effective Introductions 10.2 217
Identifying your main ideas helps to organize the message and enhances listeners’
learning.
The introduction to your speech, then, should get your audience’s attention,
give the audience a reason to listen, introduce the subject, establish your
credibility, and preview your main ideas. All this—and brevity too—might seem
impossible to achieve. But it isn’t!
Effective Introductions
10.2 list and discuss methods for introducing a speech.
With a little practice, you will be able to write satisfactory central ideas and pre-
view statements. It may be more difficult to gain your audience’s attention and
give them a reason to listen to you. Fortunately, there are several effective meth-
ods for developing speech introductions. Not every method is appropriate for
every speech, but chances are that you can discover among these alternatives at
least one type of introduction to fit the topic and purpose of your speech, what-
ever they might be. We will discuss ten ways of introducing a speech:
• Illustrations or anecdotes
• Startling facts or statistics
• Quotations
• Humor
• Questions
• References to historical events
• References to recent events
• Personal references
• References to the occasion
• References to preceding speechesIllustrations or Anecdotes
Not surprisingly, because it is the most inherently interesting type of supporting
material, an illustration or anecdote can provide the basis for an effective speech
introduction. In fact, if you have an especially compelling illustration that you
had planned to use in the body of the speech, you might do well to use it in your
introduction instead. A relevant and interesting anecdote will introduce your
subject and almost invariably gain an audience’s attention. Student speaker
Matt opened his speech on the dangers associated with the chemical BPA with
this extended illustration:
Three years ago Algeta McDonald’s life was taken by breast cancer.
She was an absolutely amazing Italian-American woman, who was10.2