Chapter 10
Understand components of beginning your speech
- Establish your credibility - Compel your audience to listen - Preview your speech: Tell them what you're going to tell them
Know which strategies to avoid.
- Overused Clichés - Disclaimers and Apologies - Rhetorical Questions
Be able to identify the 7 strategies to motivate your audience
- Personal Stories - Emotional Appeals - Humor - Repetition - Famous Quotations - Startling Facts and Statistics - Dramatic Illustrations
Famous Quotations
Famous, but familiar, quotes and the words of famous speakers, politicians, and entertainers are effective ways to begin or end a presentation. The originator of any quotation must be acknowledged during the speech.
Preview Your Speech: Tell Them What You're Going to Tell Them
A preview gives an overview of the main points and helps the audience organize what's to come in a systematic way. The preview always comes at the end of the introduction.
Dramatic Illustrations
Beginning or concluding a presentation with a dramatic illustration or a story that paints a picture is an excellent rhetorical strategy. The more visual the experience, the more likely the audience will respond and remember it.
Personal Stories
Beginning the speech with a personal story allows the audience to feel a sense of shared background, experience, and history. Ending the speech with a personal story helps bring home a point in the conclusion.
Overused Clichés
Clichés are trite phrases or expressions that are common and overused. At one time, these phrases were effective, but due to overuse audiences view them as tiresome, unoriginal, and annoying.
Emotional Appeals
Depending on the topic and the purpose of the presentation, the speaker may want to incite fear, guilt, anger, passion, pity, love, or other emotional responses. Emotional responses should not alienate the audience, but should help form a common bond or empathy. Emotionally charged appeals are also effective in concluding remarks and are often effective in exciting the audience to take an action.
Disclaimers and Apologies
Disclaimers are used to deny any responsibility for a faulty presentation. Apologies allow the speaker to assume total responsibility for doing a bad job or for having nothing further to contribute. Both are used to set up the audience for a failed presentation.
Startling Facts and Statistics
Facts and statistics that amaze can entice the audience to listen or to leave with a "gee-whiz!" response.
Repetition
Repetition - the repeated use of a word or phrase—adds rhythm to a speech and draws attention to the subject.
Rhetorical Questions
Rhetorical questions are those questions the speaker asks the audience without intending the audience to answer because he or she plans to answer them. Rhetorical questions can be effective at motivating the audience to listen, but if the questions are overused or trite the speaker may appear tentative and lacking in conviction. Rhetorical questions can be turned into assertive declarative statements for more powerful results.
Compel Your Audience to Listen
Speakers must compel the audience to listen by furnishing them with audience-centered reasons for listening. The more personal and audience-related the reasons for listening, the more likely the audience will accept them. Beginning with a dramatic device, such as a humorous story, startling statement, or little-known fact, will also motivate the audience to listen.
Establish your credibility
The audience should be provided with an introduction from a reliable source. The speaker should provide the audience with the specific qualifications or expertise he or she has regarding the topic. Attire and nonverbal communication are the first things the audience uses to judge the speaker. Looking composed is critical to appearing so.
Purpose of the conclusion
The conclusion summarizes the main ideas of the speech and finishes the presentation with some kind of memorable statement.
Humor
To be effective in an introduction or conclusion, humor must be funny and directly relevant to the point.
