©2005Sherrie Rita Marshall
Giving a well received and clearly understood speech is the goal of every public speaker. For that to happen, you need to have a clear road map leading to your destination. Know your startingpoint, and know your ending. This takes organization.
How are you going to organize those main points? There are several methods of organization, but for purposes of this article, we will briefly examine three logical patterns.
Putting information in Chronological Order is “telling about events in the order in which they happen, from earliest to latest. For example, if you were to give someone directions, it would require that you present this information in chronological order, or precisely,
step by step, from A to Z.
Topical Order places organization at the speakers discretion Here you may break your topic down into parts and place them in the order that you decide on. Since this pattern of organization does not require a time sequence, you decide what you tell first. You may
address the main points in whatever order you deem best, it won’t affect your speech’s effectiveness.
The third organizational pattern we will discuss here is Spatial Order. This involves organizing things or events according to their position in space or to simplify it, from top to bottom, or bottom to top.
There are other organizational patterns for an informative speech such as cause and effect, comparison and contrast, and climactic order. For a more in-depth study of organizing your speech, checks out my e-book Preparing the Speech.
Before we end, let me give you an example of an outline for my main points that I gave you earlier:
Specific Purpose: I would like to to explain how to organize the body of your speech.
Thesis Statement: Organizing the body of your speech, a key element of the public speaking process, involves three important things:
I. Determining your main points
II. Organizing those main points
III. Making an outline of the information that
will go into your speech.
Now that you have your main points and your outline before you, you are ready for the next step. Look now at all the wonderful information you’ve gathered from your hours of research, and put each piece of supporting information under the the main point that it applies to. What I am about to say next is very important, that is, “if it doesn’tfit, don’t force it.” Remember what I said about bananas and oranges. You want to write your speech using only the information that relates directly to your topic (weed out the rest). That my darling, is called Unity, and that is where we will end this discussion. Sherrie Marshall is a Fort Lauderdale, Florida based keynote speaker and speech coach.; She currently teaches English and TV Producton in a local high school. She is the author of Invisible Chainsand One Heartbeat Away. Please contact Mrs. Marshall at: sherrimar1@bellsouth.net or by calling (954) 552-8796
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