RIZAL COLLEGE OF TAAL

Taal, Batangas

SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

ORAL COMMUNICATION IN CONTEXT

Quarter 2 – Lesson 9:
TYPES OF SPEECHES

STUDY GUIDE
Types of Speeches

Speech According to Purpose

A speaker communicates for five reasons which, we call the functions of
communication. But a speaker also creates a speech based on the purpose he or she wants
to achieve. These purposes are called the Goals of Speech. It becomes obvious as the
Speaker shows through the Speech what he/she wants to achieve. The speaker through the
Speech can make one think, change one’s mind, or smile or laugh.
The purposes of speech are studied in order to deepen one’s knowledge and learn how
to apply them in one’s own speech. The three types of speech according to purpose are
Exploratory/informative, persuasive and entertainment.
Let us say one wants to talk about the Ebola virus pandemic, its causes, symptoms,
and treatment. The purpose best suited this topic is Exploratory or informative. The
Speaker wants the listeners to be informed about the Ebola pandemic. The Audience will be
informed on how the pandemic came about and how to tell one is infected with it. At the
end, the audience will be told about the treatments available now in the near future to stop
this virus and prevent people from dying from it.
The purpose of an Exploratory or Informative Speech is to provide information history,
theories, practical applications, etc., that can and will help the listeners understand
something that is unknown to them or already known to them but not clearly understood. A
speech of this nature is meant to help the listeners understand a topic in a more in-depth
manner by providing the following in an organized way: new data, data that are not readily
available to everyone, or data already known by the audience but looked at in a different
way.
The second type of speech based on purpose is the Persuasive Speech. This is a speech
whose goal is to change the Listener’s opinion, attitude, or belief regarding a certain topic
(usually controversial) by providing materials that can or will help convince listener.
A speech that is Persuasive is meant to convince the listeners why the speaker’s side of
the equation is more beneficial. The speaker’s assertion must be supported by historical
data in the form of statistical results and experts’ testimonies as well as comparisons and
contrast (e.g., before and after) between the Speakers side and the Listeners’ side of the
equation.
Entertainment Speech is not a comedy sketch- the purpose is not only to tell a series
of jokes. Neither is it the purpose of the speaker to have the audience laughing throughout
the speech. To make the listeners smile or feel light hearted after the speech is enough.
An Entertainment speech must lead the audience into looking at something familiar in a
totally different and completely humorous light by providing comparisons and contrasts,
especially with the strange or unusual; highlighting the quirks of important personages such
as officials, celebrities, actors and athletes and applying them to regular people like say, the
listeners; or assigning human characteristics of inanimate objects. It can also be highly
entertaining to engage in word play like puns, and giving funny meanings to acronyms or
anagrams.
 These three purposes: Exploratory/informative, Persuasive and Entertainment, direct
the speaker toward the correct treatment of the topic. After all, every speech has a purpose
in reaching out to the listener.

Speech According to Manner of Delivery

Besides classifying speech according to purpose of the Speaker, it can be classified
based on the Manner of Delivery or the way the Speech is given before an audience.

When a Guest Speaker gives a speech before an audience, most of the time, he/she
reads a fully written out speech. This is called Reading from a Manuscript or Speaking from
a Manuscript. When a student joins an oratorical contest, he/she memorizes the full Speech
beforehand. This is called a Memorized speech. When without preparation, or hardly any,
you are suddenly asked to give the Welcome Remarks in a program that is about to start or
is already ongoing, what you will be delivering is an Impromptu Speech. But when you
deliver the a Speech from a prepared outline of your ideas, complete with supporting data,
testimonies, and statistics, this is the Extemporaneous Speech, delivered without having
been written in full, without memorizing, or without reading from a manuscript prepared
beforehand.

a. Reading or Speaking from a Manuscript is usually used in the Formal Speech

Context. The speech is fully written out, usually typed, and not folded but placed in a
folder for neatness. This manner of Delivery allows for greater control of wording of
the speech when precise wording is paramount. This is also useful when you have to
embellished your thoughts and you want to deliver your sentences exactly as you
wrote them. The State of the Nation address by the President of the Republic of the
Philippines is one such Speech. Presentations of Scientific Papers in conferences are
another. There are, however, drawbacks to Reading/Speaking from a Manuscript:
1. The Speaker tends to read without emotion, lacking spontaneity, and may even
sound boring. The reading will contain no highlights, show little or no variation of
intonations, and no obvious emphases.
2. The Speaker, most of the time, never look up from the manuscript being read. All
anyone sees is top of the Speaker’s head. This position contributes to the
Speaker’s voice being muffled and unintelligible, even without a microphone.
3. The Speaker can lose his/her place in the speech even while reading it or turn to
the wrong page of the manuscript.
4. The manuscript may be blown by the wind/fan/air conditioning unit or fall from
lectern and the order of the sheets of paper disarranged while being put back
together.
5. The formality of the language of the Speech/Manuscript often means the use of
complex words, jargon, or technical language which are more often than not
 polysyllabic. Most of the time, the Listeners are lost in such language, unless they
are experts in the same field.
b. Memorized Speech is also a speech that is fully written out like the Speech that is
read from the Manuscript. This time, however, the written speech is fully
memorized- every word, every phrase, every comma, and every period. Oratorical
Contests require that contestants memorize their speech thoroughly. But, again,
there are drawbacks to a Memorized Speech:
1. The most common problem encountered by the Speaker is forgetting lines when
one is already delivering the speech. This is usually noticeable to the audience,
and in case of a contest, to the judges. Very seldom dose one meet a Speaker
who can bridge that memory gap without letting the audience notice it.
2. The second problem is the lack of eye contact with the audience. Many Speakers
tend to look upward, to the side, or, worse on the floor, to help themselves
remember the Speech. They say that not looking at the audience seems to lessen
their nervousness or at least does not exacerbate it.
3. Similar to Reading form a Manuscript, there could be a tendency to deliver the
Speech without any inflection, unless, of course, the contestant has had a good
coach and had practiced to sound spontaneous.
c. Impromptu Speech is when one is suddenly asked to give the welcome remarks in a
program already ongoing and there is hardly time to prepare. Many people think
that an Impromptu speech is the same as extemporaneous speech. In fact, theses
two types of speech have sometimes been interchanged. The major difference: one
is hardly given time to prepare one’s Impromptu Speech, while one can prepare and
Extemporaneous Speech because one is given enough time to prepare.
The Impromptu Speech is delivered on short notice with little or no
preparation. That is why it is sometimes called “thinking on your feet”. The
speech is not really made on the spot because one usually speaks or is asked
to speak about something one already knows. One’s preparation comes from
everything one has learned or experienced as they are all source of ideas for
the Speech. Therefore, one is prepared although the speech was not written
out nor rehearsed. Before speaking, one may ask for a few minutes to
collects one’s thoughts or be given time to jot down a few notes that can be
used as basis for the speech. Just remember that no matter how short the
impromptu speech is, it has to have a beginning (introduction), a middle
(body of the speech, and an end (conclusion/summary).

The advantages of a Speech delivered impromptu are the following:

1. The speech is delivered in a spontaneous manner and in a more conversational tone

unlike the Manuscript.
 2. The speaker can adjust the speech (make it longer or shorter) and add or skip an idea
without any problem, obvious gaps, or long pauses due to memory loss as in the
Memorized Speech.

There are, however, drawbacks to this type of delivery such as the following:

1. The speaker can just go on, and sometimes, with no point to make at all.
2. The Speaker may be so rattled and disorganized that the speech ends up with not
much sense.

d. Extemporaneous Speech may sound like it is delivered “off-the-cuff” as it were with

hardly any preparation because it sounds so spontaneous or it may also sound like a
speech that was fully written out and then memorized, but both are not the case.
What the speaker prepares, however, is a good outline which organizes the
Speaker’s thoughts and ideas (including data, testimonies, etc.). It is only this fully
developed outline that is memorized.

This outline preparation is what differentiates Extemporaneous Speech from

Impromptu speech or any of the other types of speech according to manner of
delivery. The following are the advantages of using Extemporaneous speech:

1. The outline helps the Speaker remember the particular order of points he/she wants
to make. There is no need to memorize paragraph upon paragraph that make up the
speech.
2. At the same time, the outline allows the speaker to jump from one point to another
or even rearrange the order of the Speech’s point should circumstances demand it
without the Audience knowing or noticing the change.

The delivery of the Speech is less formal than a Manuscript Speech, more conversational
than a memorized speech, and prevents the speaker from losing eye contact with the
audience. Sometimes, Speaker using Extemporaneous delivery may bring one or two note
cards so they do not forget some data such as specific concepts, complicated statistics, or an
important quotation. But definitely, these outlines are not manuscripts in which the speech
is fully written out.