9. Organizing Your Speech

Question 1

Organizing Your Main Ideas

Answer 1

Main ideas can be (in U.S style):

chronological (historical and how-to speeches)
topical (e.g types of infertility treatments, selecting a mountain bike, etc.)
spatial (e.g Heard Museum in Phoenix, the travels of Robert louis Stevenson, makeup of an atom)
causal (e.g widespread adult illiteracy)
problem-solution (e.g how can crimes on university campus be reduced)

Structure (for all of them) : Purpose Statement - Central idea - Main ideas

Question 2

Organizing Your Supporting Material

Answer 2

Primacy - most important material 1st
Recency - most important material last
Specificity - specific info to general overview or vice-versa
Complexity - from simple to more complex material
Soft to hard evidence - from opinion or hypothetical illustration to fact/statistic.

Question 3

Developing Signposts

Answer 3

Signposts = words and gestures that allow you to move smoothly from one idea to the next throughout your speech.

Transitions: spk finishes one idea and moves to another.
a) verbal - In addition to / Not only… as well / In other words / In summary / Therefore.
b) nonverbal - pause, movement

Previews: we will look at the root of it and then move to … and finally to ….

Summaries: final (end of the speech) and internal (within or throughout a speech)

+ Supplementing Signposts With Visual Aids