The True Purpose of Speech Organization

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Jun 07

The Toastmasters Competent Communication manual has a project specifically on organizing your speech. In fact, it’s the first project after introducing yourself to your club, which means it’s one of the most basic building blocks… it also means it’s something that people usually face when they’re trying to simply survive a speech, and then forget all about in later speeches.

You organize your speech to build up your main point; to explain it, to make it memorable.

It’s easy to get confused about speech organization. Let’s create a fictional and quite silly example. Suppose someone is practicing a speech for their job at a bakery, where they’ll introduce a new doughnut in time for Independence Day.

General vs Specific Purpose

When asked if their speech is a persuasive speech–to convince people to buy the doughnut–the speaker may get confused. “No, this is CC Project #2, Organize Your Speech” they may say. “I don’t give a persuasive speech until Project #9”!

All speeches have a general purpose. It may just not be clear to anyone. The Competent Communication manual Toastmasters provides actually explains this. Here’s my list of general speech purposes:

  • To inform: teach people how to perform a process or teaching them facts
  • To entertain: make them laugh, or just absorb their attention with a story
  • To persuade: to change their opinion on a subject or convince them to take specific action
  • To inspire: to make them feel something

There are other purposes, but it’s very rare you’d want to use anything other than these four.

Remember, the purpose is what your audience gets out of the speech. “I want to impress them” is not a good speech purpose, even if it’s why you’re getting up to speak. You must give the audience value to have any hope of success.

The specific purpose, on the other hand, varies from speech to speech. In this case, the purpose is to convince the audience to buy the new Independence Doughnut. Both your general purpose and specific purpose should be kept in mind through every aspect of speech planning.

Your specific purpose should be one short sentence. It’s not “specific purposes” and it shouldn’t take several dozen words to explain. If you want the audience to have any hope of remembering it, it needs to be short and simple. “Try our new bakery across the store and fill out a survey card so you may win a prize while you sample our muffins and our doughnuts” is not a specific purpose. “Try our Independence Doughnut today” is. Ask yourself… what will your audience remember about your speech in two weeks? What is most important for them to remember?

<h2>Main Points</h2>

The main points flow from and support the specific purpose. This is another easily confused topic. Our new Toastmaster may carefully diagram an outline like this:

  • Introduction
  • Body
    • Red
    • White
    • Blue
  • Conclusion

This is not an effective outline. It may help provide an easy-to-remember code for your listeners, but it does not help in planning your speech. Something like this may be better:

Specific purpose: Try an Independence Doughnut Today

  • Intro: “Independence Doughnut saved my life” says man who threw one to vicious dog
  • Body
    • Mouth-watering description of the Independence Doughnut
    • Fourth of July sale on orders of 10 or more
    • Independence Doughnut disappearing soon
  • Call to action: buy an Independence Doughnut today

This is not a perfect example, but is much more useful. Now as you plan out support material, you understand that it makes sense to describe, in vivid detail, the strawberry filling (red), powdered sugar (white) and blueberry frosting (blue) of the doughnut (yes, this is a ridiculous example). On the other hand, the joke you had about a doughnut salesman doesn’t seem to fit in anymore–it doesn’t support any of your main points.  This structure ensures that your speech has a clear purpose and that everything you say clearly supports that purpose. After the speech, people will say “he wants me to buy an Independence Doughnut, and it sounds yummy” instead of “I don’t get it. Was his speech about supporting the military, explaining the colors of the flag, or about doughnuts?”

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