Speech Outlining: Key Elements for Effective Delivery
Key Elements of Speech Outlining
Main Points: Complete sentence statements of the two to four central ideas the audience needs to understand for your speech goal to be realized.
Thesis Statement: A one or two sentence summary of the speech that incorporates the general and specific goals and previews the main points.
Speech Outline Structure
A speech outline is a sentence representation of the hierarchical and sequential relationships among the ideas presented in the speech. When you have the thesis statement, you can begin outlining the main points that will make up the body of your speech.
Types of Speech Outlines
Formal Outline: A full sentence outline of your speech that includes internal references and a reference list.
Preparation Outline: Provides a starting point of main points but doesn’t specify clearly how each main point is related to the goal.
Organizing Your Speech
Parallel Structure: When the wording of points follows the same structural pattern, often using the same introductory words.
Organizational Patterns
Time Order: Organizing the main points of the speech in a chronological sequence or by steps in a process is appropriate when you are showing others how to do or make something or how something works.
Narrative Order: Organizing the main points of the speech as a story or series of stories.
Topic Order: Organizing the main points of the speech by categories or divisions of a subject.
Logical Reasons Order: Organizing the main points of a persuasive speech by the reasons that support the speech goal.
Connecting with Your Audience
Listener Relevance Link: A statement alerting listeners about how a main point or sub-point relates to them or why they should care about it.
Developing Sub-Points
Identifying Sub-Points: You can identify sub-points by sorting the research cards you prepared earlier into piles that correspond to each of your main points.
Outlining Sub-Points: Sub-points should also be represented on the outline in full sentences.
Supporting Material: Developmental material that will be used in the speech, including personal experiences, examples, illustrations, anecdotes, statistics, and quotations.
Transitions and Signposts
Transitions: Words, phrases, or sentences that show a relationship between, or bridge, two ideas.
Section Transitions: Complete sentences that show the relationship between, or bridge, major parts of a speech.
Signposts: Words or phrases that connect pieces of supporting material to the main point or sub-point they address.
Primacy-Recency Effect: The tendency to remember the first and last items conveyed orally in a series rather than the items in between.
Crafting the Introduction
Once you have your body of the speech, you can create the introduction.
Get attention in the introduction.
Attention-Getting Techniques
Startling Statement: A sentence or two that grabs your listener’s attention by shocking them in some way.
Rhetorical Question: A question that seeks a mental rather than a direct response.
Direct Question: A question that demands an overt response from the audience, usually by a show of hands.
Story: An account of something that has happened or could happen.
Joke: An anecdote or a piece of wordplay designed to be funny and make people laugh.
Personal Reference: A brief story about something that happened to you or a hypothetical situation that listeners can imagine themselves in.
Quotation: A comment made by and attributed to someone other than the speaker.
Action: An attention-getting act designed to highlight your topic or purpose.
Creating Suspense: Wording an attention getter so that what is described generates initial uncertainty or mystery and excites the audience.
Concluding Your Speech
The conclusion will be a relatively short part of the speech. Goals are to review the goal of the main point and provide a sense of closure that leaves the audience with a vivid impression of your message.
Conclusion Strategies
Clincher: A one or two sentence statement in a conclusion that provides a sense of closure by driving home the importance of your speech in a memorable way.
Appeal to Action: A statement in a conclusion that describes the behavior you want your listeners to follow after they have heard your arguments.