Tips for Beginning to Draft First Informative Speech  - Topic, SP, Thesis - Speech I

                                                                                                                                                                - Barry Preston

1. Pick a good Topic: Rely on your own knowledge, make sure it is appropriate for the audience, make it easy for audience to understand, pick something you are interested in, make it informative, descriptive, not persuasive, it should be narrow versus broad, topic should provide new information.  Also, give good details!  Instead of saying just "the shark bit me on the leg"; say "the great white shark, 20 footer, bit into my leg right above the knee"; details can carry a speech.  Think you are "giving" the audience something with your informative speaking.  What are you giving them?  Good details!  That will keep them interested in your speech...:-)

2. Draft a clear Specific Purpose: Goal of the speech in a sentence that contains 1 idea. Should include prefix, “to inform or to describe or to educate”. Should be written like, “Today I will inform you about my topic: (put topic here).
   
   EX. “Today I will inform you about my trip to Acapulco!” One idea, one sentence including “inform you”.
   
   ***The SP is the key to your speech. It is delivered right after the attention getter and tells the audience **exactly** what you will be speaking about. Remember the golden rule: If the audience can’t figure out what you are saying, they won’t listen and they actually tune you out. (heaven forbid!).

3. Draft a clear Thesis: The body of the speech in one sentence, using commas to separate the main ideas. It is also called the hub of the speech, think of a bike tire and the spokes being the main ideas. (what an analogy!) The thesis should be drafted so if someone comes into class late, and they hear only your thesis, they will know what your body parts are. It takes a few tries to draft a solid thesis, but in concept, it’s actually easy, much easier than your traditional English I thesis. It’s a **speaking thesis! It’s delivered right after the SP because the SP tells the audience what you are going to tell them, the thesis tells the audience how you will do it.
   
   EX - If my main points to my Acapulco speech are:
   I. The Famous Cliff Divers
   II. The Hotel Suicide
   III. My Parasailing Adventure
   
   My thesis would be: While on my trip to Acapulco I saw the famous Cliff Divers, a dangerous hotel suicide, and went on a wild parasailing adventure!

4. Body Points should be organized either chronologically (by time) or topically (by topic).  Some speeches are better delivered using the topical approach.  In the Acapulco speech above, I organized it topically.  I picked the topics that I thought were interesting about my trip to relate to the audience.  I could have done it chronologically, but I was there two days and I did too much!  Come on, it was Acapulco!