1. Organizing Your Speech

2. Organizing your speech: Introduction A disorganized speech will confuse your audience Clear organization: –Imposes order on your presentation –Helps audience grasp main and supporting points –Is critical in oral communications Bonus: A clearly structured speech enhances your credibility as a speaker.

3. Organizing your speech: An overview Effective organization involves: –Selecting your main points –Organizing your supporting materials –Arranging your main points –Using organizing words and sentences

4. Selecting your main points Structure the body of your speech around your main points, the ideas most important for your listeners to remember.

5. Selecting your main points: Consider your purpose Make sure every main point relates to your presentation’s purpose.

6. Selecting your main points: Take your audience into account Identify who your listeners are. Determine most interesting and useful information for audience.

7. Selecting your main points: Select an appropriate number of main points Limit main points to no more than five, each of which contains only one idea.

8. Selecting your main points: Select an appropriate number of main points To reduce too many main points to a manageable size: –Look for relationships between points for potential combinations. –Review audience analysis to see which points you can eliminate. –Evaluate which points are most important to your thesis, and omit the others.

9. Selecting your main points: Select an appropriate number of main points

10. Organizing your supporting materials Explain, prove, and expand on your main points with supporting materials (remember those from chapter 8?)

11. Organizing your supporting materials: Subordination Creating a hierarchy of points and supporting materials in your speech

12. Main points are the most important or highest level Supporting materials used to develop a main points are subpoints Materials that support subpoints are sub-subpoints Organizing your supporting materials: Subordination

13. Organizing your supporting materials: Coordination Each point at a certain outline level has the same degree of significance Each main point is: –coordinated with the other main points –coordinated with other subpoints

14. Organizing your supporting materials: When a subpoint doesn’t fit Reword a main point to include the additional information. Create another main point to include the new material.

15. If you decide you like this point and it has no supporting points… You can create an additional main point out of it.

16. Tips for organizing your supporting materials Tip: Be sure the number of supporting points you have is appropriate for the time limit of the speech. If you have too many consider further narrowing your topic. Tip: If you are having difficulty relating all your main points to your specific purpose, look at your thesis again. Maybe it is too broad, too specific, or contains more than one idea.

17. Arranging your main points There are several common methods for speech organization: –Spatial –Temporal –Causal –Comparison –Problem-cause-solution –Criteria application –Narrative –Categorical

18. Arranging your main points: Spatial pattern Each point can be seen geographically or physically

19. Arranging your main points: Temporal pattern Each point is in a chronological (time-based) sequence.

20. Arranging your main points: Causal pattern The points reveal a cause-and-effect relationship.

21. Arranging your main points: Comparison pattern The points discuss major similarities and differences between two items.

22. Arranging your main points: Problem-cause-solution pattern The points persuade your audience to take action or support a specific policy by: –arguing that a problem exists –identifying the causes –proposing a solution

23. Problem-cause-solution pattern

24. Arranging your main points: Criteria-application pattern The pattern proposes standards and then applies those standards to your topic.

25. Arranging your main points: Narrative pattern Each point is a story event that uses characters and a plot to convey your message.

26. Arranging your main points: Categorical pattern Each point represents an important aspect of your topic.

27. Tips for arranging your main points Tip: You should let your specific purpose determine the speech’s organization. For example, if you want to discuss the best coffee chains in your city you may want to consider a categorical pattern, but if you want to persuade your audience that coffee drinking causes cancer, you may want to use a problem-cause- solution pattern. Tip: If you are having trouble organizing your points, reevaluate your organizational pattern or your specific purpose.

28. Using organizing words and sentences To make it easy for your audience to listen to and understand your speech, you should insert organizing words and sentences throughout your speech. These include: –Transitions –Signposts –Internal previews

29. Using organizing words and sentences: Transitions Sentences that link one point in your speech to the next

30. Using organizing words and sentences: Signposts Words or phrases in sentences that help audiences understand a speech's structure

31. Using organizing words and sentences: Internal previews and summaries Internal previews present a short list of the ideas that follow. Internal summaries review what you just said about the main points.