developing an audience-Centered informative speech 15.6 337
Select and Narrow Your Informative Topic
During the early stages of preparing your message, ask yourself, and answer,
the question “What do they already know about my topic?” If you misjudge
what an audience already knows about your topic, that misjudgment may ham-
per your development of an effective and precise specific-purpose statement.
You should also consider the question “How interested are they in my
topic?” If your audience is both knowledgeable about and interested in your
topic, you can provide greater detail and build on the information audience
members already have. If they are likely to be uninterested or uninformed, then
you’ll need to establish, early in your message, a clear and engaging reason why
they should tune you in.
Determine Your Informative Purpose
You already know that your general purpose is to inform. You also need to
develop a specific behavioral purpose. That is, you need to identify what you’d
like the audience to be able to do when you finish your speech. “Wait a minute,”
you might think. “Shouldn’t an informative speech be about what the audience
should learn rather than do?” Yes, your purpose is focused on what you want the
audience to learn, but we suggest that you phrase your learning goal in terms of
behavior. The How To box gives some suggestions for formulating your specific-
purpose statement.
Develop Your Central Idea
With a clear and precise specific-purpose sentence, you’ll be better prepared
to identify your central idea—a one-sentence summary of your message.
Rather than a fuzzy central-idea sentence such as “C. S. Lewis wrote the Narnia
Formulate Your Informative Specific-Purpose Statement
• Use behavioral verbs. Say what you want your audience members to state, restate, describe,
enumerate, identify, list, summarize, or otherwise do to demonstrate their learning, rather
than merely indicating that you want your audience to know or appreciate some general
information.
• Be precise. Give numbers or other benchmarks to describe the behavior in your verb. A pre-
cise specific-purpose sentence will guide you as you develop your central idea and main ideas,
and it is especially important when you organize your message.
• Think of your specific-purpose sentence as a test question. Imagine that you’re writing a test
for your audience. You might never actually ask your audience your “test question,” but by
thinking of your specific purpose as a test question, you’ll have a clearer goal in mind, one that
will help you in other areas of preparing your message. For example, a test question that asks
what you know about why The Chronicles of Narnia were written is less specific than a ques-
tion that asks you to identify three reasons why the stories were written.HOW TO