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Learning Objectives

  1. Revisit the function of a specific purpose.
  2. Use a specific purpose to create a series of main points.
  3. Narrow a speech from all the possible points to the main points.
  4. Explain how to prepare meaningful main points.

A man with a lightbulb above his head

Every speech has three parts: the introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction establishes the topic and whets your audience’s appetite, and the conclusion wraps everything up at the end of your speech. The real “meat” of your speech happens in the body. In this section, we’re going to discuss how to think strategically about the body of your speech.

We like the word strategic because it refers to determining what is important or essential to the overall plan or purpose of your speech. Too often, new speakers just throw information together and stand up and start speaking. NOTE: Don’t Do That!! When that happens, audience members are left confused and the reason for the speech may get lost. To avoid being seen as disorganized, we want you to start thinking critically about the organization of your speech. In this section, we will discuss how to take your speech from a specific purpose to creating the main points of your speech.

From Thesis to Main Points

Once you’ve written down your thesis statement, you can now start thinking about the best way to turn that into a series of main points. The main points are the key ideas you present to enable your speech to accomplish its specific purpose. In this section, we’re going to discuss how to determine your main points and how to organize those main points into a coherent, strategic speech.

How Many Main Points Do I Need?

While there is no magic number for how many main points a speech should have, speech experts generally agree that the fewer the number of main points the better. For the speeches you will be delivering in a typical public speaking class, you will usually have just two or three main points. If your speech is less than three minutes long, then two main points will probably work best. If your speech is between five and ten minutes in length, then it makes more sense to use three main points. As a speaker, you will use your best judgment to determine what works best for your speech based on your topic, research, and integration of support within the main points.

You may be wondering why we are recommending only two or three main points. The reason comes straight out of the research on listening. According to LeFrancois, people are more likely to remember information that is meaningful, useful, and of interest to them; different or unique; organized; visual; and simple (LeFrancois, 1999). Two or three main points are much easier for listeners to remember than ten or even five. In addition, if you have two or three main points, you’ll be able to develop each one with examples, statistics, or other forms of support. Including support for each point will make your speech more interesting and more memorable for your audience.

Narrowing Down Your Main Points

When you write your specific purpose and review the research you have done on your topic, you will probably find yourself thinking of quite a few points that you’d like to make in your speech. Whether that’s the case or not, we recommend taking a few minutes to brainstorm and develop a list of points. In brainstorming, your goal is simply to think of as many different points as you can, not to judge how valuable or important they are. What information does your audience need to know to understand your topic? What information does your speech need to convey to accomplish its specific purpose? Consider the following example:

Specific Purpose To inform a group of school administrators about the various open-source software packages that could be utilized in their school districts
Brainstorming List of Points Define open-source software.
Define educational software.
List and describe the software commonly used by school districts.
Explain the advantages of using open-source software.
Explain the disadvantages of using open-source software.
Review the history of open-source software.
Describe the value of open-source software.
Describe some educational open-source software packages.
Review the software needs of my specific audience.
Describe some problems that have occurred with open-source software.

Now that you have brainstormed and developed a list of possible points, how do you go about narrowing them down to just two or three main ones? Remember, your main points are the key ideas that help build your speech. When you look over the preceding list, you can then start to see that many of the points are related to one another. Your goal in narrowing down your main points is to identify which individual, potentially minor points can be combined to make main points. This process is called chunking because it involves taking smaller chunks of information and putting them together with like chunks to create more fully developed chunks of information. Before reading our chunking of the preceding list, see if you can determine three large chunks out of the list (note that not all chunks are equal).

Specific Purpose To inform a group of school administrators about the various open-source software packages that could be utilized in their school districts
Main Point 1 School districts use software in their operations.
Define educational software.
List and describe the software commonly used by school districts.
Main Point 2 What is open-source software?
Define open-source software.
Review the history of open-source software.
Explain the advantages of using open-source software.
Describe the value of open-source software.
Explain the disadvantages of using open-source software.
Describe some problems that have occurred with open-source software.
Main Point 3 Name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider.
Review the software needs of my specific audience.
Describe some educational open-source software packages.

You may notice that in the preceding list, the number of subpoints under each of the three main points is a little disjointed or the topics don’t go together clearly. That’s all right. Remember that these are just general ideas at this point. It’s also important to remember that there is often more than one way to organize a speech. Some of these points could be left out and others developed more fully, depending on the purpose and audience. We’ll develop the preceding main points more fully in a moment.

Hints for Selecting Main Points

Now that we’ve discussed how to take a specific purpose and turn it into a series of main points, here are some helpful hints for creating your main points.

Do They Reflect Your Thesis?

Once you’ve generated a possible list of main points, you want to ask yourself this question: “When you look at your main points, do they serve to communicate my thesis?” For example, if you look at the three preceding main points (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider), ask yourself, “Do these main points help my audience understand my specific purpose and thesis statement?”

Suppose you added a fourth main point about open-source software for musicians—would this fourth main point go with the other three? Probably not. While you may have a strong passion for open-source music software, that main point is extraneous information for the speech you are giving. It does not help accomplish your specific purpose, so you’d need to toss it out.

Note: This is also where adjusting your thesis statement may come in. If you determine you want to cover main points that don’t directly reflect your thesis, you may need to tweak your thesis at this point. 

Keeping Main Points Separate

The next question to ask yourself about your main points is whether they overlap too much. While some overlap may happen naturally because of the singular nature of a specific topic, the information covered within each main point should be clearly distinct from the other main points. Imagine you’re giving a speech with the specific purpose “to inform my audience about the health reasons for eating apples and oranges.” You could then have three main points: that eating fruits is healthy, that eating apples is healthy, and that eating oranges is healthy. While the two points related to apples and oranges are clearly distinct, both of those main points would probably overlap too much with the first point “that eating fruits is healthy,” so you would probably decide to eliminate the first point and focus on the second and third. On the other hand, you could keep the first point and then develop two new points giving additional support to why people should eat fruit.

Balancing Main Points

One of the biggest mistakes some speakers make is to spend most of their time talking about one of their main points, completely neglecting their other main points. To avoid this mistake, organize your speech so as to spend roughly the same amount of time on each main point. If you find that one of your main points is simply too large, you may need to divide that main point into two main points and consolidate your other main points into a single main point.

Let’s see if our preceding example is balanced (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider). What do you think? Obviously, the answer depends on how much time a speaker will have to talk about each of these main points. If you have an hour to talk, then you may find that these three main points are balanced. However, you may also find them wildly unbalanced if you only have five minutes to speak because five minutes is not enough time to even explain what open-source software is. If that’s the case, then you probably need to rethink your specific purpose to ensure that you can cover the material in the allotted time.

Creating Parallel Structure for Main Points

Another major question to ask yourself about your main points is whether or not they have a parallel structure. By parallel structure, we mean that you should structure your main points so that they all sound similar. When all your main points sound similar, it’s simply easier for your audiences to remember your main points and retain them for later. Let’s look at our sample (school districts use software in their operations; what is open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider). Notice that the first and third main points are statements, but the second one is a question. Basically, we have an example here of main points that are not parallel in structure. You could fix this in one of two ways. You could make them all questions: what are some common school district software programs; what is open-source software; and what are some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider. Or you could turn them all into statements: school districts use software in their operations; define and describe open-source software; name some specific open-source software packages that may be appropriate for these school administrators to consider. Either of these changes will make the grammatical structure of the main points parallel.

Maintaining Logical Flow of Main Points

The last question you want to ask yourself about your main points is whether the main points make sense in the order you’ve placed them. The next section goes into more detail about common organizational patterns for speeches, but for now, we want you to just think logically about the flow of your main points. When you look at your main points, can you see them as progressive, or does it make sense to talk about one first, another one second, and the final one last? If you look at your order, and it doesn’t make sense to you, you probably need to think about the flow of your main points. Often, this process is an art and not a science. But let’s look at a couple of examples.

School Dress Codes Example
Main Point 1 History of school dress codes
Main Point 2 Problems with school dress codes
Main Point 3 Eliminating school dress codes
Rider Law Legislation
Main Point 1 Why should states have rider laws?
Main Point 2 What are the effects of a lack of rider laws?
Main Point 3 What is rider law legislation?

When you look at these two examples, what are your immediate impressions of the two examples? In the first example, does it make sense to talk about history, and then the problems, and finally how to eliminate school dress codes? Would it make sense to put history as your last main point? Probably not. In this case, the main points are in a logical sequential order. What about the second example? Does it make sense to talk about your solution, then your problem, and then define the solution? Not really! What order do you think these main points should be placed in for a logical flow? Maybe you should explain the problem (lack of rider laws), then define your solution (what is rider law legislation), and then argue for your solution (why states should have rider laws). Notice that in this example you don’t even need to know what “rider laws” are to see that the flow didn’t make sense.

Devising Main Points

As you begin to draft your main points, there are a few things you need to keep in mind.

Each main point should be one idea: Each main point should only focus on one idea. If you have too many ideas in a main point, this may confuse the audience.

Consider the following main points:

  1. Our educational system needs reform to effectively educate youth on life skills, and it can be more engaging for students.

This main point has two completely separate topics. These separate ideas should be in separate points.

  1. Our education system needs reform to effectively educate youth on life skills.
  2. Education reform will provide more opportunities for engaging students.

A topic is not a main point: When a speaker states, “Education reform” this is stating the topic, not the main point. Stating the topic does not adequately prepare the audience because the audience does not know what the actual point is.

Avoid announcements: Announcements also do not adequately communicate the main point. “I am going to talk about education reform” does not tell the audience what the speaker will be discussing. Is education reform good? Bad? Necessary? What?

Each main point should be a full, declarative statement. 

Consider the following statements:

  1. “Education reform”
  2. “I am going to talk about education reform.”
  3. “Education reform will provide more opportunities to engage students in the curriculum.”

The final statement is a full, declarative statement. It tells the audience, specifically, what the main point is. You must tell the audience your main point to effectively get your message across.

 

For Future Reference | How to organize this in an outline |

Body of your Speech

Body

(The number of main-points and sub-points will vary for each speech)

I. (First main-point)

    1. (First level sub-point)
      1. (Second level sub-point)
      2. (Second level sub-point)
    2. (First level sub-point)
      1. (Second level sub-point)
      2. (Second level sub-point)

Transition: (complete sentence, phrase, or word)

II. (Second main-point)

    1. (First level sub-point)
      1. (Second level sub-point)
      2. (Second level sub-point)
    2. (First level sub-point)
      1. (Second level sub-point)
      2. (Second level sub-point)

Transition: (complete sentence, phrase, or word)

III. (Third main-point)

  1. (First level sub-point)
    1. (Second level sub-point)
    2. (Second level sub-point)
  2. (First level sub-point)
    1. (Second level sub-point)
    2. (Second level sub-point)

Transition: (complete sentence, phrase, or word)

 

 

Key Takeaways

  • All speeches start with a general purpose and then move to a specific purpose that gives the whowhatwhere, and how for the speech.
  • Transitioning from the specific purpose to possible main points means developing a list of potential main points you could discuss. Then you can narrow your focus by looking for similarities among your potential main points and combining ones that are similar.
  • Shorter speeches will have two main points while longer speeches will generally have three or more main points. When creating your main points, make sure that they are united, separate, balanced, parallel, and logical.
  • Main points should be one idea stated in a full, declartive sentence.

 

References

LeFrancois, G. R. (1999). Psychology for teaching (10th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

License

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Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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