Speech Organization Tips
Starting off your speech with an attention-getter is probably the advice you’ll get about making a speech more than any other. There is a reason for this unanimity of opinion. If you can’t get an audience’s attention right away, your chances of getting it later are almost nil.
While getting the audience’s attention is incredibly important, I believe that of equal importance is being able to successfully relating the topic to the audience. There’s no getting around it: If a person has a personal stake in what you are saying, he will be more readily available to open himself up to any new information you have to give him. Speeches are often lost on over-reliance of vague, nebulous generalities to which the audience doesn’t personally relate.
Part and parcel with this, of course, is relating the speaker to the topic. An audience has to have the confidence that you know what you are talking about. If you seem ill informed from the beginning, or uninterested in the topic yourself, you will face only an uphill battle in trying to win their attention.
The attention getter can be a statistic or an interesting fact that may or may not be really significant to the topic of your speech. It’s certainly all right to open with an attention getter that you never mention again. But you will have to state your topic early on in the speech. The audience has to know what they are there for or the fidgeting starts. You’ve probably written a topic sentence for an essay and a speech is really just a spoken essay, so don’t be afraid to write a topic sentence. Just don’t make it sound like a topic sentence. This is where you let the audience know in hopefully no uncertain terms exactly what the subject matter at hand is going to be. If they don’t know exactly what you’re supposed to be talking about, they can only get more and more lost as you go on.
What do you in the body of your speech depends completely upon your audience. You may introduce multimedia components or you may just stand up there and be essentially a talking head. You may feel comfortable using humor and walking into the audience, or your purpose may be only to introduce pertinent information with no room for the human touch. Regardless of what the body of your speech contains, however, you need a conclusion. And you need to build toward that conclusion. There’s nothing worse than a person who just suddenly stops talking and sits down and the audience is left wondering if there’s more.
Lead up to your conclusion and, if possible, create a little suspense. One way to do this is to ask a question about halfway through that is completely and totally significant. This question isn’t like the attention getter. The answer to this question should, if at all possible, reiterate through example the main point you are trying to make. Ask the question halfway through and then about three-fourths refer to it again. Build up the suspense. After wrapping up your speech by reviewing the key points, ask the question one last time and then give the answer. The more outrageous and unexpected the answer, the better. If your audience audibly gasps, consider your conclusion a success.
Basically, there are two types of speeches. The informative speech and the persuasive speech. There are four general purposes on informative speaking: informing the audience, increases the audience’s understanding of the topic, encouraging audience to remember what you’ve informed them, and inviting the audience to apply the information as quickly as possible.
An informative speech can range from a dry school lecture to an emotionally charged sermon in church. (Though the sermon is just as likely to be a persuasive speech!) There are several types of informative speeches: The speech of definition, the speech of description, the speech of explanation and the speech of demonstration. The main point is that it is a speech designed to educate the audience in one way or another. Often, visual aids are used to punch up the topic, help the audience to relate better or just to get a bored crowd more interested. Repeating information is okay, but you don’t want your audience to just sit there and listen, only to forget what you’ve talked about five minutes after you’ve left. A truly great informative speech will stick in the audience’s mind. You must find ways not only to inform and entertain them, but also find a way by which the information will stick to their memories and perhaps even actually help them out one day. Obviously, you have to establish your credibility or else it won’ really matter what information you are asking the audience to partake. Integrity, or lack thereof, is sometimes the difference between a good speech and a magnificent speech. Of course, as Pres. Bush has shown on numerous occasions, sometimes informative speeches can be wildly successful without the least iota of integrity or factual information attached to them.
A persuasive speech is often an argument disguised as an informative speech. True, you are giving information as in the informative speech, but your agenda-sometimes hidden and sometimes not-is to entice someone to your point of view. A great persuasive speech should ideally contain indisputable facts and proof, though, again, Dubya has proven these things aren’t always necessary. This proof can take the form of great mythic arguments or cold, hard, logical data. As noted before, persuasive speeches can run quite a gamut. Sometimes you will be simply trying to change a person’s attitude toward a single subject, sometimes you might be trying to sway their entire belief system or values. There are three types of persuasive speeches: The speech to inspire, the speech to convince, and the speech to actuate a change in a person’s behaviors or actions.
Before giving a speech, it really helps to engage in critical listening so you will know what the audience is hearing. Critical listening is sometimes known as evaluative listening and it is exactly what it sounds like. It is the process of taking in information from one or more speakers and deciding what you agree with and what you disagree with. It is the kind of listening people do at such events as a debate, or when taking part in an argument, or watching a movie review show on television. The listener is distilling the information he is being given and acting as a sort of scale, weighing the data in order to make an informed opinion or choice. Generally, critical listening winds up with your either agreeing or disagreeing about a subject or a point of view.
Critical listening also involves making a decision in reference to what you believe about the speaker. Do you believe he is well informed and trustworthy? Do you think he has a darker, hidden agenda behind the words he is speaking? Is he a particularly ethical person or are there questions about his character which may lead to a diminution of his believability? When listening with a critical ear, one should not take things out of context, but view them as they relate to the speech as a whole. This also involves being prepared to find the positive when the negative is more obvious and vice versa.
The best way to become a good public speaker is by becoming a good public listener. Learn what to look for, the little details that most audience members overlook but that significantly impact their reception. For instance, how often do you see a politician giving a speech without an American flag somewhere in the background? You may not be able to control your surroundings, but if you do have any input, study the psychological impact of color on the reception of ideas. This article is not prepared to go into detail on that score, but there is plenty of free information out there concerning this subject.
Be aware of the use of certain terms and slang. Just because your audience is going to be high school students and you’re a fiftysomething don’t assume you’ll appear hipper if you use street language. You are just likely to see a lot of eyes rolling up into the head. And the connotation of certain words has effects beyond our actual message sometimes. The obvious example here is the use of the terms “freedom fighter” versus “terrorist.” While American revolutionaries were freedom fighters in our eyes, they were actually engaging in terrorist activities according to modern day definitions. When writing your speech be acutely aware of the nuance of certain synonyms. Just as no woman likes to be called fat, few take exception to the term voluptuous. Just as few men like to be called nerds, few take exception to being called intellectual. And while few take exception to term Patriot Act, would it have passed had it been called what it really is: The Assault on The First Amendment Act?
Giving a speech doesn’t have to be the greatest terror of your life. With a little organization, you can give just as good a speech as the next guy.
