Public Speaking

Plan Your Introduction (^127)

Plan Your Introduction

Chapter 2 points out that the Roman educator Quintilian identified four purposes for

an introduction:^1

1. To draw your listeners’ attention to the topic


2. To motivate your audience to listen


3. To establish yourself as knowledgeable about the topic


4. To preview the major ideas of your speech

Here, you can also provide definitions or background information that your

listeners need. These four elements of an introduction serve to answer four basic

audience questions: What’s this all about? Why should I listen? Why should I listen to

you? What will you cover? Figure 10.1 depicts these four introductory functions.

Gain Attention

Gaining attention is the first step in the listening process, so it’s important to answer

immediately your audience’s question, What’s this speech about? True, saying, “My speech

is about... [and then announcing your subject]” introduces your topic, but less effec-

tively than one of the several attention-gaining strategies that follow.

Ask a Question

Both rhetorical questions, those that listeners answer mentally, and participatory

questions, those that ask for an overt response, such as a show of hands, work well. For

his speech on the psychology of resilience, this speaker referred to a major flood in the

area and then asked a series of rhetorical questions:^2

Read, highlight, and take

notes online.

rhetorical question question

that listeners answer in their

minds

participatory question

question that listeners

answer overtly

© 2014 Cengage Learning®/Microsoft Image

Figure 10.1

Four audience Questions

Your introduction functions

to answer these four

questions.

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