Public Speaking students are often surprised at the amount of work that goes into delivering a strong speech.
- Develop an extemporaneous speech by following the steps of preparing a speech.
Process of Preparing a Speech
Many students are surprised by the amount of work that is required to deliver an extemporaneous speech. Public Speaking requires students to choose a topic, consider their audience, analyze the audience, consider their own biases to avoid ethnocentrism, research their topic, craft an outline, and practice the delivery of the speech. If you are thinking, “Oh! My!” You are right, “Oh, My”. This chapter will break down the importance of each step and highlight best practices for strong speech delivery.
Choosing a Topic
There is no “right” topic for a speech class; however, there are topics that are more suitable for a particular audience, the occasion of the speech, and the type of speech. Therefore, it is important for students to spend quality time in the brainstorming phase of selecting a topic and narrowing in on the scope of their speech.
Analyzing the Who, Why, and Where
Knowing and understanding your audience is one of the most important parts of developing an effective speech. The next steps in the speech making process include knowing and understanding your audience. What are their motives, intentions, and goals? You will be required to engage in an audience analysis process in order to learn your public speaking audience and tailor your speech to this particular audience. Stay tuned!
Topic Research: Gathering Materials and Evidence
You now have a topic and an understanding of the audience – you are ready to begin researching! You will use the library (your institution’s library, the local library, online databases, etc.) to begin researching. Researching takes time and skill. Simply going to Google, typing in a few keywords, and choosing the first three results, is not research. You will need to carve out hours of time to gather materials and evidence to support your claims. These skills will be introduced in the research section for both informative and persuasive speaking.
The Thesis Statement
In any opinion piece, written or spoken, the main argument – the thesis statement – comes at the end of your introduction. You want your audience to know right away the point you are trying to make. It is important to remember that your thesis statement only addresses one main issue; the ways in which you choose to support your thesis add complexity and depth to your speech.
Preparing Supporting Materials
Once you have solidified your position in your thesis statement, you want to back up your thesis with a variety of supporting ideas and examples. To do this, there are several ways you can support your claims while adding variety and interest to the overall story of your speech. In order to prepare supporting materials, you will need to consider elements of your research and determine how the research (facts, statistics, anecdotes, testimonies, etc.) fits into the main points of your speech. The main points will carry the main message of your speech; it is important to construct strong supporting materials.
Organizing and Outlining Your Speech
Now that you have decided on your topic, analyzed your audience, arrived at your thesis, and determined how you will support your claims, it is time to organize your notes and research into one coherent speech.
You did keep all of your notes centrally collected and easily accessible, right? If you put all of your research notes and thoughts onto notecards, it is particularly helpful to lay them out in front of you and begin to organize your points and sub-points in ways that make the most logical sense.
The main points of your speech will be supported by research; however, you will need to determine the order of the main points and how you present the information. In public speaking, we call these “organizational patterns”. The stronger the pattern, the easier it is to listen to a speaker AND the easier it is for the speaker to remember what comes next – it is like a road map! You should choose an organizational pattern that works for your speech topic and builds logically from one point to the next. There are several patterns to choose from; you will learn key differences between the patterns and the strategy behind utilization.
Public Speaking professors often lament that college students just simply read their outlines word-for-word. NOTE: This is NOT public speaking, it is public reading. There is very little skill involved in reading an outline in a public speaking class. The intention of this course is to deliver an extemporaneous speech. Therefore, it is recommended to take your polished outline and turn it into keyword note cards. Your note cards should have a few words or phrases to remind the speaker of what comes next. You should avoid long sentences and word-for-word phrasing. Less is more. After you have created your note cards, you should begin practicing your speech aloud.
Perfect does not exist in public speaking. However, pretty darn good DOES! The bolded concepts, when built upon, will allow a public speaker to begin the speech making process. Once you have gone through each step, you can then begin to put the pieces together. Then, when you are ready, you can practice your speech in front of a mirror, record yourself and watch your speech, or ask a peer to practice with you. You should practice using the method of delivery. Face to face? Practice in a classroom-type setting. Virtual? Practice on Zoom or Google Meet. You will also want to practice with your technology and/or props – forgetting to add this step is detrimental to students and their success. Practice as if your intended audience is in front of you.
As crafting a speech is a process, there are steps that must be followed – in order – to be successful. Below is a roadmap of the steps that will be addressed in the following readings.
As speech making is a process, this process will require time, effort, and pre-planning to execute effectively. Use the tool below and the syllabus to plan out your process to meet project deadlines for your informative speech (note: per the syllabus, you will have four weeks to work through your informative speech process).
Preparing a speech requires time, research, practice, and skill.
- Remember to plan ahead and give yourself enough time to plan and execute on your speaking expectations.
- Extemporaneous speaking requires a step-by-step process to be successful.
