Audience Centered Speech Building

Chapter 6 (1)
Notes For Ms. Alia Khatib’s Class
Fall 2020

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 1

 (2)

The 1st Steps in preparing a speech are as follows:

1. Select & narrow your topic.

2. Determine your purpose.
3. Develop your central idea.
4. Generate your main idea.

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 2

Select & Narrow Your Topic (3)

 Guidelines for Selecting a Topic…

- Consider the audience

- Consider the occasion
- Consider yourself

 Strategies for Selecting a Topic…

- Brainstorming: A creative problem solving technique used to generate many ideas.

- Listening & reading for topic ideas

- Scanning web directories

 Narrowing the Topic..

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 3

Determine Your Purpose (4)

 General purpose- The broad reason for a speech: to inform, to persuade, or to entertain an audience.

 General purposes for speeches…

- To inform: To share information with listeners by defining, describing, or explaining a thing, person,
place, concept, process, or function.
- To persuade: To change or reinforce a listener’s attitude, belief, value, or behavior.
- To entertain: To help listeners have a good time by getting them to relax, smile, & laugh.

 Specific purpose- A statement of what listeners should be able to do by the end of the speech.

 Behavioral objective- Wording of a specific purpose in terms of desired audience behavior.

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Develop Your Central Idea (5)

- Central idea: A 1 sentence statement of what a speech is about.

- Declarative sentence: A grammatically complete sentence, rather than a clause, phrase, or question.

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 5

Generate & Preview Your Main Ideas (6)

 Generating your main ideas…

- Main points: Detailed points of focus for developing your central idea.
- Previewing your main ideas.

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 6

Meanwhile, Back at the Computer… (7)

- Blueprint: The central idea of a speech plus a preview of the main idea.

(COM 206) Oral Communication Fall 2020 7