Show Read this article to learn how to choose your main points and an appropriate speech pattern. In a series of important and ground-breaking studies conducted during the 1950s and 1960s, researchers started investigating how a speech's organization was related to audience perceptions of those speeches. The first study, conducted by Raymond Smith in 1951, randomly organized the parts of a speech to see how audiences would react. Not surprisingly, when speeches were randomly organized, the audience perceived the speech more negatively than when audiences were presented with a speech with clear, intentional organization. Smith also found that audiences who listened to unorganized speeches were less interested in those speeches than audiences who listened to organized speeches. Smith, R. G. (1951). An experimental study of the effects of speech organization upon the attitudes of college students. Speech Monographs, 18, 292–301. Thompson furthered this investigation and found that unorganized speeches were also harder for audiences to recall after the speech. Basically, people remember information from speeches that are clearly organized – and forget information from speeches that are poorly organized. Thompson, E. C. (1960). An experimental investigation of the relative effectiveness of organizational structure in oral communication. Southern Speech Journal, 26, 59–69. A third study by Baker found that when audiences were presented with a disorganized speaker, they were less likely to be persuaded, and saw the disorganized speaker as lacking credibility. Baker, E. E. (1965). The immediate effects of perceived speaker disorganization on speaker credibility and audience attitude change in persuasive speaking. Western Speech, 29, 148–161. These three very important studies make the importance of organization very clear. When speakers are not organized they are not perceived as credible and their audiences view the speeches negatively, are less likely to be persuaded, and do not remember specific information from the speeches after the fact. We start this chapter discussing these studies because we want you to understand the importance of speech organization on real audiences. If you are not organized, your speech will never have its intended effect. In this chapter, we are going to discuss the basics of organizing the body of your speech. Determining Your Main IdeasWhen creating a speech, it is important to remember that speeches have three clear parts: an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The introduction establishes the topic and whets your audience's appetite, and the conclusion wraps everything up at the end of your speech. The real meat of your speech happens in the body. In this section, we are going to discuss how to think strategically about the body of your speech. We like the word strategic because it refers to determining what is important or essential to the overall plan or purpose of your speech. Too often, new speakers just throw information together and stand up and start speaking. When that happens, audience members are left confused and the reason for the speech may get lost. To avoid being seen as disorganized, we want you to start thinking critically about the organization of your speech. In this section, we will discuss how to take your speech from a specific purpose to creating the main points of your speech. What Is Your Specific Purpose?Before we discuss how to determine the main points of your speech, we want to revisit your speech's specific purpose. Recall that a speech can have one of three general purposes: to inform, to persuade, or to entertain. The general purpose refers to the broad goal for creating and delivering the speech. The specific purpose, on the other hand, starts with one of those broad goals (inform, persuade, or entertain) and then further informs the listener about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the speech. The specific purpose is stated as a sentence incorporating the general purpose, the specific audience for the speech, and a prepositional phrase that summarizes the topic. Suppose you are going to give a speech about using open-source software. Here are three examples (each with a different general purpose and a different audience):
From Specific Purpose to Main PointsOnce you have written down your specific purpose, you can now start thinking about the best way to turn that specific purpose into a series of main points. Main points are the key ideas you present to enable your speech to accomplish its specific purpose. In this section, we are going to discuss how to determine your main points and how to organize those main points into a coherent, strategic speech. How Many Main Points Do I Need?While there is no magic number for how many main points a speech should have, speech experts generally agree that the fewer the number of main points the better. First and foremost, experts on the subject of memory have consistently shown that people do not tend to remember very much after they listen to a message or leave a conversation. Bostrom, R. N., & Waldhart, E. S. (1988). Memory models and the measurement of listening. Communication Education, 37, 1–13. While many different factors can affect a listener's ability to retain information after a speech, how the speech is organized is an important part of that process. Dunham, J. R. (1964). Voice contrast and repetition in speech retention (Doctoral dissertation). An experimental study of the effects of speech organization upon the attitudes of college students. Speech Monographs, 18, 292–301; Thompson, E. C. (1960). An experimental investigation of the relative effectiveness of organizational structure in oral communication. Southern Speech Journal, 26, 59–69. For the speeches you will be delivering in a typical public speaking class, you will usually have just two or three main points. If your speech is less than three minutes long, then two main points will probably work best. If your speech is between three and ten minutes in length, then it makes more sense to use three main points. You may be wondering why we are recommending only two or three main points. The reason comes straight out of the research on listening. According to LeFrancois, people are more likely to remember information that is meaningful, useful, and of interest to them; different or unique; organized; visual; and simple. LeFrancois, G. R. (1999). Psychology for teaching (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Two or three main points are much easier for listeners to remember than ten or even five. In addition, if you have two or three main points, you will be able to develop each one with examples, statistics, or other forms of support. Including support for each point will make your speech more interesting and more memorable for your audience. Narrowing Down Your Main PointsWhen you write your specific purpose and review the research you have done on your topic, you will probably find yourself thinking of quite a few points that you would like to make in your speech. Whether that is the case or not, we recommend taking a few minutes to brainstorm and develop a list of points. In brainstorming, your goal is simply to think of as many different points as you can, not to judge how valuable or important they are. What information does your audience need to know to understand your topic? What information does your speech need to convey to accomplish its specific purpose? Consider the following example:
Your goal in narrowing down your main points is to identify which individual, potentially minor points can be combined to make main points. This process is called chunking because it involves taking smaller chunks of information and putting them together with like chunks to create more fully developed chunks of information. Before reading our chunking of the preceding list, see if you can determine three large chunks out of the list (note that not all chunks are equal).
Helpful Hints for Preparing Your Main PointsNow that we have discussed how to take a specific purpose and turn it into a series of main points, here are some helpful hints for creating your main points. Uniting Your Main PointsOnce you have generated a possible list of main points, you want to ask yourself this question: "When you look at your main points, do they fit together?" For example, if you look at the three preceding main points (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider), ask yourself, "Do these main points help my audience understand my specific purpose?" Suppose you added a fourth main point about open-source software for musicians – would this fourth main point go with the other three? Probably not. While you may have a strong passion for open-source music software, that main point is extraneous information for the speech you are giving. It does not help accomplish your specific purpose, so you would need to toss it out. Keeping Your Main Points SeparateThe next question to ask yourself about your main points is whether they overlap too much. While some overlap may happen naturally because of the singular nature of a specific topic, the information covered within each main point should be clearly distinct from the other main points. Imagine you are giving a speech with the specific purpose "to inform my audience about the health reasons for eating apples and oranges". You could then have three main points: that eating fruits is healthy, that eating apples is healthy, and that eating oranges is healthy. While the two points related to apples and oranges are clearly distinct, both of those main points would probably overlap too much with the first point "that eating fruits is healthy", so you would probably decide to eliminate the first point and focus on the second and third. On the other hand, you could keep the first point and then develop two new points giving additional support to why people should eat fruit. Balancing Main PointsOne of the biggest mistakes some speakers make is to spend most of their time talking about one of their main points, completely neglecting their other main points. To avoid this mistake, organize your speech so as to spend roughly the same amount of time on each main point. If you find that one of your main points is simply too large, you may need to divide that main point into two main points and consolidate your other main points into a single main point. Let's see if our preceding example is balanced (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider). What do you think? Obviously, the answer depends on how much time a speaker will have to talk about each of these main points. If you have an hour to talk, then you may find that these three main points are balanced. However, you may also find them wildly unbalanced if you only have five minutes to speak because five minutes is not enough time to even explain what open-source software is. If that is the case, then you probably need to rethink your specific purpose to ensure that you can cover the material in the allotted time. Creating Parallel Structure for Main PointsAnother major question to ask yourself about your main points is whether or not they have a parallel structure. By parallel structure, we mean that you should structure your main points so that they all sound similar. When all your main points sound similar, it is simply easier for your audiences to remember your main points and retain them for later. Let's look at our sample (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider). Notice that the first and third main points are statements, but the second one is a question. Basically, we have an example here of main points that are not parallel in structure. You could fix this in one of two ways. You could make them all questions: what are some common school district software programs; what is open-source software; and what are some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider. Or you could turn them all into statements: school districts use software in their operations; define and describe open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider. Either of these changes will make the grammatical structure of the main points parallel. Maintaining Logical Flow of Main PointsThe last question you want to ask yourself about your main points is whether the main points make sense in the order you have placed them. The next section goes into more detail of common organizational patterns for speeches, but for now we want you to just think logically about the flow of your main points. When you look at your main points, can you see them as progressive, or does it make sense to talk about one first, another one second, and the final one last? If you look at your order, and it does not make sense to you, you probably need to think about the flow of your main points. Often, this process is an art and not a science. But let's look at a couple of examples.
Using Common Organizing PatternsPreviously in this chapter, we discussed how to make your main points flow logically. This section is going to provide you with a number of organizational patterns to help you create a logically organized speech. The first organizational pattern we will discuss is categorical/topical. Categorical/TopicalBy far the most common pattern for organizing a speech is by categories or topics. The categories function as a way to help the speaker organize the message in a consistent fashion. The goal of a categorical/topical speech pattern is to create categories (or chunks) of information that go together to help support your original specific purpose. Let's look at an example.
Comparison/ContrastAnother method for organizing main points is the comparison/contrast speech pattern. While this pattern clearly lends itself easily to two main points, you can also create a third point by giving basic information about what is being compared and what is being contrasted. Let's look at two examples; the first one will be a two-point example and the second a three-point example.
SpatialThe spatial speech pattern organizes information according to how things fit together in physical space. This pattern is best used when your main points are oriented to different locations that can exist independently. The basic reason to choose this format is to show that the main points have clear locations. We will look at two examples here, one involving physical geography and one involving a different spatial order.
Now let's look at a spatial speech unrelated to geography.
ChronologicalThe chronological speech pattern places the main idea in the time order in which items appear – whether backward or forward. Here is a simple example.
BiographicalAs you might guess, the biographical speech pattern is generally used when a speaker wants to describe a person's life – either a speaker's own life, the life of someone they know personally, or the life of a famous person. By the nature of this speech organizational pattern, these speeches tend to be informative or entertaining; they are usually not persuasive. Let's look at an example.
In this example, these three stages are presented in chronological order, but the biographical pattern does not have to be chronological. For example, it could compare and contrast different periods of the subject's life, or it could focus topically on the subject's different accomplishments. CausalThe causal speech pattern is used to explain cause-and-effect relationships. When you use a causal speech pattern, your speech will have two basic main points: cause and effect. In the first main point, typically you will talk about the causes of a phenomenon, and in the second main point you will then show how the causes lead to either a specific effect or a small set of effects. Let's look at an example.
However, a causal organizational pattern can also begin with an effect and then explore one or more causes. In the following example, the effect is the number of arrests for domestic violence.
Problem-Cause-SolutionAnother format for organizing distinct main points in a clear manner is the problem-cause-solution speech pattern. In this format, you describe a problem, identify what you believe is causing the problem, and then recommend a solution to correct the problem.
PsychologicalA further way to organize your main ideas within a speech is through a psychological speech pattern in which "a" leads to "b" and "b" leads to "c". This speech format is designed to follow a logical argument, so this format lends itself to persuasive speeches very easily. Let's look at an example.
Selecting an Organizational PatternEach of the preceding organizational patterns is potentially useful for organizing the main points of your speech. However, not all organizational patterns work for all speeches. For example, as we mentioned earlier, the biographical pattern is useful when you are telling the story of someone's life. Some other patterns, particularly comparison/contrast, problem-cause-solution, and psychological, are well suited for persuasive speaking. Your challenge is to choose the best pattern for the particular speech you are giving. You will want to be aware that it is also possible to combine two or more organizational patterns to meet the goals of a specific speech. For example, you might wish to discuss a problem and then compare/contrast several different possible solutions for the audience. Such a speech would thus be combining elements of the comparison/contrast and problem-cause-solution patterns. When considering which organizational pattern to use, you need to keep in mind your specific purpose as well as your audience and the actual speech material itself to decide which pattern you think will work best.
Keeping Your Speech MovingHave you ever been listening to a speech or a lecture and found yourself thinking, "I am so lost!" or "Where the heck is this speaker going?" Chances are one of the reasons you were not sure what the speaker was talking about was that the speaker did not effectively keep the speech moving. When we are reading and encounter something we do not understand, we have the ability to reread the paragraph and try to make sense of what we are trying to read. Unfortunately, we are not that lucky when it comes to listening to a speaker. We cannot pick up our universal remote and rewind the person. For this reason, speakers need to really think about how they keep a speech moving so that audience members are easily able to keep up with the speech. In this section, we are going to look at four specific techniques speakers can use that make following a speech much easier for an audience: transitions, internal previews, internal summaries, and signposts. Transitions between Main PointsA transition is a phrase or sentence that indicates that a speaker is moving from one main point to another main point in a speech. Basically, a transition is a sentence where the speaker summarizes what was said in one point and previews what is going to be discussed in the next point. Let's look at some examples:
You will notice that in each of these transition examples, the beginning phrase of the sentence indicates the conclusion of a period of time (now that, thus far). Table 1 Transition Words contains a variety of transition words that will be useful when keeping your speech moving.
Table 1 Transition Words Beyond transitions, there are several other techniques that you can use to clarify your speech organization for your audience. The next sections address several of these techniques, including internal previews, internal summaries, and signposts. Internal PreviewsAn internal preview is a phrase or sentence that gives an audience an idea of what is to come within a section of a speech. An internal preview works similarly to the preview that a speaker gives at the end of a speech introduction, quickly outlining what he or she is going to talk about (i.e., the speech's three main body points). In an internal preview, the speaker highlights what he or she is going to discuss within a specific main point during a speech. Ausubel was the first person to examine the effect that internal previews had on retention of oral information. Ausubel, D. P. (1968). Educational psychology. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Basically, when a speaker clearly informs an audience what he or she is going to be talking about in a clear and organized manner, the audience listens for those main points, which leads to higher retention of the speaker's message. Let's look at a sample internal preview: To help us further understand why recycling is important, we will first explain the positive benefits of recycling and then explore how recycling can help our community. When an audience hears that you will be exploring two different ideas within this main point, they are ready to listen for those main points as you talk about them. In essence, you are helping your audience keep up with your speech. Rather than being given alone, internal previews often come after a speaker has transitioned to that main topic area. Using the previous internal preview, let's see it along with the transition to that main point. Now that we have explored the effect that a lack of consistent recycling has on our community, let's explore the importance of recycling for our community (transition). To help us further understand why recycling is important, we will first explain the positive benefits of recycling and then explore how recycling can help our community (internal preview). While internal previews are definitely helpful, you do not need to include one for every main point of your speech. In fact, we recommend that you use internal previews sparingly to highlight only main points containing relatively complex information. Internal SummariesWhereas an internal preview helps an audience know what you are going to talk about within a main point at the beginning, an internal summary is delivered to remind an audience of what they just heard within the speech. In general, internal summaries are best used when the information within a specific main point of a speech was complicated. To write your own internal summaries, look at the summarizing transition words in Table 1 Transition Words. Let's look at an example. To sum up, school bullying is a definite problem. Bullying in schools has been shown to be detrimental to the victim's grades, the victim's scores on standardized tests, and the victim's future educational outlook. In this example, the speaker was probably talking about the impact that bullying has on an individual victim educationally. Of course, an internal summary can also be a great way to lead into a transition to the next point of a speech. In this section, we have explored how bullying in schools has been shown to be detrimental to the victim's grades, the victim's scores on standardized tests, and the victim's future educational outlook (internal summary). Therefore, schools need to implement campus-wide, comprehensive antibullying programs (transition). While not sounding like the more traditional transition, this internal summary helps readers summarize the content of that main point. The sentence that follows then leads to the next major part of the speech, which is going to discuss the importance of antibullying programs. SignpostsHave you ever been on a road trip and watched the green rectangular mile signs pass you by? Fifty miles to go. Twenty-five miles to go. One mile to go. Signposts within a speech function the same way. A signpost is a guide a speaker gives her or his audience to help the audience keep up with the content of a speech. If you look at Table 1 Transition Words and look at the "common sequence patterns", you will see a series of possible signpost options. In essence, we use these short phrases at the beginning of a piece of information to help our audience members keep up with what we are discussing. For example, if you were giving a speech whose main point was about the three functions of credibility, you could use internal signposts like this:
Signposts are simply meant to help your audience keep up with your speech, so the more simplistic your signposts are, the easier it is for your audience to follow. In addition to helping audience members keep up with a speech, signposts can also be used to highlight specific information the speaker thinks is important. Where the other signposts were designed to show the way (like highway markers), signposts that call attention to specific pieces of information are more like billboards. Words and phrases that are useful for highlighting information can be found in Table 1 Transition Words under the category "emphasis". All these words are designed to help you call attention to what you are saying so that the audience will also recognize the importance of the information.
Analyzing a Speech BodyThus far this chapter has focused on how you go about creating main points and organizing the body of your speech. In this section we are going to examine the three main points of an actual speech. Before we start analyzing the introduction, please read the paragraphs that follow. Smart Dust Speech BodyTo help us understand smart dust, we will begin by first examining what smart dust is. Dr. Kris Pister, a professor in the robotics lab at the University of California at Berkeley, originally conceived the idea of smart dust in 1998 as part of a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to a 2001 article written by Bret Warneke, Matt Last, Brian Liebowitz, and Kris Pister titled "Smart Dust: Communicating with a Cubic-Millimeter Computer" published in Computer, Pister's goal was to build a device that contained a built-in sensor, communication device, and a small computer that could be integrated into a cubic millimeter package. For comparison purposes, Doug Steel, in a 2005 white paper titled "Smart Dust" written for C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, noted that a single grain of rice has a volume of five cubic millimeters. Each individual piece of dust, called a mote, would then have the ability to interact with other motes and supercomputers. As Steve Lohr wrote in the January 30, 2010, edition of the New York Times in an article titled "Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We're Getting There", smart dust could eventually consist of "tiny digital sensors, strewn around the globe, gathering all sorts of information and communicating with powerful computer networks to monitor, measure, and understand the physical world in new ways". Now that we have examined what smart dust is, let's switch gears and talk about some of the military applications for smart dust. Because smart dust was originally conceptualized under a grant from DARPA, military uses of smart dust have been widely theorized and examined. According to the Smart Dust website, smart dust could eventually be used for "battlefield surveillance, treaty monitoring, transportation monitoring, scud hunting" and other clear military applications. Probably the number one benefit of smart dust in the military environment is its surveillance abilities. Major Scott Dickson in a Blue Horizons Paper written for the Center for Strategy and Technology for the United States Air Force Air War College, sees smart dust as helping the military in battlespace awareness, homeland security, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) identification. Furthermore, Major Dickson also believes it may be possible to create smart dust that has the ability to defeat communications jamming equipment created by foreign governments, which could help the U.S. military to not only communicate among itself, but could also increase communications with civilians in military combat zones. On a much larger scale, smart dust could even help the U.S. military and NASA protect the earth. According to a 2010 article written by Jessica Griggs in New Scientist, one of the first benefits of smart dust could be an early defense warning for space storms and other debris that could be catastrophic. Now that we have explored some of the military benefits of smart dust, let's switch gears and see how smart dust may be able to have an impact on our daily lives. According to the smart dust project website, smart dust could quickly become a part of our daily lives. Everything from pasting smart dust particles to our finger tips to create a virtual computer keyboard to inventory control to product quality control have been discussed as possible applications for smart dust. Steve Lohr in his 2010 New York Times article wrote, "The applications for sensor-based computing, experts say, include buildings that manage their own energy use, bridges that sense motion and metal fatigue to tell engineers they need repairs, cars that track traffic patterns and report potholes, and fruit and vegetable shipments that tell grocers when they ripen and begin to spoil". Medically, according to the smart dust project website, smart dust could help disabled individuals interface with computers. Theoretically, we could all be injected with smart dust, which relays information to our physicians and detects adverse changes to our body instantly. Smart dust could detect the microscopic formations of cancer cells or alert us when we have been infected by a bacteria or virus, which could speed up treatment and prolong all of our lives. Now that you have had a chance to read the body of the speech on smart dust, take a second and attempt to conduct your own analysis of the speech's body. What are the main points? Do you think the main points make sense? What organizational pattern is used? Are there clear transitions? What other techniques are used to keep the speech moving? Is evidence used to support the speech? Once you are done analyzing the speech body, look at Table 2 Smart Dust Speech Body Analysis, which presents our basic analysis of the speech's body.
Table 2 Smart Dust Speech Body Analysis Source: Writing Commons, https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_stand-up-speak-out-the-practice-and-ethics-of-public-speaking/s13-creating-the-body-of-a-speech.html Last modified: Wednesday, September 23, 2020, 1:25 PM Page 2
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