ORGANIZATION

How Do We Organize

We want to avoid making our audience frustrated

or have them stop listening.
We prevent this by organizing our speech in a way
that makes sense to the topic and by having lots of
transitions.

Main Points

The first thing we must do is prepare 3-4 main

points or key ideas. These will become our main
points.
We decide what our main points will be and what
order they go in by picking an organizational
pattern.

This makes up the body of our speech.

Organizational Patterns

1. Chronological: MP organized by time

Could

be by dates, by the order things must be done,

etc.

2. Difficulty: MP organized by level of difficulty

3. Spatial: MP organized by space
Could

be geographical, physical structure, etc.

4. Causal (logical): MP organized by cause and

effect
5. Topical: main points are organized by topic
This

is one of the most common and easiest patterns.

Patterns Contd

5. Problem/Solution: MP organized by addressing a

problem and how to solve that problem
Need/Plan:

a variation of Problem/Solution

Need/Problem
Plan/Solution

plan that meets the need

how the plan works

Main Points Developed

The heart of your presentation comes in all the

information within the main points.
You organize your speech into 3-4 main points and
then you elaborate with supporting points and subpoints in outline format.

Transitions

The key to letting your audience know when you are

moving from one topic to the next are transitions.
These are statements that indicate the topic change.
I will ask you to use a chronological or directional
transition. Here you summarize your last point and
preview you next point.
Example:

Now that weve covered the houses in

Marshall County, lets move on and look at the condos
available.

Planning the Introduction

Functions of the Introduction

Securing attention Attention Getter

This is a sentence or more that captures the audiences attention.

There are many ways to capture your audience including direct questions,
shocking or interesting facts/statistics, stories, promises of something
beneficial, humor, and quotes

Orientation Setting the stage

Providing any necessary information so the audience will understand the

body of the speech

Providing background information, definitions, timeline info

Clarifies your central idea and purpose

What exactly will you be talking about

What are you seeking from your audience
At minimum, a preview of your main body

To Recap:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Secure Attention
Establish goodwill and credibility
Assure a fair hearing
Orient your audience to the subject
Make your central idea and
purpose clear
6. Offer a preview

Include all of these for a top notch introduction.

Doing so will ensure you set yourself up for successful delivery of meat (body) of
your speech!

Common Introduction Pitfalls

False Starts
Unnecessary
Apologies
Overstatement

Overtly shocking, offensive,

emotional language or
examples

Planning the Conclusion

Aristotle suggested that the major purpose of
the conclusion is to help the memory.

Functions of the Conclusion

A good conclusion offers:
Review
Reinforcement
Call to action
Sometimes we add:
Visualization
Restatement
Impression

Three Major Functions:

1. Review the central idea (tell em what
you told em)

2. Reinforce belief or action

desired (what do you want them to do?)
3. End with impact and impress
when appropriate

Common Conclusion Pitfalls

Avoid doing this:

Deprecation of Effort
Overamplification
Prolonged Close

Instead do this:

OWN it!
Simple restatement of
points already
covered
Short Concise and
Sweet