Sample Informative Speech Outline

Topic: Insert The Title You Have Decided Upon Which Details the Topic of Your Speech

General Purpose: To Inform

Specific Purpose: Insert your specific purpose here. Your specific purpose identifies the information you want to communicate in the mode you have chosen. (i.e. …to inform my audience about how to effectively perform the Heimlich maneuver).

Thesis: The central idea of your speech. (Although fad diets produce quick weight loss, they can lead to serious health problems by causing vitamin and mineral deficiencies and by breaking down muscle tissue, as well as fat).

I. Introduction

A. Attention Getter: Deliver something that grabs the attention of the audience.

Strategies for this: Startling statistics, stories, rhetorical questions, quotations, scenarios, etc. This point should be more than one sentence long.

B. Reason to Listen: Explain why the audience should listen to your speech Make it personal to each of them.

C. Credibility Statement:

1. Insert what personally connects you to this topic.

2. Insert what type of research have you done to establish credibility.

I. Thesis:

1. First, I will describe, share or …

2. Second, I will examine, help you understand or …

3. Third, I will discuss, share or …

II. Body

A. Statement of the first main point.

1. Idea of development or support for the first main point

a. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc.- cite source)

b. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc. – cite source)

Transition: (Required) Statement of movement that looks back (internal summary)

and looks forward (preview).

B. Statement of second main point.

1. Idea of development or support for the second main point

a. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc. – cite source)

b. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc. – cite source)

Transition: (Required) Statement of movement that looks back (internal summary)

and looks forward (preview).

C. Statement of third main point.

1. Idea of development or support for the third main point

a. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc. – cite source)

b. Support material (ex: statistics, quotation, etc. – cite source)

III. Conclusion

A. Review of Main Points:

1. Restate your first main point.

2. Restate your second main point.

3. Restate you third main point.

B. Restate Thesis: Restate your thesis here.

C. Closure: Develop a creative closing that will give the speech a sense of ending. This should be more than one sentence. Refer back to your attention getter.