For each major section of your presentation, follow the “4 S Structure” 1: Organize your talk logically and clearly around 2-3 main points or arguments.

Preview the presentation’s structure, content or approach to let the audience know how the presentation will unfold.

Let your audience know what they’ll learn. Now that your audience knows why they should care, state your thesis or goal. Watch Simon Sinek’s TED talk for inspiration. The best presentations begin by answering “why.” In other words, why you are excited about your research or speech topic, and most important, why the audience should care. Start with a story, a startling statement, statistic, or a question that grabs your audience’s attention. Ultimately, the outline of your speech will have an introduction, a body and a conclusion. You can’t introduce what you haven’t written yet, so begin with the body of the speech first. Now that you have your purpose statement, you can write your Introduction, right? WRONG!īegin writing your speech by outlining the body of the speech first.

It gives you a way to evaluate how successful you were after your presentation.

(three ways to turn data into charts vote because it’s affordable, quick and lasting the two to three ways my research might predict sustainability on Mars.)

It basically writes the body of your speech for you.

It keeps you “one sentence clear.” You know where you’re headed with the audience.

My purpose is to inspire my audience by sharing research that may predict sustainable life on Mars.Ī purpose statement is critical in speech planning because:.

My purpose is to persuade my audience to vote for this new idea because it’s affordable, quick to implement and will have long-lasting positive impact.

My purpose is to teach my audience three ways they can turn data into clear, useful charts.

Purpose statements are ambitious, active and audience focused. Where are you taking your audience? We call this your PURPOSE, and speakers often begin their planning by writing a purpose statement.

You don’t want to lose your audience, so plan for a clear beginning (introduction), middle (body) and end (conclusion).įIRST: Decide where you’re going. I like to think of a speech as a journey that you and your audience take together. Good news! You can get your point across in one shot with structure.

When speaking in front of a live audience, however, you only have one shot at getting your point across. If an essay’s ideas aren’t clear, its audience can read the words over and over again. A public presentations’ audience, however, understands the speaker’s ideas by seeing, hearing and “feeling” the speaker by using their eyes, ears and heart. The essay’s audience-a reader-takes in the written ideas through the eyes. The biggest difference between preparing a speech and preparing an essay is the audience. “A Speech is not an essay up on its hind legs!”

Conclusion signpost speech