“START HERE WITH A CREATIVE TOPIC FOR YOUR SPEECH”

Topic: What’s your topic?

Organization: Are you organizing your speech topically, chronologically, or spatially?

Specific Purpose: What do you want to achieve with your speech? (Hint: you want your audience to UNDERSTAND something).

INTRODUCTION

Attention getter: Get our attention! Use an interesting quote, statistic, story, etc.

Relevance: Why should your IMMEDIATE audience care about your topic? How does it affect them? How can they relate to your topic?

Credibility statement: Why should we listen to you? Why are you credible to speak about this particular topic?

Central idea: This is the overall idea of your speech—your MAIN topic.

Initial preview: This is your “thesis statement” that previews all 3 of your main points. The initial preview breaks your central idea down into 3 main points.

Transition to 1st main point: First, let’s talk about Point #1 (Replace “Point #1” with what your first topic will be)

Body

Point #1: Start here with a Topic Sentence

Give us some information about your first main point in multiple bullet points. You must include at least one source unique to this main point and cite in parenthesis with author last name and year (Ray, 2014).

Relate this main point to your immediate audience (again, why should they care?)

Use personal stories, examples, hypotheticals, statistics, etc… to make this part interesting.

Transition to 2nd main point: Now that we’ve talked about Point #1, now we’re going to talk about Point #2 (Replace “Point #1” and “Point #2” with what your topics are)

Point #2: Start here with a Topic Sentence

Give us some information about your second main point in multiple bullet points. You must include at least one source unique to this main point and cite in parenthesis with author last name and year (Ray, 2014).

Relate this main point to your immediate audience (again, why should they care?)

Use personal stories, examples, hypotheticals, statistics, etc… to make this part interesting.

Transition to 3rd main point: Now that we’ve discussed Point #1 and Point #2, let’s discuss Point #3 (Replace “Points #1, 2, and 3” with what your three points are – repetition is a good thing!!)

Point #3: Start here with a Topic Sentence

Give us some information about your third main point in multiple bullet points. You must include at least one source unique to this main point and cite in parenthesis with author last name and year (Ray, 2014).

Relate this main point to your immediate audience (again, why should they care?)

Use personal stories, examples, hypotheticals, statistics, etc… to make this part interesting.

Conclusion

Transition to Conclusion: “In conclusion,” “In sum,” “Overall,” etc…

Restate central idea: From your introduction; what was your overarching idea again? (DO NOT ADD ANY NEW INFO IN THE CONCLUSION – ONLY REDCAP)

Final summary: Restate your 3 main points (basically re-stating your initial preview statement)

Memorable closing: Conclude your speech on a high note; this is similar to your attention getter.

(Start References on Separate Page)

References

See APA Guidelines on pages 96-97 of your Guidebook. For further help search for “Purdue OWL APA” on Google or send me an e-mail at acc152@txstate.eduRemember to list alphabetically and to indent all EXCEPT the first line of each citation