198 9.4 Organizing and Outlining YOur Speech
Transitions, summaries, and previews are the glue that holds a speech together.
Such signposts can help you to achieve a coherent flow of ideas and help your
audience to remember those ideas. Unfortunately, you cannot guarantee that
your audience will be attentive to your signposts. In Chapter 1, we discussed the
concept of noise as it affects the public-speaking process. It is possible for your
listeners to be so distracted by internal or external noise that they fail to hear or
process even your most carefully planned verbal signposts.
One way in which you can increase the likelihood of your listeners’ attend-
ing to your signposting is to prepare and use presentation aids to supplement
your signposts. For example, you could display on PowerPointTM or similar
slide a bulleted or numbered outline of your main ideas as you initially preview
them in your introduction and again as you summarize them in your conclu-
sion. Some speakers prefer to use one slide for each main point. Transitions be-
tween points are emphasized as the speaker displays the next slide.
In Chapter 14, we discuss guidelines for developing and using such presen-
tation aids. Especially if your speech is long or its organization is complex, you
can help your audience to remember your organization if you provide visual
support for your signposts.Outlining Your Speech
9.4 develop a preparation outline and speaking notes for a speech.
Although few speeches are written in paragraph form, most speakers develop a
detailed preparation outline of the central idea, main ideas, and supporting ma-
terial. Depending on your instructor’s specific requirements, it may also include
your specific purpose, discussed in Chapter 7; your introduction and conclu-
sion, discussed in Chapter 10 and 11; and your references, discussed in Chapter- One CEO notes,
9.4
Quick check
Types of Signposts
• initial previews
• internal previews
• Verbal transitions
• nonverbal transitions
• Final summaries
• internal summaries