Real Communication An Introduction

368

After you have finished

reading this chapter,

you will be able to

Organize and support

your main points

Choose an appropriate

organizational pattern

for your speech

Move smoothly from

point to point

Choose appropriate and

powerful language

Develop a strong

introduction, a crucial

part of all speeches

Conclude with the same

strength as in the

introduction

Prepare an effective

outline

368

chapter

outcomes

magine that you are building a bridge, a skyscraper, or even a house. You

might have ambitious blueprints, but before you can build it, you need to

form a solid foundation and develop a structurally sound framework. Any archi-

tect will tell you that even the most exciting and lofty designs are useless without

these two crucial components. Skimp on either one and your structure will

crack, shift, or collapse.

Building a speech follows a similar process. Whether you are writing a

national address for the president of the United States or a five-minute class

presentation, you will be unable to make your point if your speech is not struc-

turally sound. As we discussed in Chapter 12, you begin with your idea and then

build your foundation with research and a clear thesis statement. The next step

is to develop your framework—the overall structure of your presentation. In this

chapter, we’ll focus on organizing all of your ideas and information into a clear

and practical framework and integrating them into a well-written speech. Let’s

begin by considering the main points of your speech.

Organizing Your Speech Points

You’ve got your purpose, your research, and your thesis. But before you begin

writing, it’s best to organize your ideas—to set out the points you want to make,

examples you plan to use to support them, and the basic order in which you

want to present them. And you will want to do all of this before you write your

introduction or conclusion. In this section, we’ll focus on identifying your main

points and developing your supporting points, in addition to considering useful

ways to arrange those points and connect them in your speech.

Identifying Your Main Points

First and foremost, you must determine the main points of your speech, which

are the central claims that support your specific speech purpose and your thesis

statement (which you learned about in Chapter 12). That is, you need to iden-

tify and organize key ideas that will lead the audience members to accept or

think about what you are asking them to do, believe, or consider.

Before you begin developing your main points, you may be wondering how

many you will need in your speech. Because each speech is unique, there is no

easy answer, but the general rule is that audiences have trouble remembering

more than three or four main points. This guideline will serve you well for the

purposes of your human communication course, but always check with your

instructor if you have questions.

With this in mind, let’s consider how main points work in action. Suppose

you’re giving a persuasive speech advocating for listeners to resist the tempta-

tion of texting while driving. What key points do you think will influence your

listeners to see the immediate dangers of this behavior? Perhaps they would be

motivated to do so if they knew the scope of the problem:

Main Point 1: Driver distraction, specifically mobile phone use while

operating a motor vehicle, is a growing problem in the United States.

I