Organizing your speech

Chapter#6 (in book ch-9)

• Select and narrow a topic
• Determine your purpose
• Develop your central idea
• Generate main ideas
• Gather supporting material
 Organize your speech
• Pattern of organization commonly used to
arrange or structure the main ideas of speech
 Organizing your main points
• Arranging ideas chronologically
• Organization by time, that is, your steps are ordered according
to when each step occurred or should cover (e.g, historical
speeches)
• You may wish to organize your main points either from earliest
to most recent (forward in time ) or from recent events back
into history (backward in time)
• Progression you choose depends on your personal preferences
• Recency : placing the most important
information last
• According to the principle of recency, the
event discussed last is usually the one
audience will remember best
• Organizing ideas topically

• If your central idea has natural divisions, your speech can

often be organized topically
• Natural divisions are often fairly equal in importance. It may
not matter which point is discussed first
• The order in which you arranged your main points will be a
matter of personal preference
• If you wish to emphasize one point more than the other,
follow the principle of recency
• If topic is controversial, then use the principle of primacy
• Primacy: placing the most important info first
• That way you don’t risk losing your audience before you can
reach your most significant idea

• Ordering ideas Spatially

• Spatial organization is arranging items according to their
location and direction
– e.g; speech on makeup of an atom
• Arranging ideas to show cause and effects

• Cause & effect:

– discussion of a situation & its causes, or of a
situation & its effects
• A speech organized to show cause & effect may
first identify a situation & then seek its causes
• Or the speech may present a cause & then
describes its effects
• If you wish to emphasize the causes, you will
discuss the effect first & then examine its
causes & vice versa
• Organizing ideas by problem and solution

• Pattern of cause & effect discusses how a

problem developed or what its results are, if you
want to emphasize how best to solve the
problem, you will probably use problem solution
pattern

• Problem solution: discussion of a problem & its

various solutions, or of a solution & the problems
it would solve
• Acknowledging Cultural Differences

• As an audience centered speaker, you should

investigate & adapt to customary organizational
strategy of your particular audience

• When you are listening to speech, recognizing

existence of cultural differences can help you
appreciate & understand the organization of a
speaker from a culture other than your own
 Subdividing your main points
• Once you decide how to organize your main points, you
may need to subdivide them

• Any of the five organizational patterns that apply to main

points can apply to sub-points as well

• It is also possible that your main points may be arranged

according to one pattern & your sub-points according to
another

• you may need to add, regroup , or eliminate points or sub-

points at any stage in preparation process, as you consider
the needs , interest & expectations of your audience
 Integrating your supporting material
• State the point:
– this statement should be concise and clear, so that audience can
grasp it immediately
• Cite the source of the supporting material:
– this does not mean that you have to give complete bibliographical
information. You will have to provide author’s name (if available) &
the title & date of the publication
• Present the supporting material:
– state the statistics, opinion, illustration, or other form of supporting
material
• Explain how the supporting material substantiates or
develops the point:
– Do not assume that audience members will automatically
understand the connection. Your listeners will not remember too
many specific facts & statistics after a speech, but they should
remember the main points. Connecting ideas & supporting
materials makes it more likely that they will
 Organizing your supporting materials
• Primacy or recency
– Recency: placing the most important information last
– According to the principle of recency, the event discussed last is usually the
one audience will remember best
– Primacy: placing the most important info first
– That way you don’t risk losing your audience before you can reach your
most significant idea
• Specificity:
– sometimes your supporting material will range from vary specific examples
to more general overviews of a situation
– You may either offer your specific information first & end with your general
statements, or make the general statements first & support it with specific
evidence
• Complexity:
– moving from the simple to complex as a way to organize subtopics
– When describing how the sun causes skin cancer, the next speaker first
explain the simplest effect of sun , rapid aging of the skin, & then goes on to
the more complex effect, molecular alteration
• Sift to hard evidence:
– supporting material can also be arranged from soft to
hard. Soft supporting materials are based mainly on
opinion or interference
– Hypothetical illustrations, explanations, & descriptions,
analogies & opinions are usually considered soft
– Hard evidence includes factual examples & statistics
– It would be more accurate to think of soft & hard as two
ends of a continuum, with various supporting materials
falling somewhere between
– The surgeon general’s analysis of the AIDS crisis, for
example would be placed nearer the hard end of the
continuum than
– Soft to hard organization of supporting materials relies
chiefly on the principle of recency , that the last statement
will be remembered best
 Developing Signposts
• Next organizational task is to develop signposts – words & gestures
that allow you to move smoothly from one idea to the next
throughout your speech , showing relationships b/w ideas &
emphasizing important points

• Three types of signposts can serve as glue to hold your speech

together

• Transitions
– Verbal transitions
– Non-verbal transitions
• Previews
• summaries
• Transitions:
– transitions indicate that a speaker has finished an idea &
is moving to another
– It may be verbal & nonverbal

– Verbal Transitions:
– it can be made simply by repeating a key word from an
earlier statement or by using a synonym or a pronoun
that refers to an earlier key word or idea
– This type of transition is often used to make one sentence
flow smoothly into the next (this sentence itself is an
example): “this type of transition” refers to the sentence
that precedes it
– Other verbal transitions are words or phrases that show
relationships b/w ideas
– Words like, finally and in conclusion, give the audience
implicit permission to stop listening , & they ofetn do
• Non-Verbal Transitions:
– sometimes alone & sometimes in combination with
verbal transitions

– Change in facial expression, a pause, an altered vocal

pitch or speaking rate, or a movement all may
indicate a transition

– Mostly speakers will use a combination of verbal &

non-verbal transitions to move from one point to
another through their speeches
• Previews:
– Audience centered speakers need to remember that members of their
audiences, unlike readers, cant go back to review a missed point
– Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what
you have told them
– A preview fulfills the first third formula
– Preview is a statement of what is to come
– Preview help to ensure that audience members will first anticipate &
later remember the important points
– It also help to provide coherence

• Two types of previews

– Preview statement or initial preview and internal preview
– Preview statement usually occurs at near the end of introduction . It is a
statement of what the main points of the speech will be
– Internal previews introduce & outline ideas that will be developed as the
speech progresses. Internal previews can serve as transitions
– Sometimes speakers couch internal previews in the form of questions
that they plan to answer
• Summaries
– Tell them what you have told them
– Summaries provide additional exposure to a speaker’s ideas
& can help ensure that audience members will grasp &
remember them

• Two types of summaries

– Final & internal
– Final summary occurs in or just before the end of speech,
final summary serves as a transition b/w body & the
conclusion , at other times, the summary is the conclusion
– Internal summaries occur within & throughout a speech.
They are often used after two or three points have been
discussed, to keep those points fresh in minds of the
audience as the speech progresses
– Internal summaries can serve as transitions
– Internal summaries are often used in combination with
internal previews to form transitions b/w major points &
ideas
 Developing visual support for
signposts
• Transitions, summaries, previews are the glue that holds a
speech together

• Such signposts can help you achieve a coherent flow of

ideas & help your audience remember those ideas

• It is possible for your listeners to be so distracted by

internal & external noise that they fail to hear or process
even your most carefully planned verbal signposts

• One way in which you can increase the likelihood of your

listener’s attending to your signposting is to prepare & use
visual aids to supplement your signposts
• For example, you could display on an
overhead transparency a bulleted or
numbered outline of your main ideas as you
initially preview them in your introduction ,
and again as you summarize them in your
conclusion