Structuring Your

Speech
Determining your purpose

“Why would I want to speak on this topic?”

 Determining your purpose

• The general function of your speech

• Determine your specific purpose
• Develop a clearly worded thesis statement and
central idea
 General function

• The most basic functions of speeches are –

✓To inform
✓To persuade
✓To entertain/celebrate
 Specific purpose
Your specific purpose is what you would like to
accomplish in your speech. It –
• Identifies precisely what you want your listeners to
understand, believe, feel, or do.
• Helps direct your research toward relevant
information
You have to state your specific purpose clearly and
succinctly a single idea in single infinitive phrase.
Your specific purpose should be manageable in
the time allotted to you.
 examples
➢ Topic : Tourism in Bangladesh
General Function : To inform
Specific Purpose : To inform my audience
about some less-popular
tourist spots in Bangladesh

➢ Topic : Tourism in Bangladesh

General Function : To persuade
Specific Purpose : To persuade my audience about
the reasons for choosing
Bangladesh as their favorite
tourist spot over others
 Tips for Formulating
the Specific Purpose statement
• Write the purpose statement as a full infinitive
phrase, not as fragment.
• Express your purpose as a statement, not as a
question.
• Avoid figurative language in your purpose
statement.
• Limit your purpose statement to one distinct
idea.
• Make sure your specific purpose is not too
vague or general.
 Thesis Statement

Thesis statement reflects the specific purpose. It

condenses your message into a single declarative
phrase.
It is usually offered as you introduce your
speech so that listeners understand your intention.
 Central Idea/Preview

Central Idea signals the main points that will

develop in the body of the speech.
 Example
Topic : Tourism in Bangladesh
General function : To inform
Specific Purpose : To inform my audience about
the less-popular tourist spots in
Bangladesh
Thesis Statement : There are many beautiful
places in Bangladesh yet to be
explored by the tourists.
Central Idea : I would like to introduce three
very promising tourist spots in
Bangladesh – A, B, and C
which are still behind the curtain.
 Acquiring Responsible Knowledge
Once you have your specific purpose and thesis
statement clearly in mind, you can move onto the
concentrated phase of research that will provide you with
responsible knowledge. These can be gathered from –
✓ Personal experience
✓ Library search (encyclopedias, atlases, biographical
information, books of quotations)
✓ Government documents
✓ Electronic databases (internet, online newspaper,
magazines etc.)
✓ Interview
Structuring your speech

“Every discourse ought to be a living creature;

having a body of its own and head and feet;
there should be a middle, beginning, and end,
adapted to one another and to the whole.”
- Plato
 Principles of good form
The structure of a speech should follow the ways people
naturally see and arrange things in their minds. They
cluster material so that it can be more easily recalled; for example,
as we recall telephone numbers.
Once grouped, information is organized according to a few
basic principles. When these principles are satisfied, a speech has
a good form.
Good form depends on –
➢ Simplicity
➢ Balance
➢ Order
 Simplicity
The more simple your speech design, the easier it
will be for the listeners to follow, understand, and
remember your message.
To achieve simplicity you should limit your number
of main ideas in your speech and keep each direct and
to the point.
 simplicity
➢ Number of main points:
In general, the fewer main points you have, the better.
Each main point of your message must be developed
with supporting materials. And, each main point breaks
down into more specific sub-points that extend and explain
its meaning. These ideas might be clustered into a simpler
structural pattern.
Short classroom speeches usually should have no more
than three main points. Even longer speeches, should not
consist of more than five points.
 Simplicity

➢Phrasing the main points:

You should state your main points as simply as
possible. Wording of these points should be made
clear and direct.
Parallel phrasing is helpful. This strategic
repetition helps listeners remember the message.
 Balance
Balance means that all the major parts of your
speech-introduction, body, and conclusion-
receive the right amount of emphasis and
development. It depends largely upon timing.
It can be very disconcerting to find yourself
finishing the first main point of your speech with
only one minute left and two more main points
plus conclusion to cover.
 Balance
The following suggestions may be helpful to realize
how major parts of speeches should be balanced:-
➢ The body should be the longest
➢ Allocate time according to your topic:
✓ One way to balance your main points is to give the
same amount of development, which suggests that the
main points are equally important.
✓ Another approach is to arrange in order of their
importance in descending or ascending order, spending
proportionately more/less time on each.
➢ The introduction and conclusion should be
approximately equal in length
 Order
An orderly speech follows a consistent pattern of
development.
You should develop the body first so that your
introduction and conclusion fit your message.
To be better orderly, you can try to tie the introduction
and conclusion; for example, if the introduction asked any
question, the conclusion could supply answer based on
the ideas from the speech.
You also have to arrange the main points in order; for
example, if you want to propose a solution to a problem,
you should first present the problem, and then the solution.
 Structuring the body
Because the body of your speech contains the
major substance of your message, you should
organize it first.
In developing the body of your speech. You
have three major tasks to accomplish:
✓Determine your main points
✓Arrange your main points effectively
✓Decide how to use supporting materials
Determine your main points

• Look for stressed or repeated themes by

preparing research overview
• how those relate to your specific purpose, thesis
statement
• How relevant they are to the needs and interests
of your listeners
 Arrange your main points

Once you have determined your main points,

you must decide how to arrange them. Some
basic speech designs that relate to these principles
of orderliness are:
➢Principle of Similarity
➢Principle of Proximity
➢Principle of Closure
 Principle of Similarity

Leads people to group things together that

they seem alike
This tendency underlies the categorical design
for speeches. Speakers use categories based on
the actual division of a topic to represent
customary ways of thinking about a subject.
 Principle of Proximity

• Things that occur close together in time or

space should be presented in the order in which
they naturally occur
• Uses sequential or spatial design for speeches
 Principle of Closure

• Based on the natural tendency of people to

seek completion
• Applies to especially cause-effect and problem-
solution designs for speech
 Adding Supporting materials
Once you have framed and arranged your main
points, you must support them with facts and
figures, testimony, examples, or narratives to
make the speech sturdy and reliable.
A probable sequence can be:

Statement of main points - facts/figures/testimony/examples/narratives –

transitions-next main point
 Using Connectives
Connectives show your listeners how your ideas
connect with each other. Listeners focus on the
message you have already discussed and
prepare them for what is still to come.
There are four kinds of transitions used in
speeches. They are:
➢Transitions
➢Internal Preview
➢Internal Summary
➢Signposts
 Connectives
A word or phrase that connects the ideas of a
speech and indicates the relationship between them.
Connectives in the body of a speech are like
ligaments and tendons in a human body. Without
connectives, a speech is disjointed and
Uncoordinated - much as a person would be
without ligaments and tendons to join the bones
and hold the organs in place.
 Transitions
❑Transitions are words or phrases that indicate
when a speaker has just completed one thought
and is moving on to another.
❑Technically, the transitions state both the idea
the speaker is leaving and the idea she or he is
coming up to.
❑Without transitions, a speech will seem
disjointed and uncoordinated.
 Internal Preview
A statement in the body of a speech that lets the
audience know what the speaker is going to
discuss next.
They are more detailed than transitions.
They are rarely necessary for every main point.
Sometimes, introduction can be used as
preview.
 Internal Summary
Internal summaries remind listeners of what
they have just heard.
Internal summaries are especially useful when a
speaker finishes a complex or important point.
They clarify and reinforce the speaker’s ideas.
• Specially useful in cause-effect and problem-
solution speeches, where they can span the gap
between the two dimensions of the design.
 Signposts
• Signposts are brief statement that indicate
exactly where a speaker is in the speech or that
focus attention on key ideas.
• Signpost can be numerical (first, second, third
etc)
• Question also work well as signpost.
• So do phrases such as “Be sure to keep this in
mind,” ‘Above all, you need to know,’ and the
like.
 Introducing your message
An invitation to listen
When you first begin to speak, the audience will have two basic
questions:
✓ Why should I listen to this speech?
✓ Why should I listen to this speaker?
• Basic functions of an introduction:
➢ Capture attention and excites interest so that listeners want to
listen
➢ Should help establish your ethos as a competent, trustworthy
and likeable person
➢ Should help focus and preview your message to make it
easier for the audience to follow
 Capturing attention
• “Good morning. The topic of my speech is…” and then jump right into
the message is NOT effective – because it neither invites the audience
to listen nor makes them want to
• Good ways to attract and hold attention:
✓ Involve the audience; for example, by praising them or relating the
topic directly to their lives
✓ Relating the topic to personal experience because the audience is more
willing to listen to others if they know that someone or themselves have
travelled the road; it also establishes common ground
✓ Ask rhetorical question to arouse curiosity and to get the listeners
involved; for example, any narrative or hypothetical example
✓ Create suspense and startle the audience
✓ Tell a story, use humor or begin with a quotation that is relevant to
your topic
 Establishing credibility
• Establish ethos – competence, integrity, likableness, and
forcefulness
✓ Well organized speech, using language correctly and ably,
smooth flow of your speech, using facts, talking from
personal experience creates feeling of your competence
✓ Being ethical and honest along with straightforward, sincere
and concerned shows your integrity
✓ Pleasant and tactful behavior, treating listeners as friends,
sharing feelings makes you likeable
✓ Your self-confidence, smiling, establishing eye contact etc.
makes your speech forceful
Focusing and Previewing your
message

✓Focus on the thesis statement

✓Preview foreshadows the main points
 Developing conclusion
• Consists:
➢Summary statement: functions as a transition between
the body and the final remarks
➢Concluding remarks: offers a sense of closure
• Your concluding remarks can include:
✓Involving the audience
✓Asking rhetorical questions
✓Telling story/finishing the story started in the
beginning
✓Closing with a quotation related to the topic