaches through in-person and virtual experiences, technology-enabled platforms, and strategic coaching industry partnerships. With over 3 years of coaching experience and a certification in transformative leadership and life coaching from Sofia University, Elizabeth leverages transpersonal psychology expertise to help coaches and clients gain awareness of their behavioral and thought patterns, discover their purpose and passions, and elevate their potential. She is a lifelong student of psychology, personal growth, and human potential as well as an ICF-certified ACC transpersonal life and leadership Coach.

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How to Build a Speech

Structure, stories, and word choice are all key to crafting a compelling presentation..

By Ruth Nasrullah

There was a time when flowery, dense language was the standard for public speaking—18th-century North America, for instance. Here is the beginning of George Washington’s 1796 farewell speech:

The period for a new election of a citizen to administer the executive government of the United States being not far distant, and the time actually arrived when your thoughts must be employed in designating the person who is to be clothed with that important trust, it appears to me proper, especially as it may conduce to a more distinct expression ...

And that excerpt is far from the conclusion of just that first sentence. Imagine using language like that in a Toastmasters meeting!

Analyze why the opening of this august speech wouldn’t work today and two major problems quickly become apparent. First, it could have been cut down at least by half; and second, even after 20 seconds, the audience still doesn’t know much about the speaker’s purpose.

Fortunately for modern-day speakers, the Toastmasters educational program emphasizes the skill of speechwriting. Here are a few guidelines to mastering the art and technique of writing speeches.

My Kingdom for a Subject!

Need a speech topic? First identify your purpose. What do you want to do? Inform? Persuade? Inspire? Educate? Next, home in on a subject. You can select something most people can relate to—or most people in your audience can relate to—or something arcane that will require a little bit of research.

Step three: Start brainstorming.

What about your Ultimate Frisbee team? Your cat’s finicky ways? Your child’s piano recital? Your childhood dream of becoming president and what became of it? Holiday traditions in your country or region? Vanilla or chocolate? Cake or pie?

A word of caution: It may go without saying, but when it comes to controversial topics such as religion or politics, make sure you know the club policies governing such subjects—and the audience’s sensibilities.

Elena Paweta, DTM, is a member of Poland’s First Toastmasters club, based in Warsaw. She is also an organizer of TEDx events , programs in local communities that feature a diversity of speakers across several disciplines who address a variety of subjects. This gives her particular insight into crafting and refining speech topics.

“As we advance and become more experienced and confident, we can cover topics that may influence others,” Paweta says. “We can use this amazing tool [public speaking] to change people’s lives for the better.”

Deceptively Simple: The Structure

Ramona J. Smith is the 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking. Watch her winning speech and you’ll get a clue to what helps make it great: a solid, simple outline. She enters the stage and crouches down in a boxer’s stance, throwing punches in the air. She explains that we may get knocked down in life, but if we persevere we will be “still standing,” a phrase she repeats throughout, for emphasis. She then goes on to describe three events in her life that she had to fight through (extending the metaphor) and expands on each.

And how does she conclude the speech? With the phrase she offered in the beginning: “still standing.” It’s simple, yet so powerful.

To supplement that structure, Smith makes the speech come alive with vocal variety, exuberant body language (shadowboxing), and even a prop (a towel thrown to the ground).

Smith, President of the Cy-Fair Super Speakers Club in Cypress, Texas, says the key to writing a great speech is to keep it simple. “I start with the skeleton, then start to throw meat on the bones,” she says.

World Champion Ramona J. Smith says the key to writing a great speech is to keep it simple. "I start with the skeleton, then start to throw meat on the bones."

She writes speeches in three parts—introduction, body, and conclusion. In the body she identifies three points, just as in her championship speech. “Then I flesh out those three points, add transitions between each and then a call to action between the third point and the conclusion.”

Smith has another key piece of advice: Call on fellow Toastmasters for help. “Look in your club for writers,” she says. “There’s an English teacher or writer in every club—see if they can help you.”

Act Out—But in a Good Way

Toastmaster Wayne Lebowitz, a retired jeweler from Somerville, Massachusetts, always knew he wanted to be an actor. Although he ultimately found his career in the family business, he brings theatrical sensibilities to public speaking.

Writing a speech is like writing a script, he says. Start with an attention-grabbing device. For instance:

“How many of you have hunted a bear? Okay, I see by the lack of hands raised that none of you have. Let me tell you about bear hunting.” Using the bear motif, he demonstrates another approach: “I just found out that there are only three bears left in Somerville, Massachusetts. That’s three more than I thought we had.”

Lebowitz emphasizes that people remember stories. “I realize when I give a speech, I’ve got to entertain them. Otherwise, whatever my message is, it’s lost.”

He suggests the same format that Ramona J. Smith uses. “The body of your speech should consist of three bullet points,” he says. “And have a story to back up each point.” Lebowitz recommends closing the speech by reiterating those bullet points and tying together the closing and opening.

At a recent meeting of his club, Somerville Toastmasters, the first speaker gave a speech about a work situation by providing three points in the beginning, then elaborating on them, and returning to them again at the end. Because she used vocal variety and good details, the simple structure worked.

“Show, don’t tell” is advice often offered to writers whose work needs a little spark. The concept can also apply to speechwriting. Paint a picture for your audience with the language you use.

Jing Humphreys, DTM, a member of the Earlybirds Club in Butler, Pennsylvania, is a believer in the power of word choice.

“I like vivid word descriptions,” she says. “Like you can feel it happening in front of you because of the choice of words the speaker uses.”

Need a speech topic? First identify your purpose. What do you want to do? Inform? Persuade? Inspire? Educate?

Despite working in a highly technical field where there isn’t as much room for creativity with language, outside of work she is a proponent of conjuring up dramatic images to move the audience. (Example: “a big, vast ocean so clear you can almost see the bottom of it.”) This is also the message she imparts as a mentor and an evaluator: To tell a story, use powerful imagery, and don’t be afraid to provoke strong feelings in your audience.

“I just evaluated one of my club members,” she says. “I told him ‘Scare me and then save me.’ The audience needs to know why am I listening to you—why is this important to me?”

Don’t forget that you need to know your audience. If the venue is in a country with a nuanced culture and/or a culture that has significant differences from your own, make sure you’ve done your homework so you avoid potentially offensive gaffes. If you want to add jokes, try them out on others first to be sure your humor isn’t tone-deaf .

Include the Visual

Visual aids can be a powerful addition, and in some cases a necessary one, to a presentation. Technical presentations generally require the speaker to provide graphics, charts, schematics, etc., in order to fully explain the topic. Non-technical presentations, too, can gain a boost from props or visual aids.

Check that all your references are correct. Did Queen Elizabeth really give the Gettysburg Address or was your mind wandering when you wrote that?

A word about PowerPoint: Don’t read from the slides. The slides should supplement your words. In most cases, you can use words for the narrative, and the projector screen for ideas that are best conveyed graphically. The words you speak and the images you show should complement each other.

I am not a fan of PowerPoint, so when I did the “Get Comfortable With Visual Aids” project in Toastmasters’ old Competent Communication manual, I opted for a wig mannequin and demonstrated different ways Muslim women wear head scarves. It gave me the opportunity to personalize my speech and present something tangible, and it supported my discussion of why Muslim women wear head scarves.

Not So Fast!

Transitional statements help the audience easily follow you from one section of your speech to the next, or from one idea to another.

There is a wide range of transitions that serve different functions. Some keep the audience focused on the topic or time frame you are discussing; some provide examples of a particular subject area, reinforcing a point and introducing examples seamlessly. Here are just a few common transitions:

1. To tie your introduction to your first point in the body of the speech:

• Let me give you an example ...

• To get started, let’s examine ...

• First, I’m going to discuss ...

2. To move from one point within the body to the next:

• In the same way, this item tends to melt in the heat ...

• Let me show you something equally troubling ...

• This is similar to the kind of speech we’re studying ...

3. To begin the conclusion to your speech:

• All in all, this educational journey was …

• Looking back, I’m glad that I …

• To sum up, these three reasons are why …

If your speech feels or sounds awkward as you move through the main points, lead the listener with transitions, like those listed above. When in doubt, try reading that section aloud to someone else; if they are unclear about the connection between two ideas or two statements, look for a proper transition.

The Final Steps

Always do a final review of your writing before turning your attention to rehearsing. A few essential areas to look over:

• Double-check your grammar and pronunciation. This may seem like a no-brainer, but don’t assume you have it right. A great classic reference book to aid with this is The Elements of Grammar by Margaret Shertzer. Many other useful books—and grammar-related websites—exist as well, including The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, Write Right! by Jan Venolia, grammarbook.com , and www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl .
• Examine your writing for continuity of theme; make sure you aren’t wandering from your main point. Remove or revise anything that takes your speech off track.
• Make sure everything makes logical sense. Sometimes you get so deep into your subject that you mention ideas only you can understand.
• Check that all your references are correct . Did Queen Elizabeth really give the Gettysburg Address or was your mind wandering when you wrote that?
• Don’t go overboard with quotes. They can be used to enhance a speech, but make sure the quote you use is pithy, brief, and very relevant. Be sure you’re citing the correct author of the quote (pro tip: Look somewhere besides social media to verify the source).

When you’ve done all you can do to polish the writing of your speech, you will feel confident and ready. The Toastmasters guidelines for speechwriting will prepare you well.

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Listen for Lessons on Crafting a Speech

In this ToastCaster podcast , Greg Gazin speaks with Toastmaster Freddi Dogterom, DTM, AS, from Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. Dogterom, a professional speaker with more than 20 years of experience, offers up lessons on crafting your speech or presentation. Click the play button below to listen to this episode.

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The Ultimate Guide to Structuring a Speech

Hrideep barot.

• Public Speaking , Speech Writing

Some speakers are great writers. Some are great at delivery. And some are good at both.

The problem is that even if you are one of those speakers who can write good content as well as deliver well, if your speech is not structured properly, your message’s effectiveness will plummet. Structuring your speech is necessary as it makes it easy for your audience to understand its contents.

I’ve seen it time and again (including with myself) – speakers come on stage and start off really well…but somewhere the audience gets lost.

Have you ever been in this situation? This is probably because the speech is not structured properly. A well-structured speech helps navigate your audience through your message. And that is why it’s so important.

Without it, your speech will be scattery and not be held together, leaving the audience the same way – scattered.

Writer, Daniel Pink , put it well when he said:

Give the speech a beginning, a middle and an end. You don’t have to take the audience by the hand and walk them through each step. And you don’t have to proceed chronologically. But having that structure in your head will give your speech a shape. And it will provide your audience some guideposts about where you’ve been and where you’re going.

3 Things to Keep in Mind for a Good Speech Structure

Here are some things to keep in mind while writing your speech.

Don’t write like you write. Write like you talk

This one is tricky, especially if you’re a seasoned writer as opposed to a seasoned speaker. I learned this when I was giving my first few speeches. I was writing my speeches like a writer, not like a speaker.

That means to say that my speech was written in a way that would sound great if someone read it on paper. But when I would deliver it on stage, it wouldn’t be that good.

Nowadays, when I sit down to write a speech, I keep re-reading the words to see what they would sound like out loud. This makes me edit my speech to make it sound more natural and conversational and less “article-types”.

Don’t use fancy language.

This is not a grammar essay. When we talk with our friends, we tend to use shorter, more crisp sentences with simple language…which is exactly how we should write our speech.

You can also be informal when you speak. So no need to be worried if you’re not following every grammatical rule out there. Using informal language (to an extent) helps to make you sound more natural and makes your speech more conversational.

Writing a conversational speech might not be as easy as it sounds, and that’s why we have just the right video for you. From writing a conversational speech to delivering it, this video will definitely help you through the process.

Keep the speech simple

I stress this a lot. But it’s mainly because so many speakers (who are starting out) try and make their speech very fancy!

Keeping your speech simple, in language and thought, will make it that much easier to structure your speech and thus, that much easier for the audience to consume your speech.

It sounds like a piece of cake when we put it like that, and you might think that simply avoiding jargon or using more visuals will make your speech easy to follow.

Still, there are just three tips you need to know to keep a speech simple: Know your audience, focus on the outcome and finally, use a narrative structure. This video will tell you just how to use these three tips to your advantage.

When you write your speech draft, relook at it and see what words or sentences you can cut. It’s best to simplify…which brings us to our next point:

Focus on one idea

Keep your speech centered around one thought or idea. If you try to cram too much into your speech, it can get cluttered. But more importantly, the audience won’t remember much of your speech anyway!

If you talk about 4-5 ideas, they’re quite likely to remember none. But if you focus on just one idea, you can structure your whole speech around that, and it will be much easier for the audience to consume your speech and remember your idea.

You can use a simple method to make sure that your speech does not have any redundancies and you do not overwhelm your audience. This framework is called the “what? so what? now what?” framework. We put out a video you can watch explaining how to use this framework for any public speaking event and has some extra tips on how to deliver a concise and clear speech.

Step by Step Guide to Structuring a Speech

Here is a step-by-step guide to writing a great speech structure, which is broken down into two parts, that is, preparation and writing. 

Preparation

1. audience.

This includes researching your audience in order to better understand them and their interests. With proper audience research in place, one can adapt the speech as per the beliefs, interests, and level of understanding of the audience. 

Audience research mainly entails their educational background, profession, ethnicity, sex, age group, etc. But besides this, we should strive to also understand the knowledge the audience has on the topic that we are speaking about.

One way of researching your audience can be by sending a questionnaire to them before your speech. If that is not possible, try and speak to the host or the person who invited you to speak. They will probably have valuable insights into the crowd you are about to address.

Another way is by reaching the venue early, greeting the audience, and asking them questions to better understand them. However, with this method, you are required to be spontaneous and make changes which could be quite last-minute. 

This is an essential step to writing a speech that is relevant and will resonate with your audience.

This video has several additional tips on collecting information about the audience, what kind of questions need to be asked, and even some last resorts that might work when all else fails!

This includes knowing the purpose of your speech and what exactly you want to convey to the audience. I have attended some presentations where at the end of the speech, I was wondering what the speaker was trying to convey because the purpose of the speech was not clear at all. 

On a broader level, the purpose of your speech can be to inform, persuade, or entertain the audience. It is crucial to know which category your speech falls into. On a narrower level, we need to ask ourselves, “What do we want the listeners to take away from my speech?”. 

Once we have this down, all our efforts should be focused on driving that point.

Ethos mainly includes establishing credibility and convincing your audience that you are trustworthy. It is important to establish credibility from the start of the talk or it might be difficult for the audience to accept what you say. 

In order to identify ethos, one can ask oneself questions like “Why should I give this particular speech?”, “How can I get the audience to believe me with the contents of the speech?”. 

Once ethos is established, the audience is likely to listen to you more attentively and be persuaded.

4. Research

Delivering a good speech is not just about speaking or writing a good speech but also confidence in your ability to deliver it. This confidence stems from thorough research which gives your speech authenticity and credibility. 

Including statistics in your speech and the sources from where you have picked up the information can prove helpful. Moreover, if you are willing to go the extra mile, doing primary research in your speech can also help you gain insight and a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Moreover, it will make your research stand out and add to your ethos.

1. Narrative

There are different narrative styles when it comes to speeches. It helps us story-tell much more effectively and helps our audience retain a lot of the information. 

Choosing the right narrative style is important as it also helps us understand the type of structure we should follow. I’m noting down a few narrative styles for you to get inspiration from, but we have written extensively on the topic which you can check out here: 9 Storytelling Approaches For Your Next Speech or Presentation .

Nested Loops

In this, three stories or more stories are told but none of these stories are completed. Once the gist of all the three stories is given, we start closing the loop in reverse order, that is by finishing the last story first and so on. 

This is a better way of gaining the audience’s interest and attention as psychologists believe that people remember interrupted tasks better than the complete ones.

In Medias Res

In this, the narrative is started in the heat of the action rather than starting from the beginning. Basically, you launch your story right into the action–providing the snippets of how you got there. This works because you take your audience to the most titillating part which makes them inquisitive to know how you got there.

In this, you shift between hope and reality where you and your brand promise to bridge the gap between the ideal and contemporary situations. Basically providing a ray of hope to all the problems in one’s life. Through an emotional appeal the speaker fuels a desire for change among the audience. 

Rags to Riches

This is a narrative style where the protagonist has struggled and suffered greatly because of his/her background but later reaches success. This narrative instills hope in people and makes them relatable to the failures or difficulties faced in life. 

I’ve written an entire article on speech outlines which you can read so I’m not going to spend too much time here.

A basic outline of a speech broken down into a good ol’ Intro-Body-Conclusion:

The Opening  – While it’s important to have a  strong opening , your opening should seamlessly tie into your premise which is basically the core and the main reason for your speech.

The Body  – The body, while being the larger chunk of your speech, shouldn’t be just that – a large chunk. Break the body up! Split your ideas within the core message of your speech and transition smoothly through each idea so your audience can digest what you’re trying to communicate.

The Conclusion  – Here is where many new speakers fall short. While you must focus on having a  bang ending , tell the audience what you want them to do! Give them a clear indication or a ‘call-to-action’.

3. Transition

Speech transitions are words or phrases that help you to move from one topic to another without breaking the flow of the speech. A speech without transitions can seem disorganized and confusing to an audience. There are different types of speech transitions, as given below.

Counterpoints This particular transition is used while talking about contradicting ideas. Phrases such as on the other hand, contrary to what was said earlier, at the same time, on the flip side, etc. can be used to make this transition.

Important Ideas Having a transition for the important ideas in your speech can make them stand out and gain attention causing the audience to listen attentively. These transitions can include pausing before the important statement to make an impact or slowing down the pace of your speech while making the important statement. Posing a question before starting the main idea of the presentation can also put emphasis on it. 

Processes While speaking about the steps on how to achieve something or the process of something, numerical transitions can be simpler for the audience to follow. For instance, firstly, secondly, lastly, etc.

Example While giving an example of something, transitional phrases such as for instance, take the case of, to better understand this…, etc. can be used to maintain the flow of the presentation. 

Here’s a detailed article written on the different types of transitions along with an example for each, which is titled Effective Speech Transitions: How to Make Your Speech Flow . 

The content is the main matter of the speech which is divided into 3 parts, namely, beginning, body, and conclusion.

The Beginning

How you start your speech introduction is, of course, very important. It’s what will grip the audience. They say that people have judged you as soon as you go up on stage, so it’s crucial to catch their attention quickly.

There is no right way to start your speech, but when writing it, make sure you spend some time crafting a good beginning.

Most speakers start with a story, or ask the audience to close their eyes and imagine something, or start with some sort of outstanding fact.

The point is that the beginning should be something that sets the tone for your speech and gets your audience into the mood you want them to be in. There is no set rule as to how long your introduction should be – it can be a few lines or even just a sentence.

To learn more about how to begin your speech with powerful openers, read our extensively written article on 15 Powerful Speech Opening Lines (And How to Create Your Own)

Here’s the meat of your idea.

This is where you get into what your speech is really about. Again, if you’ve focused on too many ideas, the body gets cluttered up and it becomes hard for the audience to consume the speech. So, focus on that one idea that you want to communicate.

Talk about a personal story, throw in some researched facts, show the twists and turns. I like to use the statement-problem-solution approach. I start off with the idea, then I move on to what the problem with it is, and finally to the solution.

This might be hard to explain since every speech is different, so I rather show it to you instead.

Email me at [email protected] and I will send across a speech drafted by one of my speech mentors. It really drives home the idea of how you can structure your speech in an effective manner.

The best is for the last.

Remember, the audience does not tend to remember much of a speech.

So in the end, try to summarize your idea and give the audience some sort of actionable takeaway. That means that you should give the audience something that they can try or change about themselves right this very moment (or at least in the near future) so they can see the benefits of your idea.

Again, this is subjective for different speeches. But the basic idea is to repeat your idea towards the end so it sticks with your audience and gives them something to take away.

This video on 5 powerful speech-ending lines (And how to use them), displays some memorable speech endings and also gives tips on how to deliver a closing line of equal caliber on your own.

After forming the first draft of your speech, editing requires you to go through your speech and remove any kind of repetition or errors that you come across. 

Editing mercilessly is the key to delivering a good speech. Anything that strays from your core message should be edited. Making sure that there is clarity in your speech is also crucial in order to avoid confusion among the audience. 

While editing, the aim should be to make the speech concise by eliminating words that do not add meaning to the sentence, removing paragraphs if the meaning is conveyed fine without them, and using shorter and simpler words rather than using complex words.

Types of Speech Structures

These are some of the speech structure types that you might relate your speech to:

The ‘3 Anecdotes’ Structure

This structure implies that you start your speech off with an introduction by hinting at your main idea and then use the body to tell 3 different stories supporting that idea.

For example, if you were talking about the importance of confidence, give the audience 3 anecdotes of how you missed out on opportunities because you were not confident. Each story can address a different sub-idea within the main idea.

Again, this does not mean that you talk about multiple things, it just means that you are really fleshing out your main idea. These types of speeches work well when you want to tackle a singular idea from different angles.

Problem-Solution Approach

This is the approach I use a lot. What it basically means is that you start off your body by emphasizing the issue at hand. Really build it up to make the audience believe that this really is a problem!

Put in facts, use your own story and make your problem feel like the audience’s problem as well (does that make sense?).

When you introduce the solution, show how it has benefited you as well as how it can benefit the audience. This also makes it easier to add an actionable takeaway at the end.

These types of speeches are great when you have to persuade or convince your audience about a particular matter.

Bed Time Story

This follows the flow of a classic story. Start with an intro. This is where you build up the narrative by setting the scene (try not to say “once upon a time” since it’s become too clichéd).

Then, flesh out the idea. This is where you introduce the hero, the villain, and the plot twist.

Eventually, you end with a happy ending. These types of speeches are great for people who are speaking to an audience with a low attention span, like children. However, if done correctly, it can be a great speech for adults as well!

In addition to this, there are several other speech structures you can use depending on the suitability of your topic. Read the details of the various other types of speech structures (with examples) in this article called Structuring a Speech Right: 7 Simple Tips

Demonstration of the idea of your speech

Many times, when you have to make a presentation, you may have to demonstrate a product, feature, service or idea of some sort.

When doing this, don’t just jump into whatever it is you’re demonstrating. As Simon Sinek says, “talk about the WHY” of whatever it is you’re talking about. Then move on to the “HOW” of it and eventually the “WHAT” of it.

This will help you demonstrate more effectiveness rather than just talking about what you have to present. If you want to know more about “Starting with the WHY”, you can check out Simon Sinek’s best-selling book “Start with the Why”.

There are several ways to structure a speech, and there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do so. As long as you feel it’s simple and easy enough for your audience to understand, you’re good to go.

Structuring your speech is important in order to make the audience better understand the matter of the speech and also to maintain their attention and interest. The message of an unstructured speech cannot reach the audience, as the speaker is confused most of the time regarding what topic to present.

A structured speech also helps the speaker to stay calm and not stray from the topic of the presentation. If you’re still not convinced writing a speech is useful, read this article on 9 Reasons Why Writing A Speech Is Important which will change your mind.

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How to write a good speech in 7 steps

By:  Susan Dugdale  

- an easily followed format for writing a great speech

Did you know writing a speech doesn't have be an anxious, nail biting experience?

Unsure? Don't be.

You may have lived with the idea you were never good with words for a long time. Or perhaps giving speeches at school brought you out in cold sweats.

However learning how to write a speech is relatively straight forward when you learn to write out loud.

And that's the journey I am offering to take you on: step by step.

To learn quickly, go slow

Take all the time you need. This speech format has 7 steps, each building on the next.

Walk, rather than run, your way through all of them. Don't be tempted to rush. Familiarize yourself with the ideas. Try them out.

I know there are well-advertised short cuts and promises of 'write a speech in 5 minutes'. However in reality they only truly work for somebody who already has the basic foundations of speech writing in place.

The foundation of good speech writing 

These steps are the backbone of sound speech preparation. Learn and follow them well at the outset and yes, given more experience and practice you could probably flick something together quickly. Like any skill, the more it's used, the easier it gets.

In the meantime...

Step 1: Begin with a speech overview or outline

Are you in a hurry? Without time to read a whole page? Grab ... The Quick How to Write a Speech Checklist And come back to get the details later.

• WHO you are writing your speech for (your target audience)
• WHY you are preparing this speech. What's the main purpose of your speech? Is it to inform or tell your audience about something? To teach them a new skill or demonstrate something? To persuade or to entertain? (See 4 types of speeches: informative, demonstrative, persuasive and special occasion or entertaining for more.) What do you want them to think, feel or do as a result of listening the speech?
• WHAT your speech is going to be about (its topic) - You'll want to have thought through your main points and have ranked them in order of importance. And have sorted the supporting research you need to make those points effectively.
• HOW much time you have for your speech eg. 3 minutes, 5 minutes... The amount of time you've been allocated dictates how much content you need. If you're unsure check this page: how many words per minute in a speech: a quick reference guide . You'll find estimates of the number of words required for 1 - 10 minute speeches by slow, medium and fast talkers.

Use an outline

The best way to make sure you deliver a perfect speech is to start by carefully completing a speech outline covering the essentials: WHO, WHY, WHAT and HOW.

Beginning to write without thinking your speech through is a bit like heading off on a journey not knowing why you're traveling or where you're going to end up. You can find yourself lost in a deep, dark, murky muddle of ideas very quickly!

Pulling together a speech overview or outline is a much safer option. It's the map you'll follow to get where you want to go.

Get a blank speech outline template to complete

Click the link to find out a whole lot more about preparing a speech outline . ☺ You'll also find a free printable blank speech outline template.  I recommend using it!

Understanding speech construction

Before you begin to write, using your completed outline as a guide, let's briefly look at what you're aiming to prepare.

• an opening or introduction
• the body where the bulk of the information is given
• and an ending (or summary).

Imagine your speech as a sandwich

If you think of a speech as a sandwich you'll get the idea.

The opening and ending are the slices of bread holding the filling (the major points or the body of your speech) together.

You can build yourself a simple sandwich with one filling (one big idea) or you could go gourmet and add up to three or, even five. The choice is yours.

But whatever you choose to serve, as a good cook, you need to consider who is going to eat it! And that's your audience.

So let's find out who they are before we do anything else. 

Step 2: Know who you are talking to

Understanding your audience.

Did you know a  good speech is never written from the speaker's point of view?  ( If you need to know more about why check out this page on  building rapport .)

Begin with the most important idea/point on your outline.

Consider HOW you can explain (show, tell) that to your audience in the most effective way for them to easily understand it.   

Writing from the audience's point of view

To help you write from an audience point of view, it's a good idea to identify either a real person or the type of person who is most likely to be listening to you.

Make sure you select someone who represents the "majority" of the people who will be in your audience. That is they are neither struggling to comprehend you at the bottom of your scale or light-years ahead at the top.

Now imagine they are sitting next to you eagerly waiting to hear what you're going to say. Give them a name, for example, Joe, to help make them real.

Ask yourself

• How do I need to tailor my information to meet Joe's needs? For example, do you tell personal stories to illustrate your main points? Absolutely! Yes. This is a very powerful technique. (Click storytelling in speeches to find out more.)
• What type or level of language is right for Joe as well as my topic? For example if I use jargon (activity, industry or profession specific vocabulary) will it be understood?

Step 3: Writing as you speak

Writing oral language.

Write down what you want to say about your first main point as if you were talking directly to Joe.

If it helps, say it all out loud before you write it down and/or record it.

Use the information below as a guide

(Click to download The Characteristics of Spoken Language  as a pdf.) 

You do not have to write absolutely everything you're going to say down * but you do need to write down, or outline, the sequence of ideas to ensure they are logical and easily followed.

Remember too, to explain or illustrate your point with examples from your research. 

( * Tip: If this is your first speech the safety net of having everything written down could be just what you need. It's easier to recover from a patch of jitters when you have a word by word manuscript than if you have either none, or a bare outline. Your call!)

Step 4: Checking tone and language

The focus of this step is re-working what you've done in Step 2 and 3.

You identified who you were talking to (Step 2) and in Step 3, wrote up your first main point.  Is it right? Have you made yourself clear?  Check it.

How well you complete this step depends on how well you understand the needs of the people who are going to listen to your speech.

Please do not assume because you know what you're talking about the person (Joe) you've chosen to represent your audience will too. Joe is not a mind-reader!

How to check what you've prepared

• Check the "tone" of your language . Is it right for the occasion, subject matter and your audience?
• Check the length of your sentences. You need short sentences. If they're too long or complicated you risk losing your listeners.

Check for jargon too. These are industry, activity or group exclusive words.

For instance take the phrase: authentic learning . This comes from teaching and refers to connecting lessons to the daily life of students. Authentic learning is learning that is relevant and meaningful for students. If you're not a teacher you may not understand the phrase.

The use of any vocabulary requiring insider knowledge needs to be thought through from the audience perspective. Jargon can close people out.

• Read what you've written out loud. If it flows naturally, in a logical manner, continue the process with your next main idea. If it doesn't, rework.

We use whole sentences and part ones, and we mix them up with asides or appeals e.g. "Did you get that? Of course you did. Right...Let's move it along. I was saying ..."

Click for more about the differences between spoken and written language .

And now repeat the process

Repeat this process for the remainder of your main ideas.

Because you've done the first one carefully, the rest should follow fairly easily.

Step 5: Use transitions

Providing links or transitions between main ideas.

Between each of your main ideas you need to provide a bridge or pathway for your audience. The clearer the pathway or bridge, the easier it is for them to make the transition from one idea to the next.

If your speech contains more than three main ideas and each is building on the last, then consider using a "catch-up" or summary as part of your transitions.

Is your speech being evaluated? Find out exactly what aspects you're being assessed on using this standard speech evaluation form

Link/transition examples

A link can be as simple as:

"We've explored one scenario for the ending of Block Buster 111, but let's consider another. This time..."

What follows this transition is the introduction of Main Idea Two.

Here's a summarizing link/transition example:

"We've ended Blockbuster 111 four ways so far. In the first, everybody died. In the second, everybody died BUT their ghosts remained to haunt the area. In the third, one villain died. His partner reformed and after a fight-out with the hero, they both strode off into the sunset, friends forever. In the fourth, the hero dies in a major battle but is reborn sometime in the future.

And now what about one more? What if nobody died? The fifth possibility..."

Go back through your main ideas checking the links. Remember Joe as you go. Try each transition or link out loud and really listen to yourself. Is it obvious? Easily followed?

Keep them if they are clear and concise.

For more about transitions (with examples) see Andrew Dlugan's excellent article, Speech Transitions: Magical words and Phrases .

Step 6: The end of your speech

The ideal ending is highly memorable . You want it to live on in the minds of your listeners long after your speech is finished. Often it combines a call to action with a summary of major points.

Example speech endings

Example 1: The desired outcome of a speech persuading people to vote for you in an upcoming election is that they get out there on voting day and do so. You can help that outcome along by calling them to register their support by signing a prepared pledge statement as they leave.

"We're agreed we want change. You can help us give it to you by signing this pledge statement as you leave. Be part of the change you want to see!

Example 2: The desired outcome is increased sales figures. The call to action is made urgent with the introduction of time specific incentives.

"You have three weeks from the time you leave this hall to make that dream family holiday in New Zealand yours. Can you do it? Will you do it? The kids will love it. Your wife will love it. Do it now!"

How to figure out the right call to action

A clue for working out what the most appropriate call to action might be, is to go back to your original purpose for giving the speech.

• Was it to motivate or inspire?
• Was it to persuade to a particular point of view?
• Was it to share specialist information?
• Was it to celebrate a person, a place, time or event?

Ask yourself what you want people to do as a result of having listened to your speech.

For more about ending speeches

Visit this page for more about how to end a speech effectively . You'll find two additional types of speech endings with examples.

Write and test

Write your ending and test it out loud. Try it out on a friend, or two. Is it good? Does it work?

Step 7: The introduction

Once you've got the filling (main ideas) the linking and the ending in place, it's time to focus on the introduction.

The introduction comes last as it's the most important part of your speech. This is the bit that either has people sitting up alert or slumped and waiting for you to end. It's the tone setter!

What makes a great speech opening?

Ideally you want an opening that makes listening to you the only thing the 'Joes' in the audience want to do.

You want them to forget they're hungry or that their chair is hard or that their bills need paying.

The way to do that is to capture their interest straight away. You do this with a "hook".

Hooks to catch your audience's attention

Hooks come in as many forms as there are speeches and audiences. Your task is work out what specific hook is needed to catch your audience.

Go back to the purpose. Why are you giving this speech?

Once you have your answer, consider your call to action. What do you want the audience to do, and, or take away, as a result of listening to you?

Next think about the imaginary or real person you wrote for when you were focusing on your main ideas.

Choosing the best hook

• Is it humor?
• Would shock tactics work?
• Is it a rhetorical question?
• Is it formality or informality?
• Is it an outline or overview of what you're going to cover, including the call to action?
• Or is it a mix of all these elements?

A hook example

Here's an example from a fictional political speech. The speaker is lobbying for votes. His audience are predominately workers whose future's are not secure.

"How's your imagination this morning? Good? (Pause for response from audience) Great, I'm glad. Because we're going to put it to work starting right now.

I want you to see your future. What does it look like? Are you happy? Is everything as you want it to be? No? Let's change that. We could do it. And we could do it today.

At the end of this speech you're going to be given the opportunity to change your world, for a better one ...

No, I'm not a magician. Or a simpleton with big ideas and precious little commonsense. I'm an ordinary man, just like you. And I have a plan to share!"

And then our speaker is off into his main points supported by examples. The end, which he has already foreshadowed in his opening, is the call to vote for him.

Prepare several hooks

Experiment with several openings until you've found the one that serves your audience, your subject matter and your purpose best.

For many more examples of speech openings go to: how to write a speech introduction . You'll find 12 of the very best ways to start a speech.

That completes the initial seven steps towards writing your speech. If you've followed them all the way through, congratulations, you now have the text of your speech!

Although you might have the words, you're still a couple of steps away from being ready to deliver them. Both of them are essential if you want the very best outcome possible. They are below. Please take them.

Step 8: Checking content and timing

This step pulls everything together.

Check once, check twice, check three times & then once more!

Go through your speech really carefully.

On the first read through check you've got your main points in their correct order with supporting material, plus an effective introduction and ending.

On the second read through check the linking passages or transitions making sure they are clear and easily followed.

On the third reading check your sentence structure, language use and tone.

Double, triple check the timing

Now go though once more.

This time read it aloud slowly and time yourself.

If it's too long for the time allowance you've been given make the necessary cuts.

Start by looking at your examples rather than the main ideas themselves. If you've used several examples to illustrate one principal idea, cut the least important out.

Also look to see if you've repeated yourself unnecessarily or, gone off track. If it's not relevant, cut it.

Repeat the process, condensing until your speech fits the required length, preferably coming in just under your time limit.

You can also find out how approximately long it will take you to say the words you have by using this very handy words to minutes converter . It's an excellent tool, one I frequently use. While it can't give you a precise time, it does provide a reasonable estimate.

Step 9: Rehearsing your speech

And NOW you are finished with writing the speech, and are ready for REHEARSAL .

Please don't be tempted to skip this step. It is not an extra thrown in for good measure. It's essential.

The "not-so-secret" secret of successful speeches combines good writing with practice, practice and then, practicing some more.

Go to how to practice public speaking and you'll find rehearsal techniques and suggestions to boost your speech delivery from ordinary to extraordinary.

The Quick How to Write a Speech Checklist

Before you begin writing you need:.

• Your speech OUTLINE with your main ideas ranked in the order you're going to present them. (If you haven't done one complete this 4 step sample speech outline . It will make the writing process much easier.)
• Your RESEARCH
• You also need to know WHO you're speaking to, the PURPOSE of the speech and HOW long you're speaking for

The basic format

• the body where you present your main ideas

Split your time allowance so that you spend approximately 70% on the body and 15% each on the introduction and ending.

How to write the speech

• Write your main ideas out incorporating your examples and research
• Link them together making sure each flows in a smooth, logical progression
• Write your ending, summarizing your main ideas briefly and end with a call for action
• Write your introduction considering the 'hook' you're going to use to get your audience listening
• An often quoted saying to explain the process is: Tell them what you're going to tell them (Introduction) Tell them (Body of your speech - the main ideas plus examples) Tell them what you told them (The ending)

TEST before presenting. Read aloud several times to check the flow of material, the suitability of language and the timing.

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How to Write a Speech to Engage your Audience

February 19, 2021 - Dom Barnard

In order to write a speech, you need to think about your audience, the required length, and the purpose or topic. This is true whether you are writing a wedding speech, conference presentation, investor pitch, or any other type of speech.

Being a great speech writer can help you get a promotion, motivate people, sell a business idea, persuade others and much more – it’s an essential skill in the modern world. In this article, we cover key tips for writing a speech.

Initial planning – Why? Who? What?

You should invest time strategically considering the speech. This will help you decide on the key message and content about your topic. Here are some points to consider.

• What do I want to achieve?
• When I achieve this, what will that do for me?
• Why am I speaking?
• What is the purpose of this speech?
• Who are the audience and who do they represent?
• Who do I represent?
• What do I know about them? (culture, language, level of expertise)
• How much influence do they have?
• What is the main message and key points?
• What specific action is implied?
• What level of information should I include?
• What is important to them?

Popular speech structure

You need to catch the audience attention early, very early (see section below). Deliver a memorable beginning, a clear middle and structured ending.

Popular speech structure:

• Explanation 1
• Explanation 2
• Explanation 3

Secondary Point (Optional: supports main)

Tertiary Point (Optional: supports secondary and main)

Attention span of your audience

Research shows that attention span is greatest at the beginning of a speech, reduces considerably during the middle of your speech and picks up again towards the end when your audience know you about to finish.

Don’t try to put too many ideas into your speech. Research shows that people remember very little from speeches, so just give them one or two ideas to hang onto.

These two articles explain audience attention span in more detail, and how to write a speech to extend it:

• How many minutes is the audience’s attention span?
• What to do when you’re losing your audience

Speech introduction

Make sure your opening few seconds are memorable as this is when your audience will make up their minds about you. Use a bold sentence to grab their attention, works best with numbers reinforcing your point.

An example sentence might be – “After this speech, I’m confident 50% of you will go out and buy a VR headset.” Follow these tips on how to write a speech intro:

Remember the INTRO model

This is more focused on presentations but sections can be applied broadly to other general speeches.

1. Interest

You: Introduce yourself confidently and clearly Audience: Why should I listen to you?

You: Remind the audience the reasons for this speech Audience: What’s in it for me?

You: State length of speech at beginning, “Over the next 15 minutes” Audience: How long until I can get a coffee?

4. Routemap

You: State the main points, “Today I’m going to cover 4 main points” Audience: Which sections of the speech are important to me?

5. Objectives

You: Clearly state the objective, “By the end of this speech, I would like to…” Audience: So that’s what you want from me today…

Example: Great speech opening

This speech opening is by Jamie Oliver, giving a TED talk on teaching every child about food.

Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the food that they eat. My name’s Jamie Oliver. I’m 34 years old. I’m from Essex in England and for the last seven years I’ve worked fairly tirelessly to save lives in my own way. I’m not a doctor; I’m a chef, I don’t have expensive equipment or medicine. I use information, education. I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life. We have an awful, awful reality right now. America, you’re at the top of your game. This is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.

How not to open your speech

Avoid the following opening comments:

• “ Apologies, I’m a little nervous about speaking ” – no need to make the audience aware of this, it will make them focus on how nervous you are instead of what you are saying
• “ I’ve got the graveyard shift ” – you are telling people not to expect much
• “ I’m what stands between you and lunch ” – even if people weren’t thinking it, after this comment, all they are thinking of is when will you finish so they can eat
• “ We are running late, so I’ll do my best to explain… ” – instead of this, state how long your speech will take so that people know when they will be leaving

Middle of the speech

The body of your speech is where the majority of the information is. The audience has been introduced to the subject and reasons for the speech. Now you need to present your arguments and examples, data, illustrations backing up your key message.

How to write a speech body can be difficult, the best way to build this section is to write down three points you are trying to convey in your speech, your main, secondary and tertiary points. Then write down three descriptions clarifying each of these points. The descriptions should be simple, memorable and meaningful.

The middle of your speech is where the audience start losing attention. Keep this in mind and ensure your message is clear. Use images, jokes and rhetoric questions to keep the audience engaged.

Don’t overwhelm your audience with many points. It is much more valuable to make a small number of points well, than to have too many points which aren’t made satisfactorily.

Obama and his speeches

Obama’s speeches are well prepared with a focus on powerful words “A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things“. His speeches use simple language and quotes from famous speeches his listeners can relate to.

For additional trademark Obama techniques, check out  How Barack Obama prepares his speeches.

How to end a speech

Similar to the opening, your closing statements should be impactful, re-stating the key message of your speech. We advise learning your ending few lines word for word. The ending is an opportunity to:

• Leave the audience with a lasting impression of your speech
• Summarise the main points
• Provide further ideas and discussion points for the audience to take away with them
• Thank the audience for taking the time to listen

Methods to end your speech

Quotation Close  – use a famous quote to get the audience’s attention and create a link to your speech.

Bookend Close  – refer back to an opening statement and repeat it or add a few extra words to elaborate on it.

Open Question  – ask the audience a provocative question or a call to action to perform some task on the back of your speech.

For additional tips on how to write a speech, in particular how to close your speech, read:

• 5 great ways to end a speech
• 10 ways to end your speech with a bang
• Presentations: language expert – signposting

Ideas for ending a speech

• Key message
• Refer to opening impact statement
• Objectives met
• Call to action
• End on an Up

Step-by-step process for writing a speech

Here’s how to write your speech from concept to completion.

• Outline your speech’s structure. What are the main ideas for each section?
• Write out the main ideas in your outline. Don’t worry about making it perfect – just write as much of it down as you can
• Edit and polish what you’ve written until you have a good first draft of your speech
• Now you need to practice and  memorize your speech . The more you practice, the more you’ll figure out which sections need changing. You’ll also get an idea of length and if you need to extend / shorten it.
• Update your speech, practice some more, and revise your speech until it has a great flow and you feel comfortable with it.

Classic speech transcripts

One of the best ways for learning how to write a speech is reading other well written ones. Here are a list of famous speeches to read and learn from:

• Bill Gates TED Talk Transcript from 2015: Warns of Pandemics, Epidemics
• Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Commencement Speech at Harvard 2014
• Ronald Reagan Memorial Day Speech Transcript 1984
• I Have Been to the Mountaintop Speech Transcript – Martin Luther King Jr.

How to write a speech

• James Haynes
• October 6, 2022

Table of Contents

Introduction.

So you want to learn how to write a speech. Maybe it’s for a speech for work, or maybe it’s for a school project. You know that professional speakers don’t just make stuff up. They don’t write a few thoughts on a notecard and then shoot from the hip for an entire presentation. They take the time to write and carefully craft their material. And you’re ready to do that! You have an idea of what you want to speak about, but how do you actually create your talk? How do you give a speech? And what makes a talk “good”?

In this post, you can read answers to all of those questions. You’ll learn tips to go through the process to create a great speech from idea to completion. And you’ll learn how to write and give an inspiring speech. Ready to learn more? Read on!

Before you start to write your speech

A speech is simply a talk meant to get your audience to learn, understand or do something. 

The best speakers on the planet only have one or two talks they do and those talks are insanely good. Start by developing just one, really amazing talk that resonates deeply with your intended audience. The best marketing for your speaking business is a great talk, so it is worth it to put in the hours for this part. Yes, even if your first speaking gig is a free talk at a community center.

Keep in mind: Your audience is always going to be asking two questions: “so what?” and “now what?” So what means, what does this have to do with me? Now what is what you want the audience to do as a result of your talk. Give them action steps to implement what you taught them. If they hear you speak but literally don’t do anything differently, what’s the point?

Giving a speech is almost like mapping for a road trip. If you are going to go on a road trip, it’s easier to have a paper map or Google Maps to tell you where you’re going. But if you just get in the car and you start driving, and people are in the car asking you where we’re going, you’re in trouble! But by organizing and structuring your talk, you can lead the audience to your conclusions. And you can effectively answer those two questions: “so what?” and “now what?”

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Want to learn how to write a speech? Read on for 3 steps to make it unforgettable:

1. Begin with the end in mind and tell a story

Have you ever been left at the end of a speech wondering, “What was the point of this talk?” Don’t do that to your audience. When creating your talk, determine the destination that you want to take them to. Once you pick a point, then you can work backwards and reverse engineer how to get your audience to that place.

The best way to do the point of your talk is to find where your audience’s needs converge with your passions. Think about what problems you like to solve and what topics you want to talk about and look out into the world. Who is asking for solutions to those problems? Become the expert on that audience and commit yourself to meeting their needs. (for more on finding your big idea, check out this episode of The Speaker Lab podcast)

Okay, so now you have your topic, the idea you want to communicate. Now what? One of the best ways to create a memorable, relatable talk is by integrating first-person stories . You don’t have to have lost a limb or scaled Mount Everest. Keep an eye out in your everyday life for little moments that can contribute to your message. Write them down and integrate them into your talk. As you get more speaking gigs, you will very quickly learn which stories are a hit and which are total flops…which is all part of the process!

Humans relate to stories. We connect to stories. Funny stories. Sad stories. Inspirational stories. We love stories. So tell them. Lots of them. Stories will keep your audience engaged and are also easier for you to memorize. Telling stories that you lived and experienced generally makes the story better for you and the audience. For the audience, they can often times find themselves in your story. For you as the speaker, it’s much easier (and more powerful) to tell a story that you lived versus one you read in a book.

2. Write out your speech from beginning to end

As Grant Baldwin discusses in this video on preparing your talk , you want to write out your talk to have a basic structure: beginning, middle, and end.

In the beginning, you’re going to want to introduce the problem that your talk is going to solve and ultimately start to capture the audience’s attention. One thing that’s important to remember is there’s a difference between an audience that wants to be there and an audience that has to be there. When you get on stage, you want to be able to answer for the audience: Who are you? Why should I pay attention? Why does this matter? What am I supposed to do with this information? Can I trust you? You want to give the audience a reason to engage with you and where you’re going with the speech.

The next part of the process is the main body. This is where you will provide the solution to the problem or elaborate on the idea you’ve presented, and then share the action items that transform the audience. These action items should be specific, tangible, actionable, and realistic. You want to give something that the audience can leave with knowing exactly what to do now. So you want to make it specific, tangible, actionable, and realistic – not something that’s just vague or squishy, but something that they can actually understand.

The last part of the process is the closing. The purpose of the closing is to transition the audience to your main call to action. Remember, your audience is always asking themselves two questions: “So what?” and “Now what?” And this is where your closing comes in. Your closing is so important because the audience will remember what they learned and heard from you in the final minutes of your talk.

3. Structure your speech

Types of structures for writing your speech.

Another step Baldwin recommended on our podcast on creating your talk is to break your talk into sections beyond the beginning, middle, and end.  As you internalize your talk’s message, you can break the talk into sections that you either deliver in order or out of order.

But regardless of how you break it up, you should determine what the point of each section is. It may be to tell a story to illustrate some key thoughts. Practicing that section could include practicing telling the story aloud, delivering the punchline, and transitioning out of that story into the next point that you’re trying to make. This will make it easier to memorize your speech.

Each section should stack on to what you’ve already learned. So once you learn paragraph one, then you can practice paragraph two. Then you can go back and practice one and two together – again, everyone has their own technique, but oftentimes out loud is best! (Another tactic here is to record yourself and listen back to help you to not only learn the material, but to also help decide if the material works.)

Sequential structures

One method Grant Baldwin discusses in our podcast on how to write your speech is to use different types of structures. For example, a sequential structure for memorizing your talk can take the main themes you want to speak about and put them in a sequential form, so that it’s easier to remember the order. Grant gives the example of a talk he gave for college audiences called “Life is a Highway,” where he talked about an imaginary road trip. 

As Baldwin said, the way the talk was structured was to talk in the beginning about the past, and where the audience has been, then talk about the future, where they’re going, and to end by talking about where they are, right now. “It needs to almost happen in this certain sequence,” Baldwin said, “which also makes it easier for you to memorize because they need to go in this specific order.”

When you use this structure, you can deliver your speech in any order, Unlike a singer, whose audience may know all the lyrics to the song she sings, if a speaker goes out of order, it may be impossible for the audience to notice – after all, they don’t have a script!

Modular structures

Another type of structure you can use to write your speech is a modular structure. This allows you to go in order, but it also allows you to jump around. This could be especially helpful if you’ve got a couple of main thoughts or ideas and they don’t necessarily have to go in a certain order. You can kind of mix and match them around, similar to how a band at a concert can switch songs around in their setlist.

Baldwin gives the example of topics he covered in a book talk for high school students, answering questions such as, should I go to college? how do I pay for college? What classes do I take? What do I major in? Job interviews, resumes, internships, credit cards, budgets, taxes, etc.

Similar to the sequential structure, it may be helpful for you to think of the content as telling a story, so that you don’t leave anything out. If you have five key themes, for example, that you’d like to cover, they could be five elements of a story you would like to tell. Remember: stories will keep your audience engaged and also make it easier for you to write your speech.

By following these steps, you can set yourself up for success. Many external variables help make a speech go well. Beyond working these steps before giving a speech, you should try to put as many of those variables in your favor as possible. Don’t stay up late the night before at a reception. Don’t eat a massive pasta bowl before you go on stage. Try to avoid speaking during a slot when most of the audience will be distracted. If all the variables are stacked against you but you crush your talk, it can still come across as “meh” to the audience.

Keep in mind: Speaking is like playing jazz – you don’t have to give a talk the same way every time. You can improvise and mix it up sometimes, and you don’t need to plan out every hand gesture or movement or exact line you’ll use. Some of that is fine, but also be present enough with the audience that you can play jazz when the moment calls for it.

If you have a dream to inspire others with your message, you’ve probably considered taking your passion to the stage. Becoming a speaker might sound like a charmed life in many ways. And while it does take hard work, it totally is. 

What Type Of Speaker Are You?

Click below to discover your Speaker Archetype and how to start getting booked and paid to speak!

In the meantime, here are a few rapid fire FAQs about speeches. Happy speaking!

How much money can you make as a professional speaker?

The runway to a successful business is often slow. But many professional speakers make 6+ figures a year within a couple years of starting their speaking business!

What degree you need to become a professional speaker?

It does not matter! You can have no degree or a PhD in whatever field you like and still be a great speaker.

Can anyone become a professional speaker?

Absolutely.

How long does it take to become a professional speaker?

This may vary quite a bit, primarily based on your state in life.

• Last Updated: February 29, 2024

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• Speech Crafting →

The Definitive Guide on Structuring a Speech and Presentation

So, you have an important presentation coming up which requires you to not only write up a speech but also present it.

You’re probably nervous, as most people are when it comes to public speaking, which is natural.

A good way to feel confident before and during your presentation is to ensure that you are well-prepared on the content you will be presenting.

To help you prepare , you can research and learn more about your subject, practice your presentation in front of friends or family or even in front of a mirror.

While practicing , factor in the time you’ve been allocated to give your presentation, which will allow you to keep time without rushing through your presentation . This will help you avoid leaving key points out.

Additionally, you should ensure that you are audible and well understood . So, if you are a fast speaker like me, you should try slowing down .

Nerves aside, you probably are a good speaker who writes good content. However, not having your speech structured properly may make it hard for your audience to not only understand each point you are trying to put across but also the gist of your whole speech.

A well-structured speech not only prevents your audience from getting lost but also assists your audience in understanding your message.

Without a proper structure, your speech will have no sense of direction, which will leave your audience scattered on the main points you would like to put across.

Note: Research has shown that audiences tend to retain structured information 40% more precisely than unstructured information.

To begin with, you first need to draw up a speech outline .

How to Structure a Speech to Get Your Message Across Clearly

Presentation outline.

A speech outline is a general description of what your speech will be about.

The General Speech Outline is most commonly used.

This is made up of the introduction, the main body and the conclusion.

• The Introduction

This tells your audience who you are and what you are to talk about. This is where you grab your audience’s attention.

• The Main Body

This is where you begin making your arguments. To make it easier for your audience to follow what you’re talking about, you should divide your arguments into easy-to-understand and short points.

To help the audience understand your point, think up a good analogy or give a real story that they can use to relate to the points you’ve put across.

If your speech relies on data that helps emphasize your key points, then include the data to add more weight.

Pro-Tip: Ensure your data has been sourced from credible source s.

• The Conclusion

Your conclusion should summarize everything that you’ve talked about in your speech and ties it up in a bow that is easy to recall. So ensure it’s memorable!

Now that your outline is drawn up, next, you should focus on the type of structure you will be using to write up your speech.

The Common Characteristics of a Good Speech Structure

Choosing the structure that you will use for your presentation may present a challenge, as you may be conflicted on the right structure for you. To help with this, you need to ask yourself:

• What is the objective of your presentation?
• Who is your audience?
• What is your audience most interested in?  
• What are the key points your audience should recall after your presentation?

Taking these factors into consideration will allow you to structure your speech in a way that puts your main points across, helps the audience follow along throughout your presentation and also helps them remember the most important bits. 

There are various types of speech structures, which include:

• Problem-Solution Structure

This type of structure is good for presentations that require you to influence the audiences’ thoughts on an issue.

This approach may need you to appeal to your audience both emotionally and logically.

• Demonstration Structure

This structure is particularly useful when your presentation requires a lot of demonstrations .

For instance, if your speech focuses on a specific product, this particular structure allows you to explain why the commodity is not only valuable but also necessary.

This may be followed up by how the product can solve various issues which can be better explained through a demonstration .

Now, we do a deep dive into a typical speech structure, highlighting its flow, which should incorporate the speech outline you’d already drawn up.   

1. First things first, say hi.

Ever heard of a speaker who came up to the stage and without a greeting or an introduction began with their presentation? Well, me neither.

(Unless you are in a speech contest where time is very limited. But even then, the contest Toastmaster would have introduced you.)

Before you begin your presentation, introduce yourself to your audience, highlighting your relevant expertise. Your introduction need not be very detailed or long but it helps establish rapport (a connection) between you and the audience.

This is where you show exactly why you are worth listening to, through your words.

2. Introduction

Under the introduction, you will be talking about the purpose and subject of your presentation. There will be no point to this if the audience is uninterested in your subject matter.

Therefore, your objective is to not only talk about the aforementioned points but also gain your audience’s confidence, attention and interest, while also connecting with them.

To help filter down your presentation, you should:

• Introduce your topic and explain the topic area
• Mention the challenges or issues that you will be exploring in this area
• Talk about the purpose of your presentation; this is the basis of your presentation.
• Give a statement of what you hope the outcome of your presentation will be
• Demonstrate using a preview how your presentation has been organized .

Additionally, you should also;

• Specify or give a general estimate of how long your presentation will take.
• Communicate whether you’d prefer to answer any questions the audience may have in an allotted time frame or throughout your presentation.
• Let the audience know whether handouts on your presentation will be provided or whether they should take notes (if applicable).

It should be noted though that how you structure your introduction may sometimes be dependent on the amount of time you’ve been allotted for your presentation.

Related: How to Start Your Speech to Engage the Audience

3. The Main Body 

Here, you will be delving into details, talking about the topics you’d introduced in your introduction.

To ensure your audience doesn’t get lost as you discuss your presentation in detail, you should divide what you will be talking about into different topics.

This will allow you to talk about each topic in its entirety before moving onto the next, thus making it easier for your audience to not only understand your key points but keep up with the presentation.

Pro-Tip: Providing a mini-summary of what you have discussed under each topic before moving on to the next helps the audience distinguish the main points from the details and understand the key points better.

4. The Conclusion

Some speakers often make the mistake of not concluding their presentations with purpose, which leaves their messages unreinforced.

Presentations usually have a specific objective in mind that they plan to attain. While your presentation may have gone well, you need to reinforce your message in your conclusion.

To do this, you need to:

• Indicate that you are nearing the end of your presentation
• Rehash your topic and aim of your presentation
• Summarize your main points
• Give an enlightening call-to-action
• Proceed to the final section of your presentation

Pro-Tip: Always make sure that you make the closing statement for your presentation after the Q&A session. This is because audiences are likely to remember the last thing they hear.

Related:  How to End a Speech With a Bang (And be Remembered)

5. Question and Answer Time

This depends on whether you had allotted a time frame where the audience would be allowed to ask questions concerning your presentation. If you had not, then this is a perfect time to invite questions from the audience.

To do so, you should begin by thanking your audience for their time and for participating (if there was a Q&A session throughout the presentation).

While it’s totally fine to make the Q&A session a part of your presentation, focusing on your topics of discussion and letting the session come at the end of your talk allows the audience time to fully grasp your content, is recommended.

Conclusion: On Building a Speech Structure

We’ve discussed the various types of structures you can use to make your presentation as good as you would like it to be. While presentation structures may be different, there are a few factors that may affect the structure of your presentation.

These include:

• If your talk is restricted by time constraints
• How much interaction you’d like from your audience
• If the audience is knowledgeable on the subject of your discussion.
• Whether you need visual assistance or need to give demonstrations
• The setting in which you will give your presentation

In summary, structuring your presentation in a simple and logical way that allows your audience to keep up with your talk is not only important but beneficial. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so go out and put into practice the suggestions above!

Speechwriting

9 Structure and Organization

Writing a Speech That Audiences Can Grasp

In this chapter . . .

For a speech to be effective, the material must be presented in a way that makes it not only engaging but easy for the audience to follow. Having a clear structure and a well-organized speech makes this possible. In this chapter we cover the elements of a well-structured speech, using transitions to connect each element, and patterns for organizing the order of your main points.

Have you had this experience? You have an instructor who is easy to take notes from because they help you see the main ideas and give you cues as to what is most important to write down and study for the test. On the other hand, you might have an instructor who tells interesting stories, says provocative things, and leads engaging discussions, but you have a tough time following where the instruction is going. If you’ve experienced either of these, you already know that structure and the organized presentation of material makes a big difference for listening and learning. The structure is like a house, which has essential parts like a roof, walls, windows, and doors. Organization is like the placement of rooms within the house, arranged for a logical and easy flow.

This chapter will teach you about creating a speech through an outlining process that involves structure and organization. In the earlier chapter Ways of Delivering Speeches , you learned about several different modes of speech delivery: impromptu, extemporaneous, and manuscript. Each of these suggests a different kind of speech document. An impromptu speech will have a very minimal document or none at all. An extemporaneous delivery requires a very thorough outline, and a manuscript delivery requires a fully written speech text. Here’s a crucial point to understand: Whether you plan to deliver extemporaneously or from a fully written text. The process of outlining is crucial. A manuscript is simply a thorough outline into which all the words have been written.

Four Elements of a Structured Speech

A well-structured speech has four distinct elements: introduction, body, connective statements, and conclusion. While this sounds simple, each of these elements has sub-elements and nuances that are important to understand. Introductions and conclusions are complex enough to warrant their own chapter and will be discussed in depth further on.

Introduction and Conclusion

The importance of a good introduction cannot be overstated. The clearer and more thorough the introduction, the more likely your audience will listen to the rest of the speech and not “turn off.” An introduction, which typically occupies 10-15% of your entire speech, serves many functions including getting the audience’s attention, establishing your credibility, stating your thesis, and previewing your main points.

Like an introduction, speech conclusions are essential. They serve the function of reiterating the key points of your speech and leave the audience with something to remember.

The elements of introductions and conclusions will be discussed in the following chapter. The remainder of this chapter is devoted to the body of the speech and its connectors.

The Body of a Speech

The body of a speech is comprised of several distinct groups of related information or arguments. A proper group is one where a) the group can be described in a single clear sentence, and b) there’s a logical relationship between everything within it. We call that describing sentence a main point . Speeches typically have several main points, all logically related to the thesis/central idea of the speech. Main points are followed by explanation, elaboration, and supporting evidence that are called  sub-points .

Main Points

A main point in a speech is a complete sentence that states the topic for information that is logically grouped together. In a writing course, you may have learned about writing a paragraph topic sentence. This is typically the first sentence of a paragraph and states the topic of the paragraph. Speechwriting is similar. Whether you’re composing an essay with a paragraph topic sentences or a drafting a speech with main points, everything in the section attached to the main point should logically pertain to it. If not, then the information belongs under a different main point. Let’s look at an example of three main points:

General Purpose: To persuade

Specific Purpose: To motivate my classmates in English 101 to participate in a study abroad program.

Thesis: A semester-long study abroad experience produces lifelong benefits by teaching you about another culture, developing your language skills, and enhancing your future career prospects.

Main point #1: A study abroad experience allows you to acquire firsthand experience of another culture through classes, extra-curricular activities, and social connections.

Main point #2: You’ll turbocharge your acquisition of second language skills through an immersive experience living with a family.

Main point #3: A study abroad experience on your resume shows that you have acquired the kind of language and cultural skills that appeal to employers in many sectors.

Notice that each main point is expressed in a complete sentence, not merely #1 Culture; #2 Language; #3 Career. One-word signals are useless as a cue for speaking. Additionally, students are often tempted to write main points as directions to themselves, “Talk about the health department” or “Mention the solution.” This isn’t helpful for you, either. Better: “The health department provides many services for low-income residents” says something we can all understand.

Finally, the important thing to understand about speechwriting is that listeners have limits as to how many categories of information they can keep in mind. The number of main points that can be addressed in any speech is determined by the time allotted for a speech but is also affected by the fact that speeches are limited in their ability to convey substantial amounts of information. For a speech of five to seven minutes, three or four main points are usually enough. More than that would be difficult to manage—for both speaker and audience.

Obviously, creating your main points isn’t the end of the story. Each main point requires additional information or reinforcement. We call these sub-points. Sub-points provide explanation, detail, elaboration, and/or supporting evidence. Consider main point #1 in the previous example, now with sub-points:

Sub-point A: How a country thinks about education is a window into the life of that culture. While on a study abroad program, you’ll typically take 3-5 classes at foreign universities, usually with local professors. This not only provides new learning, but it opens your eyes to different modes of education.

Sub-point B: Learning about a culture isn’t limited to the classroom. Study abroad programs include many extra-curricular activities that introduce you to art, food, music, sports, and other everyday elements of a country’s culture. These vary depending on the program and there’s something for everyone! The website gooverseas.com provides information on hundreds of programs.

Sub-point C: The opportunity to socialize with peers in other countries is one of most attractive elements of studying abroad. You may form friendships that will last a lifetime. “I have made valuable connections in a country I hope to return to someday” according to a blog post by Rachel Smith, a student at the University of Kansas. [1]

Notice that each of these sub-points pertains to the main point. The sub-points contribute to the main point by providing explanation, detail, elaboration, and/or supporting evidence. Now imagine you had a fourth sub-point:

Sub-point D: And while doing all that socializing, you’ll really improve your language skills.

Does that sub-point belong to main point #1? Or should it be grouped with main point#2 or main point #3?

Connective Statements

Connectives or “connective statements” are broad terms that encompass several types of statements or phrases. They are designed to help “connect” parts of your speech to make it easier for audience members to follow. Connectives are tools that add to the planned redundancy, and they are methods for helping the audience listen, retain information, and follow your structure. In fact, it’s one thing to have a well-organized speech. It’s another for the audience to be able to “consume” or understand that organization.

Connectives in general perform several functions:

• Remind the audience of what has come before
• Remind the audience of the central focus or purpose of the speech
• Forecast what is coming next
• Help the audience have a sense of context in the speech—where are we?
• Explain the logical connection between the previous main idea(s) and next one or previous sub-points and the next one
• Explain your own mental processes in arranging the material as you have
• Keep the audience’s attention through repetition and a sense of movement

Connective statement can include “internal summaries,” “internal previews” “signposts” and “bridging or transition statements.” Each of these helps connect the main ideas of your speech for the audience, but they have different emphases and are useful for different types of speeches.

Types of connectives and examples

Internal summaries emphasize what has come before and remind the audience of what has been covered.

“So far I have shown how the designers of King Tut’s burial tomb used the antechamber to scare away intruders and the second chamber to prepare royal visitors for the experience of seeing the sarcophagus.”

Internal previews let your audience know what is coming up next in the speech and what to expect regarding the content of your speech.

“In this next part of the presentation I will share with you what the truly secret and valuable part of the King Tut’s pyramid: his burial chamber and the treasury.”

Signposts emphasize physical movement through the speech content and let the audience know exactly where they are. Signposting can be as simple as “First,” “Next,” “Lastly” or numbers such as “First,” “Second,” Third,” and “Fourth.” Signposting is meant to be a brief way to let your audience know where they are in the speech. It may help to think of these like the mile markers you see along interstates that tell you where you’re and how many more miles you will travel until you reach your destination.

“The second aspect of baking chocolate chip cookies is to combine your ingredients in the recommended way.”

Bridging or transition statements emphasize moving the audience psychologically to the next step.

“I have mentioned two huge disadvantages to students who don’t have extracurricular music programs. Let me ask: Is that what we want for our students? If not, what can we do about it?”

They can also serve to connect seemingly disconnected (but related) material, most commonly between your main points.

“After looking at how the Cherokee Indians of the North Georgia mountain region were politically important until the 1840s and the Trail of Tears, we can compare their experience with that of the Indians of Central Georgia who did not assimilate in the same way as the Cherokee.”

At a minimum, a bridge or transition statement is saying, “Now that we have looked at (talked about, etc.) X, let’s look at Y.”

There’s no standard format for connectives. However, there are a few pieces of advice to keep in mind about them:

First, connectives are for connecting main points. They are not for providing evidence, statistics, stories, examples, or new factual information for the supporting points of the main ideas of the speech.

Second, while connectives in essay writing can be relatively short—a word or phrase, in public speaking, connectives need to be a sentence or two. When you first start preparing and practicing connectives, you may feel that you’re being too obvious with them, and they are “clunky.” Some connectives may seem to be hitting the audience over the head with them like a hammer. While it’s possible to overdo connectives, it’s less likely than you would think. The audience will appreciate them, and as you listen to your classmates’ speeches, you’ll become aware of when they are present and when they are absent.

Lack of connectives results in hard-to-follow speeches where the information seems to come up unexpectedly or the speaker seems to jump to something new without warning or clarification.

Finally, you’ll also want to vary your connectives and not use the same one all the time. Remember that there are several types of connectives.

Patterns of Organization

At the beginning of this chapter, you read the analogy that a speech structure is like a house and organization is like the arrangement of the rooms. So far, we have talked about structure. The introduction, body, main point, sub-point, connectives—these are the house. But what about the arrangement of the rooms? How will you put your main points in a logical order?

There are some standard ways of organizing the body of a speech. These are called “patterns of organization.” In each of the examples below, you’ll see how the specific purpose gives shape to the organization of the speech and how each one exemplifies one of the six main organizational patterns.

Please note that these are simple, basic outlines for example purposes. The actual content of the speech outline or manuscript will be much further developed.

Chronological Pattern

Specific Purpose: To describe to my classmates the four stages of rehabilitation in addiction recovery.

Main Points:

• The first stage is acknowledging the problem and entering treatment.
• The second stage is early abstinence, a difficult period in the rehabilitation facility.
• The third stage is maintaining abstinence after release from the rehab facility.
• The fourth stage is advanced recovery after a period of several years.

The example above uses what is termed the chronological pattern of organization . Chronological always refers to time order. Organizing your main points chronologically is usually appropriate for process speeches (how-to speeches) or for informational speeches that emphasize how something developed from beginning to end. Since the specific purpose in the example above is about stages, it’s necessary to put the four stages in the right order. It would make no sense to put the fourth stage second and the third stage first.

Chronological time can be long or short. If you were giving a speech about the history of the Civil Rights Movement, that period would cover several decades; if you were giving a speech about the process of changing the oil in a car, that process takes less than an hour. Whether the time is long or short, it’s best to avoid a simple, chronological list of steps or facts. A better strategy is to put the information into three to five groups so that the audience has a framework. It would be easy in the case of the Civil Rights Movement to list the many events that happened over more than two decades, but that could be overwhelming for the audience. Instead, your chronological “grouping” might be:

• The movement saw African Americans struggling for legal recognition before the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
• The movement was galvanized and motivated by the 1955-1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott.
• The movement saw its goals met in the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

In this way, the chronological organization isn’t an overwhelming list of events. It focuses the audience on three events that pushed the Civil Rights movement forward.

Spatial Pattern

You can see that chronological is a highly-used organizational structure, since one of the ways our minds work is through time-orientation—past, present, future. Another common thought process is movement in space or direction, which is called the spatial pattern . For example:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the three regional cooking styles of Italy.

• In the mountainous region of the North, the food emphasizes cheese and meat.
• In the middle region of Tuscany, the cuisine emphasizes grains and olives.
• In the southern region and Sicily, the diet is based on fish and seafood.

In this example, the content is moving from northern to southern Italy, as the word “regional” would indicate. For a more localized example:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the layout of the White House.

• The East Wing includes the entrance ways and offices for the First Lady.
• The most well-known part of the White House is the West Wing.
• The residential part of the White House is on the second floor. (The emphasis here is the movement a tour would go through.)

For an even more localized example:

Specific Purpose: To describe to my Anatomy and Physiology class the three layers of the human skin.

• The outer layer is the epidermis, which is the outermost barrier of protection.
• The second layer beneath is the dermis.
• The third layer closest to the bone is the hypodermis, made of fat and connective tissue.

Topical / Parts of the Whole Pattern

The topical organizational pattern is probably the most all-purpose, in that many speech topics could use it. Many subjects will have main points that naturally divide into “types of,” “kinds of,” “sorts of,” or “categories of.” Other subjects naturally divide into “parts of the whole.” However, as mentioned previously, you want to keep your categories simple, clear, distinct, and at five or fewer.

Specific Purpose: To explain to my first-year students the concept of SMART goals.

• SMART goals are specific and clear.
• SMART goals are measurable.
• SMART goals are attainable or achievable.
• SMART goals are relevant and worth doing.
• SMART goals are time-bound and doable within a time period.

Specific Purpose: To explain the four characteristics of quality diamonds.

• Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of cut.
• Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of carat.
• Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of color.
• Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of clarity.

Specific Purpose: To describe to my audience the four main chambers of a human heart.

• The first chamber in the blood flow is the right atrium.
• The second chamber in the blood flow is the right ventricle.
• The third chamber in the blood flow is the left atrium.
• The fourth chamber in the blood flow and then out to the body is the left ventricle.

At this point in discussing organizational patterns and looking at these examples, two points should be made about them and about speech organization in general:

First, you might look at the example about the chambers of the heart and say, “But couldn’t that be chronological, too, since that’s the order of the blood flow procedure?” Yes, it could. There will be times when a specific purpose could work with two different organizational patterns. In this case, it’s just a matter of emphasis. This speech emphasizes the anatomy of the heart, and the organization is “parts of the whole.” If the speech’s specific purpose were “To explain to my classmates the flow of blood through the chambers of the heart,” the organizational pattern would emphasize chronological, altering the pattern.

Another principle of organization to think about when using topical organization is “climax” organization. That means putting your strongest argument or most important point last when applicable. For example:

Specific purpose: To defend before my classmates the proposition that capital punishment should be abolished in the United States.

• Capital punishment does not save money for the justice system.
• Capital punishment does not deter crime in the United States historically.
• Capital punishment has resulted in many unjust executions.

In most people’s minds, “unjust executions” is a bigger reason to end a practice than the cost, since an unjust execution means the loss of an innocent life and a violation of our principles. If you believe Main Point III is the strongest argument of the three, putting it last builds up to a climax.

Cause & Effect Pattern

If the specific purpose mentions words such as “causes,” “origins,” “roots of,” “foundations,” “basis,” “grounds,” or “source,” it’s a causal order; if it mentions words such as “effects,” “results,” “outcomes,” “consequences,” or “products,” it’s effect order. If it mentions both, it would of course be cause/effect order. This example shows a cause/effect pattern:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the causes and effects of schizophrenia.

• Schizophrenia has genetic, social, and environmental causes.
• Schizophrenia has educational, relational, and medical effects.

Problem-Solution Pattern

The principle behind the problem-solution pattern is that if you explain a problem to an audience, you shouldn’t leave them hanging without solutions. Problems are discussed for understanding and to do something about them. This is why the problem-solution pattern is often used for speeches that have the objective of persuading an audience to take action.

When you want to persuade someone to act, the first reason is usually that something needs fixing. Let’s say you want the members of the school board to provide more funds for music at the three local high schools in your county. What is missing because music or arts are not funded? What is the problem ?

Specific Purpose: To persuade the members of the school board to take action to support the music program at the school.

• Students who don’t have extracurricular music in their lives have lower SAT scores.
• Schools that don’t have extracurricular music programs have more gang violence and juvenile delinquency.
• $120,000 would go to bands.
• $80,000 would go to choral programs.

Of course, this is a simple outline, and you would need to provide evidence to support the arguments, but it shows how the problem-solution pattern works.

Psychologically, it makes more sense to use problem-solution rather than solution-problem. The audience will be more motivated to listen if you address needs, deficiencies, or problems in their lives rather than giving them solutions first.

Problem-Cause-Solution Pattern

A variation of the problem-solution pattern, and one that sometimes requires more in-depth exploration of an issue, is the “problem-cause-solution” pattern. If you were giving a speech on the future extinction of certain animal species, it would be insufficient to just explain that numbers of species are about to become extinct. Your second point would logically have to explain the cause behind this happening. Is it due to climate change, some type of pollution, encroachment on habitats, disease, or some other reason? In many cases, you can’t really solve a problem without first identifying what caused the problem.

Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience that the age to obtain a driver’s license in the state of Georgia should be raised to 18.

• There’s a problem in this country with young drivers getting into serious automobile accidents leading to many preventable deaths.
• One of the primary causes of this is younger drivers’ inability to remain focused and make good decisions due to incomplete brain development.
• One solution that will help reduce the number of young drivers involved in accidents would be to raise the age for obtaining a driver’s license to 18.

Some Additional Principles of Speech Organization

It’s possible that you may use more than one of these organizational patterns within a single speech. You should also note that in all the examples to this point (which have been kept simple for the purpose of explanation), each main point is relatively equal in emphasis; therefore, the time spent on each should be equal as well. You would not want your first main point to be 30 seconds long, the second one to be 90 seconds, and the third 3 minutes. For example:

Specific Purpose: To explain to my classmates the rules of baseball.

• Baseball has rules about equipment.
• Baseball has rules about the numbers of players.
• Baseball has rules about play.

Main Point #2 isn’t really equal in size to the other two. There’s a great deal you could say about equipment and even more about the rules of playing baseball, but the number of players would take you about ten seconds to say. If Main Point #2 were “Baseball has rules about the positions on the field,” that would make more sense and be closer in level of importance to the other two.

The organization of your speech may not be the most interesting part to think about, but without it, great ideas will seem jumbled and confusing to your audience. Even more, good connectives will ensure your audience can follow you and understand the logical connections you’re making with your main ideas. Finally, because your audience will understand you better and perceive you as organized, you’ll gain more credibility as a speaker if you’re organized. A side benefit to learning to be an organized public speaker is that your writing skills will improve, specifically your organization and sentence structure.

Roberto is thinking about giving an informative speech on the status of HIV-AIDS currently in the U.S. He has different ideas about how to approach the speech. Here are his four main thoughts:

• pharmaceutical companies making drugs available in the developing world
• changes in attitudes toward HIV-AIDS and HIV-AIDS patients over the last three decades
• how HIV affects the body of a patient
• major breakthroughs in HIV-AIDS treatment

Assuming all these subjects would be researchable and appropriate for the audience, write specific purpose statements for each. What organizational patterns would he probably use for each specific purpose?

Media Attributions

• Speech Structure Flow © Mechele Leon is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike) license
• Connectives
• https://blog-college.ku.edu/tag/study-abroad-stories/ ↵

Public Speaking as Performance Copyright © 2023 by Mechele Leon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

How to Write and Structure a Persuasive Speech

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The purpose of a persuasive speech is to convince your audience to agree with an idea or opinion that you present. First, you'll need to choose a side on a controversial topic, then you will write a speech to explain your position, and convince the audience to agree with you.

You can produce an effective persuasive speech if you structure your argument as a solution to a problem. Your first job as a speaker is to convince your audience that a particular problem is important to them, and then you must convince them that you have the solution to make things better.

Note: You don't have to address a real problem. Any need can work as the problem. For example, you could consider the lack of a pet, the need to wash one's hands, or the need to pick a particular sport to play as the "problem."

As an example, let's imagine that you have chosen "Getting Up Early" as your persuasion topic. Your goal will be to persuade classmates to get themselves out of bed an hour earlier every morning. In this instance, the problem could be summed up as "morning chaos."

A standard speech format has an introduction with a great hook statement, three main points, and a summary. Your persuasive speech will be a tailored version of this format.

Before you write the text of your speech, you should sketch an outline that includes your hook statement and three main points.

Writing the Text

The introduction of your speech must be compelling because your audience will make up their minds within a few minutes whether or not they are interested in your topic.

Before you write the full body you should come up with a greeting. Your greeting can be as simple as "Good morning everyone. My name is Frank."

After your greeting, you will offer a hook to capture attention. A hook sentence for the "morning chaos" speech could be a question:

• How many times have you been late for school?
• Does your day begin with shouts and arguments?
• Have you ever missed the bus?

Or your hook could be a statistic or surprising statement:

• More than 50 percent of high school students skip breakfast because they just don't have time to eat.
• Tardy kids drop out of school more often than punctual kids.

Once you have the attention of your audience, follow through to define the topic/problem and introduce your solution. Here's an example of what you might have so far:

Good afternoon, class. Some of you know me, but some of you may not. My name is Frank Godfrey, and I have a question for you. Does your day begin with shouts and arguments? Do you go to school in a bad mood because you've been yelled at, or because you argued with your parent? The chaos you experience in the morning can bring you down and affect your performance at school.

Add the solution:

You can improve your mood and your school performance by adding more time to your morning schedule. You can accomplish this by setting your alarm clock to go off one hour earlier.

Your next task will be to write the body, which will contain the three main points you've come up with to argue your position. Each point will be followed by supporting evidence or anecdotes, and each body paragraph will need to end with a transition statement that leads to the next segment. Here is a sample of three main statements:

• Bad moods caused by morning chaos will affect your workday performance.
• If you skip breakfast to buy time, you're making a harmful health decision.
• (Ending on a cheerful note) You'll enjoy a boost to your self-esteem when you reduce the morning chaos.

After you write three body paragraphs with strong transition statements that make your speech flow, you are ready to work on your summary.

Your summary will re-emphasize your argument and restate your points in slightly different language. This can be a little tricky. You don't want to sound repetitive but will need to repeat what you have said. Find a way to reword the same main points.

Finally, you must make sure to write a clear final sentence or passage to keep yourself from stammering at the end or fading off in an awkward moment. A few examples of graceful exits:

• We all like to sleep. It's hard to get up some mornings, but rest assured that the reward is well worth the effort.
• If you follow these guidelines and make the effort to get up a little bit earlier every day, you'll reap rewards in your home life and on your report card.

Tips for Writing Your Speech

• Don't be confrontational in your argument. You don't need to put down the other side; just convince your audience that your position is correct by using positive assertions.
• Use simple statistics. Don't overwhelm your audience with confusing numbers.
• Don't complicate your speech by going outside the standard "three points" format. While it might seem simplistic, it is a tried and true method for presenting to an audience who is listening as opposed to reading.
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• Writing an Opinion Essay
• How To Write an Essay
• 5 Steps to Writing a Position Paper
• How to Structure an Essay
• Ethos, Logos, Pathos for Persuasion
• What Is Expository Writing?
• Audience Analysis in Speech and Composition
• Definition and Examples of Analysis in Composition
• 100 Persuasive Speech Topics for Students
• What an Essay Is and How to Write One
• How to Write a Good Thesis Statement
• How to Write a Graduation Speech as Valedictorian
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Speechwriting 101: Writing an Effective Speech

Whether you are a communications pro or a human resources executive, the time will come when you will need to write a speech for yourself or someone else.  when that time comes, your career may depend on your success..

J. Lyman MacInnis, a corporate coach,  Toronto Star  columnist, accounting executive and author of  “ The Elements of Great Public Speaking ,”  has seen careers stalled – even damaged – by a failure to communicate messages effectively before groups of people. On the flip side, solid speechwriting skills can help launch and sustain a successful career.  What you need are forethought and methodical preparation.

Know Your Audience

Learn as much as possible about the audience and the event.  This will help you target the insights, experience or knowledge you have that this group wants or needs:

• Why has the audience been brought together?
• What do the members of the audience have in common?
• How big an audience will it be?
• What do they know, and what do they need to know?
• Do they expect discussion about a specific subject and, if so, what?
• What is the audience’s attitude and knowledge about the subject of your talk?
• What is their attitude toward you as the speaker?
• Why are they interested in your topic?

Choose Your Core Message

If the core message is on target, you can do other things wrong. But if the message is wrong, it doesn’t matter what you put around it.  To write the most effective speech, you should have significant knowledge about your topic, sincerely care about it and be eager to talk about it.  Focus on a message that is relevant to the target audience, and remember: an audience wants opinion. If you offer too little substance, your audience will label you a lightweight.  If you offer too many ideas, you make it difficult for them to know what’s important to you.

Research and Organize

Research until you drop.  This is where you pick up the information, connect the ideas and arrive at the insights that make your talk fresh.  You’ll have an easier time if you gather far more information than you need.  Arrange your research and notes into general categories and leave space between them. Then go back and rearrange. Fit related pieces together like a puzzle.

Develop Structure to Deliver Your Message

First, consider whether your goal is to inform, persuade, motivate or entertain.  Then outline your speech and fill in the details:

• Introduction – The early minutes of a talk are important to establish your credibility and likeability.  Personal anecdotes often work well to get things started.  This is also where you’ll outline your main points.
• Body – Get to the issues you’re there to address, limiting them to five points at most.  Then bolster those few points with illustrations, evidence and anecdotes.  Be passionate: your conviction can be as persuasive as the appeal of your ideas.
• Conclusion – Wrap up with feeling as well as fact. End with something upbeat that will inspire your listeners.

You want to leave the audience exhilarated, not drained. In our fast-paced age, 20-25 minutes is about as long as anyone will listen attentively to a speech. As you write and edit your speech, the general rule is to allow about 90 seconds for every double-spaced page of copy.

Spice it Up

Once you have the basic structure of your speech, it’s time to add variety and interest.  Giving an audience exactly what it expects is like passing out sleeping pills. Remember that a speech is more like conversation than formal writing.  Its phrasing is loose – but without the extremes of slang, the incomplete thoughts, the interruptions that flavor everyday speech.

• Give it rhythm. A good speech has pacing.
• Vary the sentence structure. Use short sentences. Use occasional long ones to keep the audience alert. Fragments are fine if used sparingly and for emphasis.
• Use the active voice and avoid passive sentences. Active forms of speech make your sentences more powerful.
• Repeat key words and points. Besides helping your audience remember something, repetition builds greater awareness of central points or the main theme.
• Ask rhetorical questions in a way that attracts your listeners’ attention.
• Personal experiences and anecdotes help bolster your points and help you connect with the audience.
• Use quotes. Good quotes work on several levels, forcing the audience to think. Make sure quotes are clearly attributed and said by someone your audience will probably recognize.

Be sure to use all of these devices sparingly in your speeches. If overused, the speech becomes exaggerated. Used with care, they will work well to move the speech along and help you deliver your message in an interesting, compelling way.

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Module 10: Persuasive Speaking

Structure of a persuasive speech, learning objectives.

Identify characteristic structures of a persuasive speech.

In many ways, a persuasive speech is structured like an informative speech. It has an introduction with an attention-getter and a clear thesis statement. It also has a body where the speaker presents their main points and it ends with a conclusion that sums up the main point of the speech.

The biggest difference is that the primary purpose of an informative speech is to explain whereas the primary purpose of a persuasive speech is to advocate the audience adopt a point of view or take a course of action. A persuasive speech, in other words, is an argument  supported by well-thought-out reasons and relevant, appropriate, and credible supporting evidence.

We can classify persuasive speeches into three broad categories:

• The widely used pesticide Atrazine is extremely harmful to amphibians.
• All house-cats should  be kept indoors to protect the songbird population.
• Offshore tax havens, while legal, are immoral and unpatriotic .

The organizational pattern we select and the type of supporting material we use should support the overall argument we are making.

The informative speech organizational patterns we covered earlier can work for a persuasive speech as well. In addition, the following organization patterns are especially suited to persuasive speeches (these are covered in more detail in Module 6: Organizing and Outlining Your Speech):

• Causal : Also known as cause-effect, the causal pattern describes some cause and then identifies what effects resulted from the cause. This can be a useful pattern to use when you are speaking about the positive or negative consequences of taking a particular action.
• Problem-solution : With this organizational pattern, you provide two main points. The first main point focuses on a problem that exists and the second details your proposed solution to the problem. This is an especially good organization pattern for speeches arguing for policy changes.
• Problem-cause-solution: This is a variation of the problem-solution organizational pattern. A three-step organizational pattern where the speaker starts by explaining the problem, then explains the causes of the problem, and lastly proposes a solution to the problem.
• Comparative advantage : A speaker compares two or more things or ideas and explains why one of the things or ideas has more advantages or is better than the other.
• Monroe’s motivated sequence : An organizational pattern that is a more elaborate variation of the problem-cause-solution pattern.  We’ll go into more depth on Monroe’s motivated sequence on the next page.
• Structure of a Persuasive Speech. Authored by : Mike Randolph with Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

Writing Center Speech Structure

Section navigation, a guide to basic speech structure.

“A Speech is not an essay up on its hind legs!”

T he biggest difference between preparing a speech and preparing an essay is the audience. The essay’s audience—a reader—takes in the written ideas through the eyes. A public presentations’ audience, however, understands the speaker’s ideas by seeing, hearing and “feeling” the speaker by using their eyes, ears and heart. If an essay’s ideas aren’t clear, its audience can read the words over and over again. When speaking in front of a live audience, however, you only have one shot at getting your point across.

Good news! You can get your point across in one shot with structure.

I like to think of a speech as a journey that you and your audience take together. You don’t want to lose your audience, so plan for a clear beginning (introduction), middle (body) and end (conclusion).

FIRST: Decide where you’re going. Where are you taking your audience? We call this your PURPOSE, and speakers often begin their planning by writing a purpose statement .

Purpose statements are ambitious, active and audience focused.

Here are some examples:

• My purpose is to teach my audience three ways they can turn data into clear, useful charts.
• My purpose is to persuade my audience to vote for this new idea because it’s affordable, quick to implement and will have long-lasting positive impact.
• My purpose is to inspire my audience by sharing research that may predict sustainable life on Mars.

A purpose statement is critical in speech planning because:

• It keeps you “one sentence clear.” You know where you’re headed with the audience.
• It basically writes the body of your speech for you. (three ways to turn data into charts; vote because it’s affordable, quick and lasting; the two to three ways my research might predict sustainability on Mars...)
• It gives you a way to evaluate how successful you were after your presentation. Ask yourself: Did I achieve my purpose?

Now that you have your purpose statement, you can write your Introduction, right? WRONG!

Begin writing your speech by outlining the body of the speech first. Then write the introduction. You can’t introduce what you haven’t written yet, so begin with the body of the speech first.

Ultimately, the outline of your speech will have an introduction, a body and a conclusion.

Introduction

• Engage the audience. Start with a story, a startling statement, statistic, or a question that grabs your audience’s attention. The best presentations begin by answering “why...” In other words, why you are excited about your research or speech topic, and most important, why the audience should care. Watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk for inspiration. 
• Focus the presentation. Now that your audience knows why they should care, state your thesis or goal. Let your audience know what they’ll learn.
• Preview the presentation’s structure, content or approach to let the audience know how the presentation will unfold.

Organize your talk logically and clearly around 2-3 main points or arguments. For each major section of your presentation, follow the “4 S Structure” 1 :

• Signpost the point (“First, I’m going to point out the problem with...” My second argument is that...” “Now let me explain my methodology.”)
• State the point clearly and succinctly
• Support the point with data, cases, description, relevant studies, etc.
• Summarize the point

Then make a clear transition to the next major section.

Summarize and re-focus. Review key points or arguments. Restate the thesis.

• Close. Create a closing statement. Nodding back to the introduction can alert the audience that the speech has come to an end and provides a satisfying sense of final closure. Avoid using “Thank you” as your conclusion. Wait until the audience applauds. Then, thank them for that.

Audience Questions

1. Adapted from Joyce Ferguson, “Speaking Across the Curriculum at UNCG,” in Communication Across the UNCG Curriculum: A Guide for Faculty, ed. Karen Meyers, University of North Carolina—Greensboro, 2002.

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What is Eid al-Fitr? 6 questions about the holiday and how Muslims celebrate it, answered

By Ken Chitwood

Updated on: April 9, 2024 / 8:03 AM EDT / The Conversation

Ken Chitwood  is a senior research fellow, Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis and journalist-fellow at the Dornsife Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the  University of Southern California Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences .

Eid al-Fitr, one of Islam's principal festivals, will be celebrated April 9, 2024, according to the Fiqh Council of North America . At the middle of June, Muslims will celebrate Eid al-Adha. Ken Chitwood, a scholar of global Islam, explains the two Islamic festivals.

1. What is Eid?

Eid literally means a "festival" or "feast" in Arabic. There are two major eids in the Islamic calendar per year – Eid al-Fitr earlier in the year and Eid al-Adha later.

Eid al-Fitr is a three-day-long festival and is known as the "Lesser" or "Smaller Eid" when compared to Eid al-Adha, which is four days long and is known as the "Greater Eid."

2. Why is Eid celebrated twice a year?

The two Eids recognize, celebrate and recall two distinct events that are significant to the story of Islam.

Eid al-Fitr means "the feast of breaking the fast." The fast, in this instance, is Ramadan , which recalls the revealing of the Quran to Prophet Muhammad and requires Muslims to fast from sunrise to sundown for a month.

3. How do Muslims celebrate Eid al-Fitr?

Eid al-Fitr features two to three days of celebrations that include special morning prayers. People greet each other with "Eid Mubarak," meaning "Blessed Eid" and with formal embraces. Sweet dishes are prepared at home and gifts are given to children and to those in need. In addition, Muslims are encouraged to forgive and seek forgiveness. Practices vary from country to country.

In many countries with large Muslim populations, Eid al-Fitr is a national holiday. Schools, offices and businesses are closed so family, friends and neighbors can enjoy the celebrations together. In the U.S. and the U.K., Muslims may request to have the day off from school or work to travel or celebrate with family and friends.

In countries like Egypt and Pakistan, Muslims decorate their homes with lanterns, twinkling lights or flowers. Special food is prepared and friends and family are invited over to celebrate.

In places like Jordan, with its Muslim majority population, the days before Eid al-Fitr can see a rush at local malls and special "Ramadan markets" as people prepare to exchange gifts on Eid al-Fitr.

In Turkey and in places that were once part of the Ottoman-Turkish empire such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Azerbaijan and the Caucasus, it is also known as the, "Lesser Bayram" or "festival" in Turkish.

4. How do Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha?

The other festival, Eid al-Adha, is the "feast of the sacrifice." It comes at the end of the Hajj , an annual pilgrimage by millions of Muslims to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia that is obligatory once in a lifetime, but only for those with means.

Eid al-Adha recalls the story of how God commanded Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismail as a test of faith. The story, as narrated in the Quran, describes Satan's attempt to tempt Ibrahim so he would disobey God's command. Ibrahim, however, remains unmoved and informs Ismail, who is willing to be sacrificed.

But, just as Ibrahim attempts to kill his son, God intervenes and a ram is sacrificed in place of Ismail. During Eid al-Adha, Muslims slaughter an animal to remember Ibrahim's sacrifice and remind themselves of the need to submit to the will of God.

5. When are they celebrated?

Eid al-Fitr is celebrated on the first day of the 10th month in the Islamic calendar.

Eid al-Adha is celebrated on the 10th day of the final month in the Islamic calendar.

The Islamic calendar is a lunar calendar, and dates are calculated based on lunar phases. Since the Islamic calendar year is shorter than the solar Gregorian calendar year by 10 to 12 days, the dates for Ramadan and Eid on the Gregorian calendar can vary year by year.

6. What is the spiritual meaning of Eid al-Fitr?

Eid al-Fitr, as it follows the fasting of Ramadan, is also seen as a spiritual celebration of Allah's provision of strength and endurance.

Amid the reflection and rejoicing, Eid al-Fitr is a time for charity, known as Zakat al-Fitr. Eid is meant to be a time of joy and blessing for the entire Muslim community and a time for distributing one's wealth.

Charity to the poor is a highly emphasized value in Islam. The Quran says ,

"Believe in Allah and his messenger, and give charity out of the (substance) that Allah has made you heirs of. For those of you who believe and give charity – for them is a great reward."

This piece incorporates materials from an article first published on Aug. 28, 2017. The dates have been updated. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

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Albanese says a change as big as the industrial revolution is coming — you could call it the 'government intervention revolution'

Analysis Albanese says a change as big as the industrial revolution is coming — you could call it the 'government intervention revolution'

Anthony Albanese is turning his mind to a second term agenda and the best way to secure it. Which is perhaps not surprising, given we're now roughly 12 months away from the last opportunity he'll have to call an election.

Nor is it surprising the prime minister has chosen to lay out his vision to "evolve" the role of government in Queensland. If it's going to hold onto a majority in parliament, Labor will most likely need to gain seats in the sunshine state to offset expected losses elsewhere.

Albanese will tell the Queensland Media Club today "the game has changed" since the COVID pandemic and the arrival of heightened strategic tension. While he won't mention China directly, the speech is all about how the world has woken up to the risk of its over-reliance on Chinese manufacturing of materials critical to the net-zero transition.

Nations are now restructuring their economies, he will argue, in a change "every bit as significant as the industrial revolution or the information revolution — and more rapid and wide-ranging than both".

What the prime minister is referring to could perhaps then be called the "government intervention revolution".

Albanese will point to the US' "Inflation Reduction Act" and "CHIPS Act", the European Union's "European Economic Security Strategy", Japan's "Economic Security Promotion Act" and South Korea's "National Security Strategy". All involve direct government investments, tax breaks or other incentives to attract and protect industries deemed strategically vital.

In a defining (if somewhat defensive) line, the prime minister will argue "this is not old-fashioned protectionism or isolationism — it is the new competition". If Australia doesn't jump on board this bandwagon, the world will go past us. "Australia is in this race, no matter what," he will declare.

So how exactly will Australia compete?

An ambitious agenda to come

The Inflation Reduction Act, which has supercharged investment in clean technologies including solar panels and batteries in the United States, is estimated to cost more than a trillion Australian dollars over the next decade. Albanese is not suggesting Australia can match that.

But he does talk about the "need to act and invest at scale", which certainly hints at an ambitious agenda to be fleshed out between now and the election.

Today's announcement is the building block — a new law to bring everything the government is doing in this space under one umbrella. That includes existing measures including the $1 billion "Solar Sunshot" program and the $2 billion "Hydrogen Headstart" scheme.

The plan is to put all these programs (and those yet to be announced) under a new "Future Made in Australia Act". Stand by for more incentives and dollars in next month's federal budget.

Not everyone, however, is convinced it's such a good idea for the government to be picking winners and pouring taxpayers's money into things the market has chosen not to.

The Productivity Commission last year warned against Labor's plans for a local battery-making industry. Last month the Commission's new Chair, Danielle Wood, reiterated free markets should be the driver of investment priorities. "That's going to tend to be the most efficient way to get there," she told an Australian Financial Review Business Summit.

Dr Kerry Schott, who was recently appointed chair of the government's Competition Review Expert Advisory Panel, has also described local battery making as "a bit like wanting to take us back to the manufacturing that we had during the 1950s when there were big tariff walls around the country and everything was extraordinarily expensive and made here". "It's just madness," she says.

A political no-brainer

The prime minister, however, has a very different view. Australia can compete with China on making batteries, solar panels, and other green technology. We have the critical minerals, and the land mass to accommodate large-scale solar and wind farms. Importantly, the prime minister also believes the problem of labour costs is diminishing — thanks to robotics.

This might not be the bit that he promotes too loudly in selling his vision for a "future made in Australia", but it is true that machines are helping bring down labour costs.

The prime minister will certainly have the support of business groups for any commitment to invest more public funds. In a pre-budget submission, the Business Council of Australia has already put forward its own thoughts on how Australia can keep up in this global race.

Albanese sees this agenda to promote and grow local green manufacturing as not only economically and strategically vital, but a political no-brainer, too.

It brings together post-COVID concerns about China's dominance and the need to protect national economic sovereignty, promises a brighter economic future and manufacturing jobs once the resources boom fades, and pits Labor's traditional inclination towards big government intervention as the perfect fit for the times, as opposed to the Liberals' free-market purity.

That's if it all works. Picking winners always involves a gamble. But then, so does doing nothing.

Albanese reckons his plan is the safer bet.

David Speers is National Political Lead and host of Insiders, which airs on ABC TV at 9am on Sunday or on iview.

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