informative speech examples quizlet

• school Campus Bookshelves
• menu_book Bookshelves
• perm_media Learning Objects
• login Login
• how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
• hub Instructor Commons
• Download Page (PDF)
• Download Full Book (PDF)
• Periodic Table
• Physics Constants
• Scientific Calculator
• Reference & Cite
• Tools expand_more
• Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

5.1: Informative Speaking

• Last updated
• Save as PDF
• Page ID 85227

By Lisa Schreiber, Ph.D. Millersville University, Millersville, PA

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Explain why informative speeches are important
• Recognize the functions of informative speeches
• Identify the main responsibilities of the informative speaker
• List and describe the four types of informative speeches
• Discuss techniques to make informative speeches interesting, coherent, and memorable
• Apply chapter concepts in review questions and activities

Chapter Outline

Introduction.

• Provide Knowledge
• Shape Perceptions
• Articulate Alternatives
• Allow us to Survive and Evolve
• Informative Speakers are Objective
• Informative Speakers are Credible
• Informative Speakers Make the Topic Relevant
• Informative Speakers are Knowledgeable
• Definitional Speeches
• Descriptive Speeches
• Explanatory Speeches
• Demonstration Speeches
• Generate and Maintain Interest
• Create Coherence
• Make Speech Memorable
• Review Questions and Activities

Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it. – Cicero

Your ability to give informative speeches is one of the most important skills you will ever master, and it will be used both during the course of your career, and in your personal life. A pharmaceutical sales representative who can’t describe the products’ chemical composition, uses and side effects, will have trouble making a sale. A high school math teacher who can’t explain algebra in simple terms will have students who will not learn. A manager who can’t teach workers how to assemble microchips will have a department with low productivity and quality. And a little league coach who is unable to instruct players on batting and catching techniques will have a disadvantaged team. It is easy to imagine how difficult it would be to go about the business of our daily lives without the ability to give and receive information. Speeches to inform are the most common types of speeches (Gladis, 1999), so speech writers should give priority to learning how to construct them.

• Chapter 15 Objectives, Outline, and Introduction. Authored by : Lisa Schreiber, Ph.D.. Provided by : Millersville University, Millersville, PA. Located at : http://publicspeakingproject.org/psvirtualtext.html . Project : Public Speaking Project. License : CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
• Teacher. Authored by : JD Lasica. Located at : https://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/2431624696/ . License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial

Informative Speeches — Types, Topics, and Examples

What is an informative speech?

An informative speech uses descriptions, demonstrations, and strong detail to explain a person, place, or subject. An informative speech makes a complex topic easier to understand and focuses on delivering information, rather than providing a persuasive argument.

Types of informative speeches

The most common types of informative speeches are definition, explanation, description, and demonstration.

A definition speech explains a concept, theory, or philosophy about which the audience knows little. The purpose of the speech is to inform the audience so they understand the main aspects of the subject matter.

An explanatory speech presents information on the state of a given topic. The purpose is to provide a specific viewpoint on the chosen subject. Speakers typically incorporate a visual of data and/or statistics.

The speaker of a descriptive speech provides audiences with a detailed and vivid description of an activity, person, place, or object using elaborate imagery to make the subject matter memorable.

A demonstrative speech explains how to perform a particular task or carry out a process. These speeches often demonstrate the following:

How to do something

How to make something

How to fix something

How something works

How to write an informative speech

Regardless of the type, every informative speech should include an introduction, a hook, background information, a thesis, the main points, and a conclusion.

Introduction

An attention grabber or hook draws in the audience and sets the tone for the speech. The technique the speaker uses should reflect the subject matter in some way (i.e., if the topic is serious in nature, do not open with a joke). Therefore, when choosing an attention grabber, consider the following:

What’s the topic of the speech?

What’s the occasion?

Who’s the audience?

What’s the purpose of the speech?

Common Attention Grabbers (Hooks)

Ask a question that allows the audience to respond in a non-verbal way (e.g., a poll question where they can simply raise their hands) or ask a rhetorical question that makes the audience think of the topic in a certain way yet requires no response.

Incorporate a well-known quote that introduces the topic. Using the words of a celebrated individual gives credibility and authority to the information in the speech.

Offer a startling statement or information about the topic, which is typically done using data or statistics. The statement should surprise the audience in some way.

Provide a brief anecdote that relates to the topic in some way.

Present a “what if” scenario that connects to the subject matter of the speech.

Identify the importance of the speech’s topic.

Starting a speech with a humorous statement often makes the audience more comfortable with the speaker.

Include any background information pertinent to the topic that the audience needs to know to understand the speech in its entirety.

The thesis statement shares the central purpose of the speech.

Demonstrate

Preview the main ideas that will help accomplish the central purpose. Typically, informational speeches will have an average of three main ideas.

Body paragraphs

Apply the following to each main idea (body) :

Identify the main idea ( NOTE: The main points of a demonstration speech would be the individual steps.)

Provide evidence to support the main idea

Explain how the evidence supports the main idea/central purpose

Transition to the next main idea

Review or restate the thesis and the main points presented throughout the speech.

Much like the attention grabber, the closing statement should interest the audience. Some of the more common techniques include a challenge, a rhetorical question, or restating relevant information:

Provide the audience with a challenge or call to action to apply the presented information to real life.

Detail the benefit of the information.

Close with an anecdote or brief story that illustrates the main points.

Leave the audience with a rhetorical question to ponder after the speech has concluded.

Detail the relevance of the presented information.

Before speech writing, brainstorm a list of informative speech topic ideas. The right topic depends on the type of speech, but good topics can range from video games to disabilities and electric cars to healthcare and mental health.

Informative speech topics

Some common informative essay topics for each type of informational speech include the following:

Informative speech examples

The following list identifies famous informational speeches:

“Duties of American Citizenship” by Theodore Roosevelt

“Duty, Honor, Country” by General Douglas MacArthur

“Strength and Dignity” by Theodore Roosevelt

Explanation

“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” by Patrick Henry

“The Decision to Go to the Moon” by John F. Kennedy

“We Shall Fight on the Beaches” by Winston Churchill

Description

“I Have a Dream” by Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Pearl Harbor Address” by Franklin Delano Roosevelt

“Luckiest Man” by Lou Gehrig

Demonstration

The Way to Cook with Julia Child

This Old House with Bob Vila

Bill Nye the Science Guy with Bill Nye

Learning Objectives

• Define Informative Speaking
• Identify Types of Informative Speeches
• Explain guidelines for Developing an Informative Speech

Has someone provided you information and afterward you thought, “what were they talking about?” or “why does this matter to me?” We, too, have found ourselves dazed and confused after an informational presentation or an exchange in a meeting.

“What?” we ask ourselves, often in response to information that: a) we already knew, b) is confusingly presented, or c) doesn’t seem applicable to us. In these instances, the information was ineffectively presented. Perhaps it wasn’t clear. Perhaps it was disorganized. Perhaps it was not adapted to meet you as the recipient.

Gathering and understanding new information is a part of becoming critical thinkers, so effective information sharing through informative speaking can be a powerful and important tool. In this chapter, we chart informative speaking and provide guidelines for approaching and preparing an informative speech. Let’s start with the purpose and goal.

What is an Informative Speech?

The purpose of an informative speech is to share information that: a) increases audience understanding around a topic, b) provides an alternative, and/or c) raises awareness. You might, for example, give an informative speech that raises awareness about the increase in Kansas tornadoes over the past 15 years. Alternatively, you may increase your audience’s understanding about your city’s housing code changes. In each of these examples, you are selecting a topic and relevant content that would be useful for the audience to know.

Basically, an informative speech conveys knowledge— a task that every person engages in every day in some form or another. Whether giving someone who is lost directions, explaining the specials of the day as a server, or describing the plot of a movie to friends, people engage in daily forms of information sharing. When done well, information can provide a new perspective or increase our knowledge around a topic.

Despite the everyday nature of information sharing, approaching an informative speech can be slightly daunting. As the speaker, you are responsible for identifying an argument that is worthwhile—and in the age of globalization and access to digital information, there’s a lot of stuff to sort through and choose from.

The key to an effective informative speech is identifying what information your audience needs. Why, for example, would it be important for your audience to know about major climate changes in Kansas? Does the audience already know? Would it benefit them? Remember that all information may not be relevant to all audiences. You may decide that sharing the city’s changes to housing codes isn’t particularly useful for an audience that doesn’t reside in the affected neighborhoods. In other words: information is not equal in all contexts, so your job as a speaker is to advocate for meaningful, teachable content. When you select that content to share with an audience – an action that can provide alternatives and expand viewpoints—you are advocating for the relevance and timeliness of that informative topic.

Through information sharing, however, you are not taking a particular side or providing the audience with a call to action. While informative speeches advocate for novel ideas, they do not explicitly attempt to convince the audience that one thing is better than another—it doesn’t attempt to persuade (which we’ll cover in the next chapter). This can be a tricky distinction and one that you should attend to. Even if you are informing the audience about differences in views on controversial topics, you should simply and clearly explain each side of the issue.

Understanding the types of informative speeches may help as you work on selecting information that doesn’t persuade.

“Can’t We Find all the Information We Need on the Internet?

  We often hear, “If we can find anything on the Internet now, why bother to give an informative speech?” The answer lies in the unique relationship between audience and speaker found in the public speaking context. The speaker can choose to present information that is of most value to the audience.

Secondly, the speaker is not just overloading the audience with data. As we have mentioned before, that’s not really a good idea because audiences cannot remember great amounts of data and facts after listening. The focus of the content is what matters. This is where the specific purpose and central idea come into play.

Third, although we have stressed that the informative speech is fact-based and does not have the purpose of persuasion, information still has an indirect effect on someone. If a classmate gives a speech on correctly using the Heimlich Maneuver to help a choking victim, the side effect (and probably desired result) is that the audience would use it when confronted with the situation.

Types of Informative Speeches

Understanding types of informative speech that you will give can help you to figure out the best way to organize, research, and prepare. While the topics to choose for informative speeches are nearly limitless, they can generally be pared down into four broad types: description, definition, explanation, or demonstration.

Speeches that Describe

Speeches of description provide a clear, vivid, and memorable picture of a person, place, thing, idea, or alternative. In this category, your goal is to effectively describe your topic in ways that allow the audience to visualize that idea. Put differently: you place the audience in the scene of the topic.

Suppose you are an archaeologist (some of you likely are). This approach would be appropriate if you wanted to highlight a recent discovery in your field – you might describe a key finding from a dig site that advances the scientific perspective on evolution. The speech would attempt to place the audience at the dig site by describing how the finding was uncovered, the artifact itself, etc. Describing information can help simplify content for an audience that is unfamiliar with an archaeological perspective.

If you opt to provide information to an audience about alternatives, describing the differences in each alternative can be an effective application of descriptive speeches. June, for example, is celebrated as LGBTQ Pride month throughout the United States. After doing research and brainstorming, you may realize that there are a plethora of Pride events and gatherings throughout your city, and you want to provide your audience with that information. Describing the different venues and events might allow audiences to understand what each alternative event experience might provide.

For any topic that you approach descriptively, ask yourself:

• Have I effectively described this idea for an audience that may be unfamiliar with the information?
• Can I revisit the language and be more vivid?
• Am I describing information that’s related to my thesis statement?
• How can I use descriptive language that intrigues the audiences and relates this information to their lives?

Speeches that Define

Definitional speeches provide the meaning of an idea to the audience. Definitional speeches are helpful to clarify or simplify concepts, theories, or ideas that an audience may be otherwise unfamiliar.

For example, one of our authors has the tattoo “advocate feminism.”

“What does that mean?” she’s often asked. If we take a definitional approach, she would work to define and outline feminism, perhaps by providing the origin of the word or defining different feminist movements. While “advocate feminism” may appear persuasive, definitional informative speeches allow speakers to identify components of an idea that are based in information-sharing rather than asking the audience to change their perspective.

A common approach to selecting a definitional speech topic is to trace the history or origin of an idea (like feminism), an object, person, or theory.

If you’re a mathematician, for example, you might opt for a definitional speech that focuses on a contemporary mathematical theory. Because the perspective may seem abstract, a definitional approach can simply that abstraction by defining what it is for the audience.

For any topic that takes a definitional approach, ask:

• Have I provided definitional support in a way that’s clear to my audience?
• Have I defined all key parts of my topic? Have I over-defined? (In other words, is my speech just a list of definitions?)
• Is my speech too abstract? Have I provided examples and placed these definitions in contexts that my audience can connect with?

Speeches that Explain

Speeches of explanation detail processes or how something works, often explaining an otherwise complex, abstract, or unfamiliar idea to the audience. This approach is common in industry-settings or professional contexts where a speaker needs to explain the process, data, or results of a study or program.

Explanatory speeches provide audiences with a behind-the-scenes look at information. Interested in philosophy? An explanatory speech may be appropriate to help audiences wade through a current philosophical perspective that you find fascinating. Interested in the United States criminal justice system? You could report on current body camera policies.

Teaching is a great example of explanatory speeches because teachers regularly explain assignments, protocols, policies, rubrics, etc. A teacher’s main goal is to clarify expectations by using language that’s appropriate to the audience—their students!

Think back to our opening topic example about changes in city codes around housing. An explanatory approach would work to explain how those changes occurred, detail the code changes to the audience, and/or explain how the changes would affect their neighborhoods.

For explanatory speech topics, ask yourself:

• Have I effectively explained all components of the topic?
• Are my explanations effectively translated to the audience and context?
• Do my explanations detail how and why this information is relevant to the audience?

Speeches that Demonstrate

Speeches of demonstration are, well, you guessed it: speeches that demonstrate how something is done for the audience. These can be fun because they allow you to teach the audience something cool and interesting.

Demonstration speeches are commonly called “how to” speeches because they show the audience how to do something. These speeches require you to provide steps that will help your audience understand how to accomplish a specific task or process—bake cookies, for example. After a speech on how to verify information that’s found on memes, for example, the audience members could probably do it on their own.

However, these speeches can be tricky because a) the audience may be familiar with your demonstration, or b) the limited time can constrain what you’re able to demonstrate. If you want to demonstrate how to bake cookies, for example, your audience may be familiar with that process. The demonstration may lack uniqueness or novelty, especially if audiences are more confident turning on YouTube. It may also be difficult to provide all the necessary steps in the space or context that you’re speaking. If you’re an experienced baker, you may know that determining when the cookies are done can be a difficult part of the process, but your classroom space likely doesn’t facilitate the inclusion of that step.

Ask yourself:

• Does this information require a demonstration (i.e. is a demonstrative speech the best approach)?
• Am I able to outline all the steps in the time provided?
• Have I adequately outlined all the steps?
• What materials do I need to bring to guarantee the success of the demonstration in the space that I’ve been given to speak?

Section Summary

While we have provided categories to assist in understanding types of informative speeches, your topic may require adopting tactics from more than one approach.

Consider “recidivism” in the criminal justice system – the likelihood for a person to re-offend after being convicted of a crime. If you were interested in informing your audience about recidivism, you would likely need to define recidivism – a term that may be unfamiliar to some – and explain how recidivism occurs in the context of the prison system. Alternatively, you could take a descriptive approach – after defining recidivism – and describe one person’s experience going through the system.

As you begin to develop your topic, these 4 types of informative speeches can help direct your preparation and identify your specific purpose statement. Your goal, in general, is to inform, but your specific purpose will be to define, demonstrate, explain, and/or describe.

Guidelines for Selecting and Developing Your Informative Speech

Now that you have a better understanding of the informative speech types, let’s talk specifically about developing your own informative speech: from topic selection through a completed outline.

We know what you’re thinking: “We’ve already covered how to select, write, and organize arguments.” While, yes, we did discuss general approaches to these processes in Part 2 on arguments, a refresher always helps. Below, we focus on guidelines for developing your informative speeches, specifically.

Pick a Focused and Unique Topic

First, pick an informative topic that is narrow and novel. Your speech emanates and builds from your topic, and your goal should be picking a thesis statement that is focused and unique to your audience.

A large misconception about informative speeches is that bigger and broader is better. Oftentimes, topics that are super broad happen for two reasons:

• As the speaker, you believe that a broader topic will require less research. You might believe that you can brainstorm and research 5 minutes of information on a topic quickly, but if you investigate the topic, that research is often overwhelming because of the breadth of information. For example, suppose that you selected “to describe the Civil War for my audience” as your specific purpose. The Civil War was, conservatively speaking, four years long, resulted in over 750,000 casualties, and arguably changed the course of human history. A typical college library has hundreds of books dealing with the Civil War. It’s a myth, then, that broader topics mean less research. (Also: research is cool, so try to hone your research skills, not avoid them.)
• The speaker uses their first topic idea or concept that seems interesting. When you find a topic that sparks your interest, it’s tempting to keep that idea as-is. You may want to select the Civil War because you’re interested in learning more about a key moment in U.S. history. Great! We encourage you to research, learn, and explore – but it’s unlikely that you have time to cover all facets of the topic with any depth. It’s OK to use the first topic that sparks your interest, but it’s likely that the topic will be too broad.

Instead, limit and narrow your topic. “How do we do that?” you might be wondering.

Like we mentioned in Chapter 3, brainstorming will allow you to map what information you already know about an argument or topic.

The questions in Figure 12.2 can aid you in narrowing your topic and identifying an insight that’s unique to your audience. We often refer to this as the “ funnel approach ” – or starting broad and moving downward to a more specific idea. The Civil War is a broad, umbrella topic, and you could use research and the lateral approach (as introduced in Chapter 4) to funnel toward, for example, focusing on a key person that’s often left out of history.

While all the questions in Figure 12.2 are important, the last question – “is this information unique to my audience?” – is key. Think about “unique” topics in two ways:

• A topic is unique if the audience is unfamiliar with the idea. You may, for example, inform your audience about a new Climate Change technology that a local non-profit was launching. In this case, the entire topic is unique and the audience will learn something new. They’re unfamiliar with the tech.
• Second, a topic is unique if it provides novelty. There are times when your audience will know about the topic generally, but that doesn’t automatically eliminate that idea; instead, ask: can I provide or approach this topic in a new or unfamiliar way? For example, “organ donation” is a common informative speech topic, but it often lacks novelty because speakers include general information that is already known by the audience. That doesn’t prohibit “organ donation” as a topic, but it means speakers should approach the topic by finding information that is novel and fresh.

Let’s talk through an extended example. Malcolm Gladwell (2019) in his podcast, “Revisionist History,” provides an interesting informative perspective about the Boston Tea Party. At first glance, “Boston Tea Party” seems pretty broad for a topic, and it’s likely that many of Gladwell’s audience is already familiar with the Boston Tea Party, so the idea appears too big and lacking novelty. Gladwell, however, narrows the topic by focusing on smuggling practices that facilitated the event. We won’t spoil the episode, but he masterfully narrows down a broad idea to provide listeners with a fresh and unfamiliar perspective.

Pick a Clear Structure

After selecting a topic, you’ll begin expanding your informative argument, identifying an organizational pattern, and writing the outline. As you begin a working outline, the structure will play an important role in writing a successful speech. By structure, we mean 3 things: the outline structure, the argument structure, and the citation structure. Pay attention to all 3 during the speech development stage.

Organizational Structure

First, ask yourself, “what organizational pattern fits my specific purpose and/or working thesis statement?”

For topics that are broad, the information may be applicable to any of the organizational patterns that we outlined in Chapter 6. If your information is easily manipulated into multiple organizational patterns, we’d suggest asking, “can I make this more focused?” or, “how do I want to present this information?”

If you’re confident in your working thesis statement, begin to gather information and research. As you do, think about how that information might fit into organizational patterns and how those patterns provide opportunities or constraints for your topic.

Consider our opening example about housing code changes in a city. You could approach this chronologically and map the linear progression of changes to the city code. Alternatively, you could use a categorical pattern and compare how the housing codes will affect different neighborhoods. These are both possibilities – it just depends on the kind of story you want to tell the audience.

Argument Structure

Working on a clear structure doesn’t stop with the organizational pattern, however. Be attuned to the argument structure within your main points.

Even with informative speeches, claims, evidence, and warrants should still be integrated. For example, one main point on a demonstrative baking speech might read:

• Claim: Bake cookies for approximately 10 minutes for chewy yet crunchy cookies.
• Evidence : In 2019, Stacy Smith of Bakers Forever tested different times for baking cookies, finding that 10 minutes was the sweet spot.
• Warrant : A reputable baker, Stacy’s research does the work for us! Rather than open the oven every few seconds, we can be confident that a 10-minute cookie will result in the perfect consistency.

Warrants can play a particularly important role in an informative speech. A warrant – or connection between the claim and evidence – isn’t always persuasive. Instead, utilize warrants to detail why that information should matter for the audience. If it’s helpful, you can think of the warrant as the link between the claim, evidence, and audience .

Being clear in your argument structure can also aid in narrowing your topic. It’s common for informative speakers to realize, “Woah! I have way too many claims here. I need to add more supporting materials and explanations, but I won’t have time. I need to narrow this topic down.”

As you work on your outline, it’s imperative that your claims are accompanied by their appropriate argumentative companions: evidence and warrants.

Citation Structure

Finally, citations – both written and spoken – are part of a clear informative speech structure.

As you strengthen your ability to write arguments, continue to integrate proper references. Ask yourself: “Have I given credit to this evidence in the outline and reference page?” “Have I rehearsed my oral citations?”

Part of answering these questions is being appraised of the proper citation structure that’s required – APA, or MLA, for example. If you aren’t properly integrating that structure, you aren’t properly citing the research that supports your topic.

Provide Accurate, Clear, and Interesting Information

A good informative speech conveys accurate information to the audience in a way that is clear and that keeps the listener interested in the topic. Achieving all three of these goals—accuracy, clarity, and interest—is the key to being an effective speaker. If information is inaccurate, unclear, or uninteresting, it will be of limited usefulness to the audience.

Part of being accurate is making sure that your information is current. Even if you know a great deal about your topic, you will need to verify the accuracy and completeness of what you know, especially if it is medical or scientific information. Most people understand that technology changes rapidly, so you need to update your information almost constantly. The same is true for topics that, on the surface, may seem to require less updating. For example, the Civil War occurred over 150 years ago, but contemporary research still offers new and emerging theories about the causes of the war and key individuals who may have been left out of common history books. Even with a topic that seems to be unchanging, carefully check the information to be sure it’s accurate and up to date.

Second, be clear. Like we’ve discussed, make sure you’re avoiding jargon or complicated information that the audience may not understand. Remember that informative speeches are meant to increase the audience’s understanding, and if the language, evidence, or examples are too complex, it’s unlikely to achieve that goal.

Third, be interesting! What defines “interesting?” In approaching the informative speech, you should keep in mind the overall principle that the audience is asking, “what’s in it for me?” The audience is either consciously or unconsciously wondering “What’s in this topic for me? How can I use this information? Of what value is this speech content to me? Why should I listen to it?” A good way to answer this question for others is to answer it for yourself. Why do you find your topic interesting? Work outward from there. You might consider it one of the jobs of the introduction to directly or indirectly answer this question. If you can’t, then you need to think about your topic and why you are addressing it. If it’s only because the topic is interesting to you, you are missing the point.

Accuracy, clarity, and interest are incredibly important. It can be tempting to approach informative speaking with the attitude that “I’m just reporting facts that other people have stated,” but we want to minimize that approach. You are gathering information and crafting an interesting narrative around the importance of that idea – that’s a difficult but worthwhile skill.

Remember the 3 C’s: Constitutive, Contextual, Cultural

Finally, when developing your informative speech, ask yourself, am I representing information in ways that acknowledge that communication is constitutive, contextual, and cultural?

It’s common to believe that reporting knowledge or “facts” could never result in unethical communication or representations. After all, it’s not persuasive! But information sharing is not neutral, even in informative speaking, so we must consider how our communication represents others.

You may decide, for example, to provide your audience with information on a cultural practice that differs from their own, and that can be great! However, if you aren’t part of that culture, be careful in how you represent those practices to others and work to avoid appropriating or reducing complex cultural beliefs or practices.

In sum, your speeches are part of world-making. The language that you use to describe, define, explain, or demonstrate an idea is impactful to your audience.

Learning how to give informative speeches will serve you well in your college career and your future work. Keep in mind the principles in this chapter but also those of the previous chapters: relating to the informational needs of the audience, using clear structure, and incorporating interesting and attention-getting supporting evidence.

Speak Out, Call In: Public Speaking as Advocacy Copyright © 2019 by Meggie Mapes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 12: Informative Speaking

This chapter is adapted from  Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking ,  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 .

Why is speaking to inform important?

Accuracy, clarity, and interest are key to effective speaking.

A good informative speaker conveys accurate, clear, and interesting information to the audience and keeps them engaged in the topic. Achieving all three goals—accuracy, clarity, and interest—is the key to speaker effectiveness. If information is inaccurate, incomplete, or unclear, it will be useless to the audience. But, there is no topic about which you can possibly give complete information, therefore, we strongly recommend you carefully narrow your topic and purpose.

To be accurate, make sure that your information is current. Even if you know much about your topic or wrote a good paper on the topic in a high school course, verify your own accuracy and completeness. Most people understand that technology changes rapidly, so update your information often. The same applies to topics that on the surface seem to require less updating. For example, the American Civil War occurred 150 years ago, but contemporary research still offers new and emerging theories about the war’s causes and its long-term effects. So, even with a topic that seems to be unchanging, carefully check your information to confirm that it is accurate and current.

For your listeners to benefit from your speech, convey your ideas in a fashion that your audience can understand. Your speech’s clarity relies on logical organization and understandable word choices. Do not assume that something that’s obvious to you will also be obvious to your audience. Formulate your work with the objective of being understood in all details, and rehearse your speech in front of peers who will tell you whether your speech’s information makes sense.

In addition to being accurate and clear, be interesting. Your listeners will benefit the most if they can give sustained attention to the speech, and this is unlikely to happen if they are bored. This often means don’t use some topics you know a lot about. Why? Suppose, for example, that you had a summer job as a veterinary assistant and learned a great deal about canine parasites. This topic might be very interesting to you, but how interesting will it be to others in your class? To make this topic interesting, find a way to connect it with the audience’s interests and curiosities. For instance, perhaps there are certain canine parasites that also pose risks to humans—this might be an interesting connection.

Why We Speak to Inform

Informative speaking is a means to deliver knowledge. In informative speaking, we avoid expressing opinions. This doesn’t mean you may not speak about controversial topics. However, if you do so, you must deliver a fair statement of each issue’s side in a debate. If your speech is about standardized educational testing, you must honestly represent both proponents’ and critics’ views. Do not take sides, and do not slant your explanation of the debate to influence your listeners’ opinion. You are simply and clearly defining the debate. If you watch the evening television news on a major network, such as ABC, CBS, or NBC, you will see newscasters who undoubtedly have personal opinions, but they are trained to avoid expressing those opinions through loaded words, gestures, facial expressions, or vocal tone. Like those newscasters, you are educating your listeners simply by informing them. Let them make up their own minds. This is probably the most important reason for informative speaking.

How to Make Information Clear and Interesting for the Audience

To present a clear and interesting speech, use descriptions, causal analysis, or categories. With description, use words to create a picture in your audience’s minds. Describe physical realities, social realities, emotional experiences, sequences, consequences, or contexts. For instance, describe the towns peoples’ mindset during the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials. Also, use causal analysis, which focuses on the connections between causes and consequences. For example, in speaking about health care costs, explain how a serious illness can put even a well-insured family into bankruptcy. Use categories to group things together. For instance, say that there are three investment categories for the future: liquid savings, avoiding debt, and acquiring properties that will increase in value.

How to Adjust a Complex Topic for the Audience

If your speech is too complex or too simplistic, it will not hold your listeners’ interest. How can you determine the right complexity level? Your audience analysis is one important way to do this. Do your listeners belong to a given age group, or are they more diverse? Did they all go to public schools in the United States, or are some international students? Are they all students majoring in communication studies, or is there a mixture of majors in your audience? The answers to these and other audience analysis questions will help you to gauge what they know and what they are curious about.

Never assume that just because your audience is made up of students, they all share your knowledge set. If you do, you might not make sense to everyone. If, for instance, you’re an intercultural communication student discussing multiple identities , the psychology students in your audience will most likely reject your message. Similarly, the word viral has very different meanings depending on whether it is used with respect to human disease, popular response to a website, or population theory. In using the word viral, you absolutely must explain specifically what you mean. Do not hurry to explain a term that is easily misinterpreted. Make certain your listeners know what you mean before continuing your speech. Stephen Lucas explains, “You cannot assume they will know what you mean. Rather, you must be sure to explain everything so thoroughly that they cannot help but understand” (Lucas, 2004). Define terms to help listeners understand them the way you mean them to. Give explanations that are consistent with your definitions, and show how those ideas apply to your speech topic. In this way, you avoid many misunderstandings.

Similarly, be very careful about assuming there is a topic that everybody knows. Suppose you’ve decided to present an informative speech on how the early New England colonists survived. You may have learned in elementary school that their survival was attributable, in part, to Squanto assisting them. Many listeners will know which states are in New England, but if there are international students in the audience, they will not. Clarify either by pointing out the region on a map or by stating that it’s the six states in the American northeast. Other knowledge gaps can still confound your speech’s effectiveness. For instance, who or what is Squanto? How are the settlers assisted? Only a few listeners are likely to know that Squanto is a Native American Indian who spoke English and that this greatly surprised the settlers when they landed. Because Squanto spoke English, he could advise settlers in survival strategies during that first harsh winter. If you neglect to provide that information, your speech will not be fully informative.

Another way to improve your delivery, is to practice your speech in front of a live audience of friends or classmates. Notice terms that confuse them and that you must define.

Avoid Unnecessary Jargon

If you decide to give an informative speech on a highly specialized topic, limit how much technical language or jargon you use. Loading a speech with specialized language has the potential to tax your listeners. It can be too difficult to translate your meanings, and if that happens, you will not effectively deliver information. Even if you define many technical terms, the audience may feel as if they are being bombarded with definitions instead of useful information. Don’t treat your speech as a crash course in an entire topic. If you must, introduce one specialized term and carefully define and explain it to the audience. Define it in words, and then use a concrete and relevant example to clarify the meaning.

Some topics by their very nature are too technical for a short speech. For example, in a five-minute speech, you would be foolish to try to inform your audience about what caused the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear emergency that occurred in Japan. Present other technical topics in audience-friendly ways that minimize using technical terms. For instance, in a speech about Mount Vesuvius, the volcano that buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, you can use the term “pyroclastic flow” as long as you take the time to either show or tell what it means.

Create Concrete Images

As a college student, you have been significantly exposed to abstract terms and have become comfortable using and hearing abstract ideas. However, abstract terms lend themselves to many interpretations. For instance, in the abstract, the term responsibility can mean many things, such as duty, task, authority, or blame. Because of the potential for misunderstanding, use a concrete word instead. For example, rather than saying, “Helen Worth was responsible for the project,” convey a clearer meaning by saying, “Helen Worth managed the project,” or “Helen Kimes completed the project,” or “Helen Worth was to blame for the failed project .”

To illustrate the differences between abstract and concrete language, let’s look at a few word pairs:

By using an abstract term in a sentence and then comparing the concrete, notice the more precise concrete term’s meaning. Precise terms are more clearly understood. In the last pair of terms, knowledgeable is listed as a concrete term, but it can also be considered an abstract term. Still, it’s likely to be much clearer and more precise than profound.

Limit Information

If you overload your audience with information, they will be unable to follow your narrative. When you developed your speech, you carefully narrowed your topic, limiting information to its most complete and coherent. If you carefully adhere to your own narrowing, you won’t go off on tangents or confuse your audience. Use definitions, descriptions, explanations, and examples you need to make your meanings clear, but don’t add tangential information merely because you find it interesting.

Link Current Knowledge to New Knowledge

Certain knowledge sets are common to many people in your classroom audience. For instance, most know what Wikipedia is. Many find it a useful and convenient information source about coursework-related topics. Because many Wikipedia entries are lengthy, greatly annotated, and followed by substantial authoritative source lists, many students use Wikipedia in writing papers to fulfill course requirements. This a current knowledge set that virtually every classroom listener is likely to know.

Because your listeners are already familiar with Wikipedia, you can link important new knowledge to their already-existing knowledge. Wikipedia is an open source, meaning that anyone can supplement, edit, correct, distort, or otherwise alter Wikipedia information. In addition to your listeners’ knowledge that Wikipedia provides much good information, they must now know that it isn’t authoritative. Some listeners may not enjoy hearing this message. So find a way to make it acceptable by showing what Wikipedia does well. For example, some Wikipedia entries contain many good references at the end. Most of which are likely to be authoritative, having been written by scholars. In searching for topic, information, a student can look up one or more of those references in full-text databases or in the library. In this way, Wikipedia can be helpful in steering a student toward the authoritative information they need. Explaining this to your audience will help them accept, rather than reject, the bad news about Wikipedia.

Make It Vividly Memorable

If you’ve already chosen a topic, found an interesting way to narrow it, developed presentation aids, and worked to maintain audience contact, your delivery is likely to be memorable. Now, turn to your content and find opportunities to make it appropriately vivid by using explanations, comparisons, examples, or language.

Let’s say that you’re preparing a speech on the United States’ interning Japanese American people from the San Francisco Bay area during World War II. Your goal is to paint a memorable image in your listeners’ minds. Do this through a dramatic before and after contrast. For example, say, “In 1941, the Bay area had a vibrant and productive Japanese American community: people went to work every day—they opened their shops, typed office reports, and taught classroom students, just as they had been doing for years. But on December 7, 1941, everything changed. Within six months, Bay area residents of Japanese ancestry were gone, transported to internment camps located hundreds of miles from the Pacific coast.”

This strategy rests on the audience’s ability to visualize the two contrasting situations. You have presented two image sets that are familiar to most college students—images that they can easily visualize. Once the audience’s imagination is visually engaged, they are more likely to remember the speech.

Providing memorable imagery does not stop after the introduction. While maintaining an even-handed approach that does not seek to persuade, provide the audience with information about the circumstances that triggered the internment policy, perhaps by describing the advice that was given to President Roosevelt by his top advisers. You might depict the conditions Japanese Americans faced during their internment by describing a typical day in camp. To conclude your speech on a memorable note, name a notable individual—an actor, writer, or politician—who is an internment survivor.

Such a strategy might feel unnatural to you. After all, this is not how you talk to your friends or participate in a classroom discussion. Remember, though, that public speaking is not the same as talking. It’s prepared and formal. It demands more of you. In a conversation, it might not be important to be memorable; your goal might merely be to maintain a friendship. But in a speech, when you expect the audience to pay attention, you must make the speech memorable.

Make It Relevant and Useful

When thinking about your topic, it is always very important to keep your audience members center stage in your mind. For instance, if your speech is about air pollution, ask your audience to imagine feeling their eyes and lungs burning from smog. This is a strategy for making the topic more real to them, since it may happen to them often; and even if it hasn’t, it easily could. If your speech is about Mark Twain, instead of simply saying that he was very famous during his lifetime, remind your audience that he was so prominent that their own great-grandparents likely knew of his work and had strong opinions about it. In doing so, you’ve connected your topic to their own forebears.

Personalize Your Content

Giving a human face to a topic helps the audience perceive it as interesting. If your topic is related to the Maasai rite of passage into manhood, the prevalence of drug addiction in a particular locale, the development of a professional filmmaker, or the treatment of a disease, putting a human face on it should not be difficult. Find a case study you can describe within the speech and refer to the human subject by name. This conveys to the audience that these processes happen to real people. Use a real case study, though—don’t make one up. Using a fictional character without letting your audience know that the example is hypothetical is a betrayal of the listener’s trust, and hence, is unethical.

What are some informative speech topics?

For some speakers, deciding on a topic is one of informative speaking’s most difficult parts. The following subsections discuss several topic categories to use for an informative presentation. Then, we discuss how to structure your speech to address potential audience difficulties in understanding your topic or information.

The term objects encompasses many topics that we don’t ordinarily consider to be things. It’s a category that includes people, institutions, places, substances, and inanimate things. The following are some of these topics:

• Mitochondria
• Dream catchers
• Hubble telescope
• Seattle’s Space Needle
• Silicon chip
• Spruce Goose
• Medieval armor
• DDT insecticide

You must narrow your object topic because, like any topic, you can’t say everything about it in a single speech. In most cases, there are choices about how to narrow the topic. Here are some specific purpose statements that reflect ways to narrow:

• To inform the audience about soy inks’ role in reducing toxic pollution.
• To inform the audience about the banned insecticide DDT’s current uses.
• To inform the audience about what we’ve learned from the Hubble telescope.
• To inform the audience about the NAACP’s role in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• To describe the gigantic Spruce Goose’s significance—the wooden airplane that launched an airline.

These specific purposes reflect a narrow but interesting approach to each topic. They are precise, and show you how to maintain your focus on a narrow but deep knowledge set.

The people category applies both to specific individuals and also to roles. The following are some of these topics:

• Dalai Lamas
• Tsar Nicholas II
• Modern midwives
• Catherine the Great
• Navajo code talkers
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Justice Thurgood Marshall
• Madame Curie
• Leopold Mozart
• The Hemlock Society
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Jack the Ripper

There is much information about each example. To narrow the topic or to write a thesis statement, recognize that your speech is not a biography or time line of someone’s life. If you deliver a comprehensive report of your subject’s every important event and accomplishment, then nothing will seem any more important than anything else. To capture and hold your audience’s interest, narrow your focus on a feature, event, achievement, or secret about your human topic.

Here are some purpose statements that reflect ways to narrow:

• To inform the audience about the first US training program for the moon-landing astronauts.
• To inform the audience about how a young Dalai Lama is identified.
• To inform the audience about why Gandhi was regarded as a mahatma, or “great heart.”
• To inform the audience about modern midwives’ extensive scientific qualifications.

Because with any of these topics there’s simply too much to say, narrow your purpose statement, which will be a strong decision-making tool about what to include in your speech.

An event can be something that occurred only once or that is repeated:

• Emmett Till’s murder.
• The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
• The Industrial Revolution.
• The smallpox vaccine’s discovery.
• The Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests.
• The Bay of Pigs.
• The Super Bowl.
• The Academy Awards.

Again, carefully narrow these topics to build a coherent speech. Otherwise, your information is too broad and your speech is shallow. Here are a few ways to narrow the purpose:

• To explain how Emmett Till’s murder helped energize the civil rights movement.
• To describe how the Industrial Revolution affected ordinary people’s lives.
• To inform the audience about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race’s purpose.

There are many ways to approach these and other topics, but again, you must emphasize the event’s important dimension. Otherwise, you produce a time line in which the main point gets lost. In an event speech, you may use a chronological order , but if you do so, you can’t include every detail. The following is an example:

Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race’s purpose.

Central Idea: The annual Iditarod commemorates the heroism of Balto, the sled dog that led a dog team carrying medicine 1,150 miles to save Nome, Alaska from a diphtheria outbreak.

Main Points:

• Diphtheria broke out in a remote Alaskan town.
• Sled dogs were the only transportation for getting medicine.
• The Iditarod Trail was long, rugged, and under siege of severe weather.
• Balto the dog knew where he was going, even when the musher did not.
• The annual race commemorates Balto’s heroism in saving the lives of Nome’s citizens.

In this example, you must explain the event. However, another way to approach the same event is to describe it. The following is an example:

Specific Purpose: To describe the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Central Idea: It’s a long and dangerous race.

• The 1,150-mile, ten- to seventeen-day race goes through wilderness with widely spaced checkpoints for rest, first aid, and getting fresh dogs.
• A musher, or dogsled driver, must be at least fourteen-years-old to endure the rigors of severe weather, exhaustion, and loneliness.
• A musher is responsible for his or her own food, food for twelve to sixteen dogs, and for making sure they don’t get lost.
• Reaching the end of the race without getting lost, even in last place, is considered honorable and heroic.
• The participation expense is greater than the prize awarded to the winner.

By now you can see that there are various ways to approach a topic while avoiding an uninspiring time line. In the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race’s example, alternatively frame it as an Alaskan tourism topic, or emphasize the enormous staff involved in first aid, search and rescue, dog care, trail maintenance, event coordination, financial management, and registration.

Concepts are abstract ideas that can include hypotheses and theories or that exist independently of whether they are observed or practiced, for example, social equality.

• The glass ceiling
• Ethnocentrism
• Honor codes
• Fairness theory
• The American Dream
• Social equality

Here are a few ways to narrow the purpose:

• To explain why people in all cultures are ethnocentric.
• To describe the Hindu concept of karma.
• To distinguish the differences between wellness and health concepts.
• To show the resources available in our local school system for children with autism.
• To explain three of Dr. Stephen Suranovic’s seven categories of fairness.

Here is an example of a way to develop one of these topics:

Specific Purpose : To explain why people in all cultures are ethnocentric.

Central Idea: There are benefits to being ethnocentric.

• Ethnocentrism is the idea that one’s own culture is superior to others.
• Ethnocentrism strongly contributes to positive group identity.
• Ethnocentrism facilitates coordinating social activities.
• Ethnocentrism contributes to the group’s sense of safety.
• Ethnocentrism becomes harmful when it creates barriers.

For a concept about which people disagree, you must represent multiple and conflicting views as fully and fairly as possible, for instance:

Specific Purpose: To expose the audience to three different views of the American Dream.

Central Idea: The American Dream is a shared dream, an impossible dream, or a dangerous dream, depending on the individual’s perspective.

• The American Dream concept describes a state of abundant well-being in which an honest and productive American can own a home; bring up a family; work at a permanent, well-paying job with benefits; and retire in security and leisure.
• Many capitalists support the social pattern of working hard to deserve and acquire the material comforts and security of a comfortable life.
• Many sociologists argue that the American Dream is far out of reach for the 40 percent of Americans at the bottom of the economic scale.
• Many environmentalists argue that the consumption patterns that accompany the American Dream have depleted resources and contributed to air, water, and soil pollution.

If your speech topic is a process, help your audience to understand it or to be able to perform it. In either instance, processes involve a predictable series of changes, phases, or steps.

• Soil erosion
• Cell division
• Physical therapy
• Volcanic eruption
• Paper recycling
• Consumer credit evaluations
• Scholarship money searches
• Navy Seal training
• Portfolio building
• The development of Alzheimer’s disease

For some process topics, use presentation aids to make your meaning clear to your listeners. Even in cases where you don’t absolutely need a presentation aid, it is useful. For instance, if your topic is evaluating consumer credit, instead of describing a comparison between two different interest rates applied to the same original debt amount, it is helpful to show a difference graph. Also, this topic can strongly serve your audiences’ needs before they find themselves in financial trouble. Since this will be an informative speech, resist the impulse to tell your listeners that one form of borrowing is good and another is bad; simply show them the difference in numbers. They can reach their own conclusions.

Organizing your facts is crucially important when discussing a process. Every process stage must be clear and understandable. When two or more things occur at the same time, as they might in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, make it clear that several things are occurring at once. For example, as plaque is accumulating in the brain, the patient is likely to begin exhibiting various symptoms.

Here’s an example of a process speech’s initial steps:

Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about how to build an academic portfolio.

Central Idea: A portfolio represents you and emphasizes your best skills.

1. A portfolio is an organized selection of the best examples of the skills you can offer an employer. 2. A portfolio should contain samples of a substantial body of written work, print and electronically published pieces, photography, and DVDs of your media productions. 3. A portfolio should be customized for each prospective employer. 4. The material in your portfolio should be consistent with the skills and experience in your résumé.

In a portfolio-building process speech, create smaller steps to include within each main point. For instance, create separate portfolio sections for different types of creative activities, write a table of contents, label and date your samples, make your samples look attractive and professional, and other steps. Insert these sections where it makes the most sense, in the most organized places, to give your audience the most coherent understanding possible.

You’ve probably noticed that some topics are appropriate in more than one category. For instance, the 1980 Mt. St. Helen’s eruption could be legitimately handled as an event or as a process. If you approach the eruption as an event, focus most information on human responses and the consequences on humans and the landscape. If you approach the eruption as a process, use visual aids and explanations to describe geological changes before, during, and after the eruption. You might also approach this topic from the personal viewpoint of someone whose life was affected by the eruption. There are many ways to approach most topics, and because of that, narrowing your choices and purpose is the important foundation that determines your informative speech’s structure.

How do I develop informative content?

Developing your topic for the audience.

One issue to consider when preparing an informative speech is how best to present the information to enhance audience learning. Katherine Rowan suggests focusing on areas where your audience may experience confusion and use these likely confusion sources as a guide for developing your speech’s content. Rowan identifies three possible confusion sources: difficult concepts or language, difficult-to-envision structures or processes, and ideas that are difficult to understand because they are hard to believe (Rowan, 1995). The following subsections discuss each confusion source and provides strategies to deal with them.

Difficult Concepts or Language

Sometimes, audiences may have difficulty understanding information because of the concepts or language used. For example, they may not understand what the term organic food means or how it differs from all-natural foods. If an audience is likely to experience confusion over a basic concept or term, Rowan suggests using an elucidating explanation composed of four parts. The explanation’s purpose is to clarify the meaning and concept by focusing on the concept’s essential features.

The first part of an elucidating explanation is to provide a typical example that includes the concept’s central features. If you are talking about what fruit is, an apple or orange would be a typical example.

The second step Rowan suggests is to follow up the typical example with a definition. Fruits might be defined as edible plant structures that contain the plant’s seeds.

After providing a definition, move on to the third part of the elucidating explanation: provide a variety of examples and nonexamples. Here, include less typical fruit examples, such as avocados, squash, or tomatoes; and foods such as rhubarb, which is often treated as a fruit but is not by definition.

Fourth, Rowan suggests concluding by having the audience practice distinguishing examples from nonexamples. In this way, the audience leaves the speech clearly understanding the concepts.

Difficult-to-Envision Processes or Structures

A second audience confusion source, according to Rowan, is a process or structure that is complex and difficult to envision, such as the body’s blood circulation system. To address this, Rowan suggests a quasi-scientific explanation, which starts by giving the process’s big-picture perspective. Presentation aids or analogies are helpful in giving a process overview. For the body’s blood circulation system, show a video or diagram of the entire system, or make an analogy to a pump. Then, move to explaining relationships among the process’s components. Be sure when you explain relationships among components that you include transition and linking words like “leads to” and “because” so that your audience understands relationships between concepts. For example, remember the childhood song describing the body’s bones with lines such as, “the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone; the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.” Making the connections between components helps the audience to remember and better understand the process.

Difficult to Understand because It’s Hard to Believe; and Ethics

A third audience confusion source, and perhaps the most difficult to address as a speaker, is an idea that’s difficult to understand because it’s hard to believe. This often happens when people have implicit, but erroneous, theories about how the world works. For example, the idea that science tries to disprove theories is difficult for some people to understand; after all, shouldn’t the purpose of science be to prove things? In such a case, Rowan suggests using a transformative explanation. A transformative explanation begins by discussing the audience’s implicit theory and showing why it is plausible. Then you move to showing how the implicit theory is limited and conclude by presenting the accepted explanation and why that explanation is better. In the case of scientists disproving theories, start by talking about what science has proven—the causes of malaria, the usefulness of penicillin in treating infection—and why focusing on science as proof is a plausible way of thinking. Then, show how the science-as-proof theory is limited by providing examples of ideas that were accepted as proven but were later found to be false, such as the belief that diseases are caused by miasma, or bad air; or that bloodletting cures diseases by purging the body of bad humors. Then, conclude by showing how science is an enterprise designed to disprove theories and that all theories are accepted as tentative in light of existing knowledge.

Rowan’s framework is helpful because it keeps our focus on the informative speech’s most important element: increasing your audience’s topic understanding.

Being Ethical

Honesty and credibility must be the undergird to your presentation; otherwise, you betray your listeners’ trust. Therefore, if you choose a topic that turns out to be too difficult, you must decide what will serve your audience’s needs and interests. Shortcuts and oversimplifications are not the answer.

Being ethical often involves a surprising amount of work. In the case of choosing too ambitious a topic, you have some choices:

• Narrow your topic further.
• Narrow your topic in a different way.
• Reconsider your specific purpose.
• Start over with a new topic.

Your goal is to serve your audience’s interests and needs, whoever they are and whether you believe they already know something about your topic.

How do I add logos?

For informative speeches, focus on the rhetorical appeal, logos. The appeals as you recall are pathos, ethos, and logos. Logos is the logical appeal. An easy way to remember this is that logos starts with an “L” and so does logic. How can you use logos or appeal to logic inside your informative speech?

Ask yourself these questions to consider if you are using logos properly in your informative speech:

• Are you using statistics? If so, are you using them properly and making sure they are accurate?
• Are you stating facts that you have found through research, which are actually facts and not opinions?
• Are you explaining your ideas in a logical manner? Is your audience able to follow what you are saying?
• Are you using sound reasoning as you explain facts and statistics to your audience?
• Are you using definitions in the speech? If so, are they accurate?
• Are you thinking of the audience as a reasonable and logical group of individuals?
• Are you appealing to logic in your speech by using examples, statistics, facts, definitions, and explanations?
• Are you logically arranging and organizing ideas?
• Is your speech easy to understand? Will the audience understand your speech’s main points?

You must answer yes to most of these questions for any research-based and informative speech. And remember, do not forget to also add pathos and ethos to your speech as well.

University of Minnesota. (2011). Stand up, Speak out: The Practice and Ethics of Public Speaking . University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing. https://open.lib.umn.edu/publicspeaking/ . CC BY-SA 4.0.

Media References

Fuller, A. (2021, Oct). Appeals-Highlighted [Image]. Online & eLearning Services, Salt Lake Community College.

When you have a multiple identity you have different cultural outlooks in your life. You may also have different values and beliefs in your family. People in your family may also have different ancestry i.e. from different countries.

special words or expressions that are used by a particular profession or group and are difficult for others to understand

existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence

existing in a material or physical form; not abstract

the arrangement of things following one after another in time

Public Speaking Copyright © 2022 by Sarah Billington and Shirene McKay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

16.2 Types of Informative Speeches

Learning objectives.

• Identify several categories of topics that may be used in informative speaking.
• Describe several approaches to developing a topic.

Erica minton – Late Night Dry Erase Board Session – CC BY-NC 2.0.

For some speakers, deciding on a topic is one of the most difficult parts of informative speaking. The following subsections begin by discussing several categories of topics that you might use for an informative presentation. Then we discuss how you might structure your speech to address potential audience difficulties in understanding your topic or information.

The term “objects” encompasses many topics we might not ordinarily consider to be “things.” It’s a category that includes people, institutions, places, substances, and inanimate things. The following are some of these topics:

• Mitochondria
• Dream catchers
• Hubble telescope
• Seattle’s Space Needle
• Silicon chip
• Spruce Goose
• Medieval armor
• DDT insecticide

You will find it necessary to narrow your topic about an object because, like any topic, you can’t say everything about it in a single speech. In most cases, there are choices about how to narrow the topic. Here are some specific purpose statements that reflect ways of narrowing a few of those topics:

• To inform the audience about the role of soy inks in reducing toxic pollution
• To inform the audience about the current uses of the banned insecticide DDT
• To inform the audience about what we’ve learned from the Hubble telescope
• To inform the audience about the role of the NAACP in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
• To describe the significance of the gigantic Spruce Goose, the wooden airplane that launched an airline

These specific purposes reflect a narrow, but interesting, approach to each topic. These purposes are precise, and they should help you maintain your focus on a narrow but deep slice of knowledge.

This category applies both to specific individuals and also to roles. The following are some of these topics:

• Dalai Lamas
• Tsar Nicholas II
• Modern midwives
• Catherine the Great
• Navajo code talkers
• Mahatma Gandhi
• Justice Thurgood Marshall
• Madame Curie
• Leopold Mozart
• The Hemlock Society
• Sonia Sotomayor
• Jack the Ripper

There is a great deal of information about each one of these examples. In order to narrow the topic or write a thesis statement, it’s important to recognize that your speech should not be a biography, or time line, of someone’s life. If you attempt to deliver a comprehensive report of every important event and accomplishment related to your subject, then nothing will seem any more important than anything else. To capture and hold your audience’s interest, you must narrow to a focus on a feature, event, achievement, or secret about your human topic.

Here are some purpose statements that reflect a process of narrowing:

• To inform the audience about the training program undergone by the first US astronauts to land on the moon
• To inform the audience about how a young Dalai Lama is identified
• To inform the audience about why Gandhi was regarded as a mahatma, or “great heart”
• To inform the audience about the extensive scientific qualifications of modern midwives

Without a limited purpose, you will find, with any of these topics, that there’s simply too much to say. Your purpose statement will be a strong decision-making tool about what to include in your speech.

An event can be something that occurred only once, or an event that is repeated:

• The murder of Emmett Till
• The Iditarod Dogsled Race
• The Industrial Revolution
• The discovery of the smallpox vaccine
• The Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests
• The Bay of Pigs
• The Super Bowl
• The Academy Awards

Again, we find that any of these topics must be carefully narrowed in order to build a coherent speech. Failure to do so will result in a shallow speech. Here are a few ways to narrow the purpose:

• To explain how the murder of Emmett Till helped energize the civil rights movement
• To describe how the Industrial Revolution affected the lives of ordinary people
• To inform the audience about the purpose of the Iditarod dogsled race

There are many ways to approach any of these and other topics, but again, you must emphasize an important dimension of the event. Otherwise, you run the risk of producing a time line in which the main point gets lost. In a speech about an event, you may use a chronological order , but if you choose to do so, you can’t include every detail. The following is an example:

Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about the purpose of the Iditarod dogsled race.

Central Idea: The annual Iditarod commemorates the heroism of Balto, the sled dog that led a dog team carrying medicine 1150 miles to save Nome from an outbreak of diphtheria.

Main Points:

• Diphtheria broke out in a remote Alaskan town.
• Dogsleds were the only transportation for getting medicine.
• The Iditarod Trail was long, rugged, and under siege of severe weather.
• Balto the dog knew where he was going, even when the musher did not.
• The annual race commemorates Balto’s heroism in saving the lives of the people of Nome.

In this example, you must explain the event. However, another way to approach the same event would describe it. The following is an example:

Specific Purpose: To describe the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Central Idea: It’s a long and dangerous race.

• The 1150-mile, ten- to seventeen-day race goes through wilderness with widely spaced checkpoints for rest, first aid, and getting fresh dogs.
• A musher, or dogsled driver, must be at least fourteen years old to endure the rigors of severe weather, exhaustion, and loneliness.
• A musher is responsible for his or her own food, food for twelve to sixteen dogs, and for making sure they don’t get lost.
• Reaching the end of the race without getting lost, even in last place, is considered honorable and heroic.
• The expense of participation is greater than the prize awarded to the winner.

By now you can see that there are various ways to approach a topic while avoiding an uninspiring time line. In the example of the Iditarod race, you could alternatively frame it as an Alaskan tourism topic, or you could emphasize the enormous staff involved in first aid, search and rescue, dog care, trail maintenance, event coordination, financial management, and registration.

Concepts are abstract ideas that exist independent of whether they are observed or practiced, such as the example of social equality that follows. Concepts can include hypotheses and theories.

• The glass ceiling
• Ethnocentrism
• Honor codes
• Fairness theory
• The American Dream
• Social equality

Here are a few examples of specific purposes developed from the examples:

• To explain why people in all cultures are ethnocentric
• To describe the Hindu concept of karma
• To distinguish the differences between the concepts of wellness and health
• To show the resources available in our local school system for children with autism
• To explain three of Dr. Stephen Suranovic’s seven categories of fairness

Here is one possible example of a way to develop one of these topics:

Specific Purpose: To explain why people in all cultures are ethnocentric.

Central Idea: There are benefits to being ethnocentric.

• Ethnocentrism is the idea that one’s own culture is superior to others.
• Ethnocentrism strongly contributes to positive group identity.
• Ethnocentrism facilitates the coordination of social activity.
• Ethnocentrism contributes to a sense of safety within a group.
• Ethnocentrism becomes harmful when it creates barriers.

In an example of a concept about which people disagree, you must represent multiple and conflicting views as fully and fairly as possible. For instance:

Specific Purpose: To expose the audience to three different views of the American Dream.

Central Idea: The American Dream is a shared dream, an impossible dream, or a dangerous dream, depending on the perspective of the individual.

• The concept of the American Dream describes a state of abundant well-being in which an honest and productive American can own a home; bring up a family; work at a permanent, well-paying job with benefits; and retire in security and leisure.
• Many capitalists support the social pattern of working hard to deserve and acquire the material comforts and security of a comfortable life.
• Many sociologists argue that the American Dream is far out of reach for the 40 percent of Americans at the bottom of the economic scale.
• Many environmentalists argue that the consumption patterns that accompany the American Dream have resulted in the depletion of resources and the pollution of air, water, and soil.

If your speech topic is a process, your goal should be to help your audience understand it, or be able to perform it. In either instance, processes involve a predictable series of changes, phases, or steps.

• Soil erosion
• Cell division
• Physical therapy
• Volcanic eruption
• Paper recycling
• Consumer credit evaluations
• Scholarship money searches
• Navy Seal training
• Portfolio building
• The development of Alzheimer’s disease

For some topics, you will need presentation aids in order to make your meaning clear to your listeners. Even in cases where you don’t absolutely need a presentation aid, one might be useful. For instance, if your topic is evaluating consumer credit, instead of just describing a comparison between two different interest rates applied to the same original amount of debt, it would be helpful to show a graph of the difference. This might also be the sort of topic that would strongly serve the needs of your audience before they find themselves in trouble. Since this will be an informative speech, you must resist the impulse to tell your listeners that one form of borrowing is good and another is bad; you must simply show them the difference in numbers. They can reach their own conclusions.

Organizing your facts is crucially important when discussing a process. Every stage of a process must be clear and understandable. When two or more things occur at the same time, as they might in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, it is important to make it clear that several things are occurring at once. For example, as plaque is accumulating in the brain, the patient is likely to begin exhibiting various symptoms.

Here’s an example of the initial steps of a speech about a process:

Specific Purpose: To inform the audience about how to build an academic portfolio.

Central Idea: A portfolio represents you and emphasizes your best skills.

• A portfolio is an organized selection containing the best examples of the skills you can offer an employer.
• A portfolio should contain samples of a substantial body of written work, print and electronically published pieces, photography, and DVDs of your media productions.
• A portfolio should be customized for each prospective employer.
• The material in your portfolio should be consistent with the skills and experience in your résumé.

In a speech about the process of building a portfolio, there will be many smaller steps to include within each of the main points. For instance, creating separate sections of the portfolio for different types of creative activities, writing a table of contents, labeling and dating your samples, making your samples look attractive and professional, and other steps should be inserted where it makes the most sense, in the most organized places, in order to give your audience the most coherent understanding possible.

You’ve probably noticed that there are topics that could be appropriate in more than one category. For instance, the 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s could be legitimately handled as an event or as a process. If you approach the eruption as an event, most of the information you include will focus on human responses and the consequences on humans and the landscape. If you approach the eruption as a process, you will be using visual aids and explanations to describe geological changes before and during the eruption. You might also approach this topic from the viewpoint of a person whose life was affected by the eruption. This should remind you that there are many ways to approach most topics, and because of that, your narrowing choices and your purpose will be the important foundation determining the structure of your informative speech.

Developing Your Topic for the Audience

One issue to consider when preparing an informative speech is how best to present the information to enhance audience learning. Katherine Rowan suggests focusing on areas where your audience may experience confusion and using the likely sources of confusion as a guide for developing the content of your speech. Rowan identifies three sources of audience confusion: difficult concepts or language, difficult-to-envision structures or processes, and ideas that are difficult to understand because they are hard to believe (Rowan, 1995). The following subsections will discuss each of these and will provide strategies for dealing with each of these sources of confusion.

Difficult Concepts or Language

Sometimes audiences may have difficulty understanding information because of the concepts or language used. For example, they may not understand what the term “organic food” means or how it differs from “all-natural” foods. If an audience is likely to experience confusion over a basic concept or term, Rowan suggests using an elucidating explanation composed of four parts. The purpose of such an explanation is to clarify the meaning and use of the concept by focusing on essential features of the concept.

The first part of an elucidating explanation is to provide a typical exemplar, or example that includes all the central features of the concept. If you are talking about what is fruit, an apple or orange would be a typical exemplar.

The second step Rowan suggests is to follow up the typical exemplar with a definition. Fruits might be defined as edible plant structures that contain the seeds of the plant.

After providing a definition, you can move on to the third part of the elucidating explanation: providing a variety of examples and nonexamples. Here is where you might include less typical examples of fruit, such as avocados, squash, or tomatoes, and foods, such as rhubarb, which is often treated as a fruit but is not by definition.

Fourth, Rowan suggests concluding by having the audience practice distinguishing examples from nonexamples. In this way, the audience leaves the speech with a clear understanding of the concept.

Difficult-to-Envision Processes or Structures

A second source of audience difficulty in understanding, according to Rowan, is a process or structure that is complex and difficult to envision. The blood circulation system in the body might be an example of a difficult-to-envision process. To address this type of audience confusion, Rowan suggests a quasi-scientific explanation, which starts by giving a big-picture perspective on the process. Presentation aids or analogies might be helpful in giving an overview of the process. For the circulatory system, you could show a video or diagram of the entire system or make an analogy to a pump. Then you can move to explaining relationships among the components of the process. Be sure when you explain relationships among components that you include transition and linking words like “leads to” and “because” so that your audience understands relationships between concepts. You may remember the childhood song describing the bones in the body with lines such as, “the hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone; the thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone.” Making the connections between components helps the audience to remember and better understand the process.

Difficult to Understand because It’s Hard to Believe

A third source of audience confusion, and perhaps the most difficult to address as a speaker, is an idea that’s difficult to understand because it’s hard to believe. This often happens when people have implicit, but erroneous, theories about how the world works. For example, the idea that science tries to disprove theories is difficult for some people to understand; after all, shouldn’t the purpose of science be to prove things? In such a case, Rowan suggests using a transformative explanation. A transformative explanation begins by discussing the audience’s implicit theory and showing why it is plausible. Then you move to showing how the implicit theory is limited and conclude by presenting the accepted explanation and why that explanation is better. In the case of scientists disproving theories, you might start by talking about what science has proven (e.g., the causes of malaria, the usefulness of penicillin in treating infection) and why focusing on science as proof is a plausible way of thinking. Then you might show how the science as proof theory is limited by providing examples of ideas that were accepted as “proven” but were later found to be false, such as the belief that diseases are caused by miasma, or “bad air”; or that bloodletting cures diseases by purging the body of “bad humors.” You can then conclude by showing how science is an enterprise designed to disprove theories and that all theories are accepted as tentative in light of existing knowledge.

Rowan’s framework is helpful because it keeps our focus on the most important element of an informative speech: increasing audience understanding about a topic.

Honesty and credibility must undergird your presentation; otherwise, they betray the trust of your listeners. Therefore, if you choose a topic that turns out to be too difficult, you must decide what will serve the needs and interests of the audience. Shortcuts and oversimplifications are not the answer.

Being ethical often involves a surprising amount of work. In the case of choosing too ambitious a topic, you have some choices:

• Narrow your topic further.
• Narrow your topic in a different way.
• Reconsider your specific purpose.
• Start over with a new topic.

Your goal is to serve the interests and needs of your audience, whoever they are and whether you believe they already know something about your topic.

Key Takeaways

• A variety of different topic categories are available for informative speaking.
• One way to develop your topic is to focus on areas that might be confusing to the audience. If the audience is likely to be confused about language or a concept, an elucidating explanation might be helpful. If a process is complex, a quasi-scientific explanation may help. If the audience already has an erroneous implicit idea of how something works then a transformative explanation might be needed.
• Choose a topic such as “American Education in the Twenty-First Century.” Write a new title for that speech for each of the following audiences: financial managers, first-year college students, parents of high school students, nuns employed in Roman Catholic schools, psychotherapists, and teamsters. Write a specific purpose for the speech for each of these audiences.
• Think about three potential topics you could use for an informative speech. Identify where the audience might experience confusion with concepts, processes, or preexisting implicit theories. Select one of the topics and outline how you would develop the topic to address the audience’s potential confusion.

Rowan, K. E. (1995). A new pedagogy for explanatory public speaking: Why arrangement should not substitute for invention. Communication Education, 44 , 236–249.

Stand up, Speak out Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

14.2 Types of Informative Speeches

While the topics to choose from for informative speeches are nearly limitless, they can generally be pared down into five broad categories. Understanding the type of informative speech that you will be giving can help you to figure out the best way to organize, research, and prepare for it, as will be discussed below.

Type 1: History

A common approach to selecting an informative speech topic is to discuss the history or development of something. With so much of human knowledge available via the Internet, finding information about the origins and evolution of almost anything is much easier than it has ever been (with the disclaimer that there are quite a few websites out there with false information). With that in mind, some of the areas that a historical informative speech could cover would include:

(Example: the baseball; the saxophone). Someone at some point in history was the first to develop what is considered the modern baseball. Who was it? What was it originally made of? How did it evolve into the baseball that is used by Major League Baseball today?

(Example: your college; Disney World). There is a specific year that you college or university opened, a specific number of students who were initially enrolled, and often colleges and universities have name and mission changes. All of these facts can be used to provide an overall understanding of the college and its history. Likewise, the Disney World of today is different from the Disney World of the early 1970s; the design has developed over the last fifty years.

(Example: democracy; freedom of speech). It is possible to provide facts on an idea, although in some cases the information may be less precise. For example, while no one can definitively point to a specific date or individual who first developed the concept of democracy, it is known to have been conceived in ancient Greece (Raaflaub, Ober, & Wallace, 2007). By looking at the civilizations and cultures that adopted forms of democracy throughout history, it is possible to provide an audience with a better understanding of how the idea has been shaped into what it has become today.

Type 2: Biography

A biography is similar to a history, but in this case the subject is specifically a person, whether living or deceased. For the purposes of this class, biographies should focus on people of some note or fame, since doing research on people who are not at least mildly well-known could be difficult. But again, as with histories, there are specific and irrefutable facts that can help provide an overview of someone’s life, such as dates that President Lincoln was born (February 12, 1809) and died (April 15, 1865) and the years he was in office as president (1861-1865).

This might be a good place to address research and support. The basic dates of Abraham Lincoln’s life could be found in multiple sources and you would not have to cite the source in that case. But if you use the work of a specific historian to explain how Lincoln was able to win the presidency in the tumultuous years before the Civil War, that would need a citation of that author and the publication.

Type 3: Processes

Examples of process speech topics would be how to bake chocolate chip cookies; how to throw a baseball; how a nuclear reactor works; how a bill works its way through Congress.

Process speeches are sometimes referred to as demonstration or “how to” speeches because they often entail demonstrating something. These speeches require you to provide steps that will help your audience understand how to accomplish a specific task or process. However, How To speeches can be tricky in that there are rarely universally agreed upon (i.e. irrefutable) ways to do anything. If your professor asked the students in his or her public speaking class to each bring in a recipe for baking chocolate chip cookies, would all of them be the exact same recipe?

Probably not, but they would all be similar and, most importantly, they would all give you chocolate chip cookies as the end result. Students giving a demonstration speech will want to avoid saying “You should bake the cookies for 12 minutes” since that is not how everyone does it. Instead, the student should say something like:

“You can bake the cookies for 10 minutes.” “One option is to bake the cookies for 10 minutes.” “This particular recipe calls for the cookies to be baked for 10 minutes.”

Each of the previous three statements is absolutely a fact that no one can argue or disagree with. While some people may say 12 minutes is too long or too short (depending on how soft or hard they like their cookies), no one can reasonably argue that these statements are not true.

On the other hand, there is a second type of process speech that focuses not on how the audience can achieve a result, such as changing oil in their cars or cooking something, but on how a process is achieved. The goal is understanding and not performance. After a speech on how to change a car tire, the audience members could probably do it (they might not want to, but they would know the steps). However, after a speech on how a bill goes through Congress, the audience would understand this important part of democracy but not be ready to serve in Congress.

Type 4: Ideas and Concepts

Sometimes an informative speech is designed to explain an idea or concept. What does democracy mean? What is justice? In this case, you will want to do two things. First, you’ll want to define the idea or concept for the audience. The second is to make your concept concrete, real, and specific for your audience with examples.

Type 5: Categories or Divisions

Sometimes an informative speech topic doesn’t lend itself to a specific type of approach, and in those cases the topics tend to fall into a “general” category of informative speeches. For example, if a student wanted to give an informative speech on the four “C’s” of diamonds (cut, carat, color, and clarity), they certainly wouldn’t approach it as if they were providing the history of diamonds, nor would they necessarily be informing anyone on “how to” shop for or buy diamonds or how diamonds are mined. The approach in this case would simply be to inform an audience on the four “C’s” and what they mean. Other examples of this type of informative speech would be positions in playing volleyball or the customs to know when traveling in China.

As stated above, identifying the type of informative speech being given can help in several ways (conducting research, writing the introduction and conclusion), but perhaps the biggest benefit is that the type of informative speech being given will help determine, to some degree, the organizational pattern that will need to be used (see Chapter 7). For example, a How To speech must be in chronological order. There really isn’t a way (or reason) to present a How To speech other than how the process is done in a time sequence. That is to say, for a speech on how to bake chocolate chip cookies, getting the ingredients (Main Point 1) must come before mixing the ingredients (Main Point 2), which must come before baking them (Main Point 3). Putting them in any other order will only confuse the audience.

Similarly, most Histories and Biographies will be organized chronologically, but not always. It makes sense to explain the history of the baseball from when it was first developed to where it is today, but certain approaches to Histories and Biographies can make that irrelevant. For an informative speech on Benjamin Franklin, a student might choose as his or her three main points: 1) His time as a printer, 2) His time as an inventor, 3) His time as a diplomat. These main points are not in strict chronological order because Franklin was a printer, inventor, and diplomat at the same time during periods of his whole life. However, this example would still be one way to inform an audience about him without using the chronological organizational pattern.

As for general informative speeches, since the topics that can be included in this category are very diverse and cover a range of subject matter, the way they are organized will be varied as well. However, if the topic is “types of” something or “kinds of” something, the organizational pattern would be topical; if it were the layout of a location, such as the White House, it would be spatial.

Introduction to Speech Communication Copyright © 2021 by Individual authors retain copyright of their work. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Chapter 3: Preparing for Your First Speech

Patterns of Organization: Informative Speeches

At this point, then, you should see how much your audience needs organization. You also know that as you do research, you will group together similar pieces of information from different sources in your research. As you group your research information, you will want to make sure that your content is adhering to your specific purpose statement and will look for ways that your information can be grouped together into categories.At this point we will address the third step of organization, ordering , and return to labeling later. However, in actually composing your speech, you would want to be sure that you name or label your groups of ideas and content clearly for yourself and then even more clearly for your audience. Labeling is an iterative process, which means you may “tweak” how you label your main points for clarity as you progress in the speech.

Interestingly, there are some standard ways of organizing these categories, which are called “patterns of organization.” In each of the examples below, you will 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. In each example, only the three to five main sections or “points” (Roman numerals) are given, without the other essential parts of the outline.

Please note that these are simple, basic outlines for example purposes, and your instructor will, of course, expect much more content from the outlines you submit for class.

Chronological

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

I.          The first stage is acknowledging the problem and entering treatment.

II.       The second stage is early abstinence, a difficult period in the rehabilitation facility.

III.    The third stage is maintaining abstinence after release from the rehab facility.

IV.     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. Since the specific purpose is about stages, it is 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. However, 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. The pro- cess described in the speech example above would also be long-term, that is, one taking several months or years. The commonality is the order of the information.

In addition, chronological speeches that refer to processes can be given for two reasons. First, they can be for understanding. The speech about recovery is to explain what happens in the addiction recovery process, but

the actual process may never really happen to the audience members. That understanding may also lead them to more empathy for someone in recovery. Second, chronological or process speeches can be for action and instruction. For a speech about changing the oil in a car, your purpose is that the audience could actually change the oil in their cars after listening to the speech.

One of the problems with chronological speeches is, as mentioned before, that you would not want just a list of activities. It is important to “chunk” the information into three to five groups so that the audience has a frame- work. For example, in a speech about the history of the Civil Rights Movement, your “grouping” or “chunking” might be:

I.          The movement saw African-Americans struggling for legal recognition before the Brown v. Board of Education decision.

II.       The movement was galvanized and motivated by the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

III.    The movement saw its goals met in the Civil Rights Act of 1965. 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. In this outline, the audience is focused on the three events that pushed it forward, rather than the persons involved in the movement. You could give a speech with a focus on people, but it would be different and probably less chronological and more topical (see below).

We should say here that, realistically, the example given above is still too broad. It would be useful, perhaps, for an audience with almost no knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement, but too basic and not really informative for other audiences. Just one of the Roman numeral points would probably be a more specific focus.

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.

I.          In the mountainous region of the North, the food emphasizes cheese and meat.

II.       In the middle region of Tuscany, the cuisine emphasizes grains and olives.

III.    In the southern region and Sicily, the diet is based on fish and sea- food.

In this example, the content is moving from northern to southern Italy, as the word “regional” would indicate. Here is a good place to note

that grouping or “chunking” in a speech helps simplicity, and to meet the principle of KISS (Keep It Simple, Speaker). If you were to actually study Italian cooking in depth, sources will say there are twenty regions. But “covering” twenty regions in a speech is not practical, and while the regions would be distinct for a “foodie” or connoisseur of Italian cooking, for a beginner or general audience, three is a good place to start. You could at the end of the speech note that more in-depth study would show the twenty regions, but that in your speech you have used three regions to show the similarities of the twenty regions rather than the small differences.

For a more localized example:

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

I.          The East Wing includes the entrance ways and offices for the First Lady.

II.       The most well-known part of the White House is the West Wing.

III.    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.

I.          The outer layer is the epidermis, which is the outermost barrier of protection.

II.       The second layer beneath is the dermis.

III.    The third layer closest to the bone is the hypodermis, made of fat and connective tissue.

The key to spatial organization is to be logical in progression rather than jumping around, as in this example:

I.          The Native Americans of Middle Georgia were primarily the Creek nation.

II.       The Native Americans of North Georgia were of the Cherokee tribe nation.

III.    The Native Americans of South Georgia were mostly of the Hitchiti and Oconee tribes.

It makes more sense to start at the top (north) of the state and move down (south) or start at the bottom and move up rather than randomly discuss unconnected areas.

Topical/Parts of the Whole

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, dis- tinct, and at five or fewer.

Specific Purpose: To explain to my freshmen students the concept of SMART goals.

I.           SMART goals are specific and clear.

II.        SMART goals are measurable.

III.     SMART goals are attainable or achievable.

IV.     SMART goals are relevant and worth doing.

V.         SMART goals are time-bound and doable within a time period. Specific Purpose: To explain the four characteristics of quality diamonds.

I.          Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of cut.

II.       Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of carat.

III.    Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of color.

IV.    Valuable diamonds have the characteristic of clarity.

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

I.          The first chamber in the blood flow is the right atrium.

II.       The second chamber in the blood flow is the right ventricle.

III.    The third chamber in the blood flow is the left atrium.

IV.     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 is emphasizing the anatomy of the heart; if the speech’s specific purpose were “To explain to my class- mates the flow of blood through the chambers of the heart,” the organizational pattern would be chronological but very similar. However, since the blood goes to the lungs to be oxygenated before coming back to the left atrium, that might alter the pattern some.

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.

I.          Capital punishment does not save money for the justice system.

II.       Capital punishment does not deter crime in the United States historically.

III.    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.

Fundamentals of Public Speaking Copyright © by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book

Informative Speech

Informative Speech Outline

Informative Speech Outline - Format, Writing Steps, and Examples

People also read

Informative Speech Writing - A Complete Guide

Good Informative Speech Topics & Ideas

Collection of Ideas and ‘How To’ Demonstrative Speech Topics

10+ Informative Speech Examples - Get Inspiration For Any Type

Understanding Different Types of Informative Speeches with Examples

Are you tasked with delivering an informative speech but don’t know how to begin? You're in the right place! 

This type of speech aims to inform and educate the audience about a particular topic. It conveys knowledge about that topic in a systematic and logical way, ensuring that the audience gets the intended points comprehensively. 

So, how do you prepare for your speech? Here’s the answer: crafting an effective informative speech begins with a well-structured outline. 

In this guide, we'll walk you through the process of creating an informative speech outline, step by step. Plus, you’ll get some amazing informative speech outline examples to inspire you. 

Let’s get into it!

• 1. What is an Informative Speech Outline?
• 2. How to Write an Informative Speech Outline?
• 3. Informative Speech Outline Examples

What is an Informative Speech Outline?

An informative speech outline is like a roadmap for your presentation. It's a structured plan that helps you organize your thoughts and information in a clear and logical manner.

Here's what an informative speech outline does:

• Organizes Your Ideas: It helps you arrange your thoughts and ideas in a logical order, making it easier for your audience to follow your presentation.
• Ensures Clarity: An outline ensures that your speech is clear and easy to understand. It prevents you from jumping from one point to another without a clear path.
• Saves Time: With a well-structured outline, you'll spend less time searching for what to say next during your speech. It's your cheat sheet.
• Keeps Your Audience Engaged: A well-organized outline keeps your audience engaged and focused on your message. It's the key to a successful presentation.
• Aids Memorization: Having a structured outline can help you remember key points and maintain a confident delivery.

How to Write an Informative Speech Outline?

Writing a helpful speech outline is not so difficult if you know what to do. Here are 4 simple steps to craft a perfect informative outline. 

Step 1: Choose an Engaging Topic

Selecting the right topic is the foundation of a compelling, informative speech. Choose unique and novel informative speech topics that can turn into an engaging speech. 

Here's how to do it:

• Consider Your Audience: Think about the interests, knowledge, and expectations of your audience. What would they find interesting and relevant?
• Choose Your Expertise: Opt for a topic you're passionate about or knowledgeable in. Your enthusiasm will shine through in your presentation.
• Narrow It Down: Avoid broad subjects. Instead, focus on a specific aspect of the topic to keep your speech manageable and engaging.

With these tips in mind, you can find a great topic for your speech.

Step 2: Conduct Some Research

Now that you have your topic, it's time to gather the necessary information. You need to do thorough research and collect some credible information necessary for the audience to understand your topic.

Moreover, understand the types of informative speeches and always keep the main purpose of your speech in mind. That is, to inform, educate, or teach. This will help you to avoid irrelevant information and stay focused on your goal.

Step 3: Structure Your Information

Now that you have the required information to make a good speech, you need to organize it logically. This is where the outlining comes in! 

The basic speech format consists of these essential elements:

Moreover, there are two different ways to write your outline: 

• The complete sentence format 
• The key points format

In the complete sentence outline , you write full sentences to indicate each point and help you check the organization and content of the speech. 

In the key points format, you just note down the key points and phrases that help you remember what you should include in your speech.

Step 4: Review and Revise

Finally, once you've created your initial informative speech outline, you need to review and revise it. 

Here's how to go about it:

• Ensure Clarity: Review your outline to ensure that your main points and supporting details are clear and easy to understand. 
• Verify Logical Sequence: Double-check the order of your points and transitions. Ensure that the flow of your speech is logical and that your audience can follow it easily.
• Eliminate Redundancy: Remove any redundant or repetitive information. Keep your outline concise and to the point. 
• Time Yourself: Estimate how long it will take to deliver your speech. Ensure it fits within the allotted time frame, whether it's a few minutes or an hour.
• Get Feedback: Share your outline with a friend, family member, or colleague and ask for their input. Fresh eyes can provide valuable suggestions for improvement.

Follow these basic steps and write a compelling speech that gives complete knowledge about the topic. Here is a sample outline example that will help you better understand how to craft an informative speech outline.

Informative Speech Outline Format

Informative Speech Outline Examples

Let’s explore a few example outlines to help you visualize an informative speech outline. These examples illustrate the outlines for different topics and subjects.

Mental Health Informative Speech Outline

Stress Informative Speech Outline

Social Media Informative Speech Outline

Informative Speech Outline Template

Informative Speech Outline Sample

To sum it up,

Creating an effective outline is your pathway to delivering an impactful, organized, and engaging speech. Making an outline for your speech ensures that your message shines through with clarity and purpose. 

With the help of the steps and examples given above, you will be able to create a well-structured outline for your informative speech. So go ahead and deliver an engaging informative speech with the help of outlines.

Moreover, if you're passionate about public speaking but find speech writing a tedious task, your worries can now take a back seat. At MyPerfectWords.com , we offer a convenient solution.

Our essay writing service is dedicated to providing you with top-notch content, ensuring you get the results you desire. 

So, why wait? Buy Speech today and elevate your public speaking game.

Write Essay Within 60 Seconds!

Cathy has been been working as an author on our platform for over five years now. She has a Masters degree in mass communication and is well-versed in the art of writing. Cathy is a professional who takes her work seriously and is widely appreciated by clients for her excellent writing skills.

Paper Due? Why Suffer? That’s our Job!

Keep reading

Chapter 11: Public Speaking

11.4 informative speech, learning objectives.

• Discuss and provide examples of ways to incorporate ethics in a speech.
• Construct an effective speech to inform.
• Discuss the parts of an informational presentation.
• Understand the five parts of any presentation.

Now that we’ve covered issues central to the success of your informative speech, there’s no doubt you want to get down to work. Here are five final suggestions to help you succeed.

Start with What You Know

Are you taking other classes right now that are fresh in your memory? Are you working on a challenging chemistry problem that might lend itself to your informative speech? Are you reading a novel by Gabriel García Márquez that might inspire you to present a biographical speech, informing your audience about the author? Perhaps you have a hobby or outside interest that you are excited about that would serve well. Regardless of where you draw the inspiration, it’s a good strategy to start with what you know and work from there. You’ll be more enthusiastic, helping your audience to listen intently, and you’ll save yourself time. Consider the audience’s needs, not just your need to cross a speech off your “to-do” list. This speech will be an opportunity for you to take prepared material and present it, gaining experience and important feedback. In the “real world,” you often lack time and the consequences of a less than effective speech can be serious. Look forward to the opportunity and use what you know to perform an effective, engaging speech.

Consider Your Audience’s Prior Knowledge

You don’t want to present a speech on the harmful effects of smoking when no one in the audience smokes. You may be more effective addressing the issue of secondhand smoke, underscoring the relationship to relevance and addressing the issue of importance with your audience. The audience will want to learn something from you, not hear everything they have heard before. It’s a challenge to assess what they’ve heard before, and often a class activity is conducted to allow audience members to come to know each other. You can also use their speeches and topic selection as points to consider. Think about age, gender, and socioeconomic status, as well as your listeners’ culture or language. Survey the audience if possible, or ask a couple of classmates what they think of the topics you are considering.

In the same way, when you prepare a speech in a business situation, do your homework. Access the company Web site, visit the location and get to know people, and even call members of the company to discuss your topic. The more information you can gather about your audience, the better you will be able to adapt and present an effective speech.

Adapting Jargon and Technical Terms

You may have a topic in mind from another class or an outside activity, but chances are that there are terms specific to the area or activity. From wakeboarding to rugby to a chemical process that contributes to global warming, there will be jargon and technical terms. Define and describe the key terms for your audience as part of your speech and substitute common terms where appropriate. Your audience will enjoy learning more about the topic and appreciate your consideration as you present your speech.

Using Outside Information

Even if you think you know everything there is to know about your topic, using outside sources will contribute depth to your speech, provide support for your main points, and even enhance your credibility as a speaker. “According to ____________” is a normal way of attributing information to a source, and you should give credit where credit is due. There is nothing wrong with using outside information as long as you clearly cite your sources and do not present someone else’s information as your own.

Presenting Information Ethically

A central but often unspoken expectation of the speaker is that we will be ethical. This means, fundamentally, that we perceive one another as human beings with common interests and needs, and that we attend to the needs of others as well as our own. An ethical informative speaker expresses respect for listeners by avoiding prejudiced comments against any group, and by being honest about the information presented, including information that may contradict the speaker’s personal biases. The ethical speaker also admits it when he or she does not know something. The best salespersons recognize that ethical communication is the key to success, as it builds a healthy relationship where the customer’s needs are met, thereby meeting the salesperson’s own needs.

Reciprocity

Tyler discusses ethical communication and specifically indicates reciprocity as a key principle.  Reciprocity , or a relationship of mutual exchange and interdependence, is an important characteristic of a relationship, particularly between a speaker and the audience. We’ve examined previously the transactional nature of communication, and it is important to reinforce this aspect here. We exchange meaning with one another in conversation, and much like a game, it takes more than one person to play. This leads to interdependence, or the dependence of the conversational partners on one another. Inequality in the levels of dependence can negatively impact the communication and, as a result, the relationship. You as the speaker will have certain expectations and roles, but dominating your audience will not encourage them to fulfill their roles in terms of participation and active listening. Communication involves give and take, and in a public speaking setting, where the communication may be perceived as “all to one,” don’t forget that the audience is also communicating in terms of feedback with you. You have a responsibility to attend to that feedback, and develop reciprocity with your audience. Without them, you don’t have a speech.

Mutuality  means that you search for common ground and understanding with the audience, establishing this space and building on it throughout the speech. This involves examining viewpoints other than your own, and taking steps to insure the speech integrates an inclusive, accessible format rather than an ethnocentric one.

Nonjudgmentalism

Nonjudgementalism  underlines the need to be open-minded, an expression of one’s willingness to examine diverse perspectives. Your audience expects you to state the truth as you perceive it, with supporting and clarifying information to support your position, and to speak honestly. They also expect you to be open to their point of view and be able to negotiate meaning and understanding in a constructive way. Nonjudgmentalism may include taking the perspective that being different is not inherently bad and that there is common ground to be found with each other.

While this characteristic should be understood, we can see evidence of breakdowns in communication when audiences perceive they are not being told the whole truth. This does not mean that the relationship with the audience requires honesty and excessive self-disclosure. The use of euphemisms and displays of sensitivity are key components of effective communication, and your emphasis on the content of your speech and not yourself will be appreciated. Nonjudgmentalism does underscore the importance of approaching communication from an honest perspective where you value and respect your audience.

Honesty , or truthfulness, directly relates to trust, a cornerstone in the foundation of a relationship with your audience. Without it, the building (the relationship) would fall down. Without trust, a relationship will not open and develop the possibility of mutual understanding. You want to share information and the audience hopefully wants to learn from you. If you “cherry-pick” your data, only choosing the best information to support only your point and ignore contrary or related issues, you may turn your informative speech into a persuasive one with bias as a central feature.

Look at the debate over the U.S. conflict with Iraq. There has been considerable discussion concerning the cherry-picking of issues and facts to create a case for armed intervention. To what degree the information at the time was accurate or inaccurate will continue to be a hotly debated issue, but the example holds in terms on an audience’s response to a perceived dishonestly. Partial truths are incomplete and often misleading, and you don’t want your audience to turn against you because they suspect you are being less than forthright and honest.

Respect should be present throughout a speech, demonstrating the speaker’s high esteem for the audience.  Respect  can be defined as an act of giving and displaying particular attention to the value you associate with someone or a group. This definition involves two key components. You need to give respect in order to earn from others, and you need to show it. Displays of respect include making time for conversation, not interrupting, and even giving appropriate eye contact during conversations.

Communication involves sharing and that requires trust.  Trust  means the ability to rely on the character or truth of someone, that what you say you mean and your audience knows it. Trust is a process, not a thing. It builds over time, through increased interaction and the reduction of uncertainty. It can be lost, but it can also be regained. It should be noted that it takes a long time to build trust in a relationship and can be lost in a much shorter amount of time. If your audience suspects you mislead them this time, how will they approach your next presentation? Acknowledging trust and its importance in your relationship with the audience is the first step in focusing on this key characteristic.

Avoid Exploitation

Finally, when we speak ethically, we do not intentionally exploit one another.  Exploitation  means taking advantage, using someone else for one’s own purposes. Perceiving a relationship with an audience as a means to an end and only focusing on what you get out of it, will lead you to treat people as objects. The temptation to exploit others can be great in business situations, where a promotion, a bonus, or even one’s livelihood are at stake.

Suppose you are a bank loan officer. Whenever a customer contacts the bank to inquire about applying for a loan, your job is to provide an informative presentation about the types of loans available, their rates and terms. If you are paid a commission based on the number of loans you make and their amounts and rates, wouldn’t you be tempted to encourage them to borrow the maximum amount they can qualify for? Or perhaps to take a loan with confusing terms that will end up costing much more in fees and interest than the customer realizes? After all, these practices are within the law; aren’t they just part of the way business is done? If you are an ethical loan officer, you realize you would be exploiting customers if you treated them this way. You know it is more valuable to uphold your long-term relationships with customers than to exploit them so that you can earn a bigger commission.

Consider these ethical principles when preparing and presenting your speech, and you will help address many of these natural expectations of others and develop healthier, more effective speeches.

Sample Informative Presentation

Here is a generic sample speech in outline form with notes and suggestions.

Attention Statement

Show a picture of a goldfish and a tomato and ask the audience, “What do these have in common?”

Introduction

• Briefly introduce genetically modified foods.
• State your topic and specific purpose: “My speech today will inform you on genetically modified foods that are increasingly part of our food supply.”
• Introduce your credibility and the topic: “My research on this topic has shown me that our food supply has changed but many people are unaware of the changes.”
• State your main points: “Today I will define genes, DNA, genome engineering and genetic manipulation, discuss how the technology applies to foods, and provide common examples.”
• Information . Provide a simple explanation of the genes, DNA and genetic modification in case there are people who do not know about it. Provide clear definitions of key terms.
• Genes and DNA . Provide arguments by generalization and authority.
• Genome engineering and genetic manipulation . Provide arguments by analogy, cause, and principle.
• Case study . In one early experiment, GM (genetically modified) tomatoes were developed with fish genes to make them resistant to cold weather, although this type of tomato was never marketed.
• Highlight other examples.

Reiterate your main points and provide synthesis, but do not introduce new content.

Residual Message

“Genetically modified foods are more common in our food supply than ever before.”

• Identify an event or issue in the news that interests you. On at least three different news networks or Web sites, find and watch video reports about this issue. Compare and contrast the coverage of the issue. Do the networks or Web sites differ in their assumptions about viewers’ prior knowledge? Do they give credit to any sources of information? To what extent do they each measure up to the ethical principles described in this section? Discuss your findings with your classmates.
• Find an example of reciprocity in a television program and write two to three paragraphs describing it. Share and compare with your classmates.
• Find an example of honesty in a television program and write two to three paragraphs describing it. Share and compare with your classmates.
• Find an example of exploitation depicted in the media. Describe how the exploitation is communicated with words and images and share with the class.
• Compose a general purpose statement and thesis statement for a speech to inform. Now create a sample outline. Share with a classmate and see if he or she offers additional points to consider.

Creating an Informative Presentation

An informational presentation is common request in business and industry. It’s the verbal and visual equivalent of a written report. Information sharing is part of any business or organization. Informative presentations serve to present specific information for specific audiences for specific goals or functions. The type of presentation is often identified by its primary purpose or function. Informative presentations are often analytical or involve the rational analysis of information. Sometimes they simply “report the facts” with no analysis at all, but still need to communicate the information in a clear and concise format. While a presentation may have conclusions, propositions, or even a call to action, the demonstration of the analysis is the primary function.

A sales report presentation, for example, is not designed to make a sale. It is, however, supposed to report sales to date and may forecast future sales based on previous trends.

An informative presentation does not have to be a formal event, though it can be. It can be generic and nonspecific to the audience or listener, but the more you know about your audience, the better. When you tailor your message to that audience, you zero in on your target and increase your effectiveness. The emphasis is on clear and concise communication, but it may address several key questions:

• Topic: Product or Service?
• Who are you?
• Who is the target market?
• What is the revenue model?
• What are the specifications?
• How was the information gathered?
• How does the unit work?
• How does current information compare to previous information?

Table 11.2 “Presentation Components and Their Functions”  lists the five main parts or components of any presentation (McLean, S., 2003).

Table 11.2  Presentation Components and Their Functions

You will need to address the questions to establish relevance and meet the audience’s needs. The five parts of any speech will serve to help you get organized.

Sample Speech Guidelines

Imagine that you have been assigned to give an informative presentation lasting five to seven minutes. Follow the guidelines in  Table 11.3  “Sample Speech Guidelines”  and apply them to your presentation.

Table 11.3  Sample Speech Guidelines

• Write a brief summary of a class or presentation you personally observed recently; include what you learned. Compare with classmates.
• Search online for an informative speech or presentation that applies to business or industry. Indicate one part or aspect of the presentation that you thought was effective and one you would improve. Provide the link to the presentation in your post or assignment.
• Pick a product or service and come up with a list of five points that you could address in a two-minute informative speech. Place them in rank order and indicate why.
• With the points discussed in this chapter in mind, observe someone presenting a speech. What elements of their speech could you use in your speech? What elements would you not want to use? Why? Compare with a classmate.

McLean, S. (2003).  The basics of speech communication . Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Tyler, V. (1978). Report of the working groups of the second SCA summer conference on intercultural communication. In N. C. Asuncio-Lande (Ed.),  Ethical Perspectives and Critical Issues in Intercultural Communication  (pp. 170–177). Falls Church, VA: SCA.

To listen to speeches from great figures in history, visit the History Channel’s audio speech archive.  http://www.history.com/speeches

What were the greatest speeches of the twentieth century? Find out here.  http://gos.sbc.edu/top100.html

Visit this eHow link for a great video demonstrating how to remove ink stains from clothing.  http://www.ehow.com/video_2598_remove-ink-stains.html

To improve your enunciation, try these exercises from the Mount Holyoke College site.  http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/speech/enunciation.htm

The Merriam-Webster dictionary site provides a wealth of resources on words, their meanings, their origins, and audio files of how to pronounce them.  http://www.merriam-webster.com

For information on adapting your speech for an audience or audience members with special needs, explore this index of resources compiled by Ithaca College.  http://www.ithaca.edu/wise/disabilities/

Dr. Richard Felder of North Carolina State University presents this questionnaire to assess your learning styles.  http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offers an array of Web resources on ethics.  http://www.asha.org/practice/ethics

Visit this site for a list informative topics for a business speech.  http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ideas-informative-speech-topics-business-81465.html

Visit this eHow site to get ideas for an audience-oriented informative speech topic.  http://www.ehow.com/how_2239702_choose-topic-informative-speech.html

• Business Communication for Success. Provided by : University of Minnesota . Located at : https://open.lib.umn.edu/businesscommunication/chapter/13-5-preparing-your-speech-to-inform/ . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Privacy Policy

Have an account?

Informative Speech Quiz

6th - 8th grade.

15 questions

Introducing new   Paper mode

No student devices needed.   Know more

Informative Speeches should communication information

In a meaningful way

In an interesting way

All of the above

Which of the four types of Informative Speeches have we already completed?

Speeches about Objects

Speeches about Processes

Speeches about Events

Speeches about Concepts

Why should this student re-consider their informative speech topic?

Student Topic: To inform my audience about JK Rowling.

The student's topic is too broad and should be narrowed down.

The student's topic is too boring and should be re-chosen.

The student's topic doesn't have enough information for research.

The student's topic is not an actual 'real' topic.

What is Chronological Order?

An organization pattern that puts items in date or evolution order.

The method of writing in which ideas are arranged in the order of their physical location.

A method of speech organization in which the main points divide the topic into logical and consistent subtopics. supporting materials. the materials used to support a speaker's ideas.

What is Spatial Order?

What is Topical Order

When talking about Informative Speeches about EVENTS. An EVENT is defined as, "anything that happens or is regarded as happening."

Speeches about Concepts are NOT the category of Informative Speeches for our MINI SPEECH on Urban Myths and Legends?

Always UNDERESTIMATE what the audience knows.

Should you relate your subject to your audience when giving INFORMATIVE or PERSUASIVE speeches?

TWO of the OBJECTIVE below are supposed to be found in your INTRODUCTION. Choose both.

Reveal the topic of your speech.

Reinforce the audiences idea of the main topic.

Establish your credibility.

To let the audience know you are ending the speech.

True or False: People DO NOT pay attention to things that affect them personally.

True or False: You should relate your topic to your audience?

Which way is NOT a way to grab your audience's attention?

State the importance of your topic

Startle the audience with a statistic

Tell a story

All of the above are ways to grab your audiences participation.

True or False: It is important to signal thought changes and the conclusion of your speech.

Explore all questions with a free account

Continue with email

Continue with phone