An introduction (called exordium in Latin) is a part opening your speech. During this part, you are going to introduce the following:
Depending on the topic, you can determine:
Avoid introductions that are long, generalized, too complex or loaded with tons of rhetorical figures as it can distract your audience.
In classical argumentation there is a visible division between laying down all of the factual evidence and drawing conclusions from them. In some speeches it can be showing evidence. In others it might mean presenting definitions necessary for understanding the speech.
Nowadays, a similar duality can be seen in court proceedings, where there is separate time for investigation and finding evidence, and a separate time for trial with evidence known to all parties.
Your audience believes that all important elements will be shown in the narration part of your speech. Separating evidence with your argumentation will be perceived as more credible and will give the audience time to verify your line of thinking.
Even given that rhetorics not always is used to find out truth, it is unreasonable to deriberately omit some information just because they are uncomfortable to a speaker. It is also risky as it requires only one person from the audience to speak up about missing evidence to put your argumentation in unfavorable light.
But you are not defenseless. Roman orators propose to use amplification techniques to strengthen facts that support your thesis and weaken claims against it. You can use these with references, emphasis, subverting anticipations and piling-up techniques - look up their definitions to learn more.
This part is optional. It is up to you whether you want to state the order of arguments or not. We encourage you to have at least a table of contents if you are going to speak more than 20 minutes.
So what are the benefits of presenting the order of arguments? Well, in long lectures maintaining engagement through the whole time is near impossible, especially if some people in your audience know some of what are your going to say. If you present the structure of your argument first, your audience will know when a part interesting to them is going to happen.
On the other hand, consider leaving out some surprises for your audience, as these can easily make your speech more interesting. If there is no need to present the structure of your argument, remove this element from your outline.
When composing the speech, writing down all of the arguments will help you check if all of them are distinct and strong enough to be used. It might also be easier to find holes in your reasoning this way.
Arguments should be presented in the following order: 1) ones supporting your cause, 2) refutations to counterarguments from other people.
If a speech contains a thesis, this thesis must be supported by arguments.
Arguments can refer to different modes of persuasion - Aristotle pointed out three: pathos (simply put, emotions), ethos (simply put, your credibility and authority) and logos (data, logic - or tricks merely imitating logic).
It's worth to mention that arguments do not need to be logic-based in a formal sense. A good rule of thumb is the ARG rule (described by Trudy Govier) which says that an argument can be deduced from premises that meet the following criteria:
Some people might be tempted to not follow these rules if they feel safe they are not going to be catched red-handed during your speech. It's important to keep that possibility in mind, especially during debates. Of course, we discourage doing that in your speech as it is most probably going to be recorded somewhere.
This app contains different types of arguments. Add them here after you've gathered your material.
After presenting your arguments you are going to refute the most common counterarguments by your opponents.
The rules are similar to argumentation with one difference - you do not know exactly what counterarguments are going to be used against you so you need to do some guesswork which ones are going to be the most probable ones. Have answers ready for them.
Your goal is to contest the logic behind these counterarguments and find points that do not match your case or assumptions that you do not believe to be true. It is a mistake to admit that the perspective of the counterargument is of the same weight as your arguments. In such cases, even with evidence against you, you can try to find losses and other bad consequences that follow not listening to your advice.
There are some circumstances under which you might need to start with refutation and then follow with argumentation. If the topic is very controversial and there is a danger of losing your audience's attention it's better to start refuting common counterarguments straight away, and bit by bit gain more ground before trying out with supportive arguments. However, do not put all refutations early, as a large number of counterarguments can also be perceived as another counterargument. Try to refute two or three most important counterarguments at first, and then follow it up with your supportive arguments.
It's time to wrap up your speech. In this part your thesis should be restated at least the third time.
How can you do it? For example:
All of these elements can be found in this app.
Informative speech introduction should grab attention of your audience. You can start in many different ways:
Consider what your audience already knows. If possible try referring to that knowledge. Also think, how your knowledge can help people, prevent disasters or be in some other way important to your audience.
Describe your thesis. It should be as short sentence that will be supported by your arguments. A thesis might be structured in following forms:
When laying out your thesis consider what would make it confirmed / rejected.
Remember that reality is often more complex as you will be presenting. You should avoid stating your thesis as a false dichotomy (There is X and Y and nothing in between). Do not be afraid to mention that there is a lot of factors that can influence the outcome if you are describing some probable behaviour.
Shortly describe the order of your arguments.
When composing the speech, writing down all of the arguments will help you check if all of them are distinct and strong enough to be used. It might also be easier to find holes in your reasoning this way.
If you want to surprise your audience, delete this element.
If a speech contains a thesis, this thesis must be supported by arguments.
Arguments can refer to different modes of persuasion - Aristotle pointed out three: pathos (simply put, emotions), ethos (simply put, your credibility and authority) and logos (data, logic - or tricks merely imitating logic).
It's worth to mention that arguments do not need to be logic-based in a formal sense. A good rule of thumb is the ARG rule (described by Trudy Govier) which says that an argument can be deduced from premises that meet the following criteria:
We recommend constructing arguments that use logic to infer some premise from statistics, data, and research - if that research was conducted in an impartial manner to minimize error (for example, by using scientific method).
At the same time, a well-narrated anecdotical evidence that taps into emotions can be of similar strength (in reception) to a logical argument. However it depends strongly on the target audience. Appeals to authority are similar in this perspective.
A decision which arguments and which types of arguments should be chosen depends on the goal, message, audience expectations. If the audience needs to make a decision on their own, it's desired to put more data and logical arguments. If the speech should motivate people to do some action, arguments relying on personal stories and emotions can persuade audience.
If a speech contains a thesis, this thesis must be supported by arguments.
Arguments can refer to different modes of persuasion - Aristotle pointed out three: pathos (simply put, emotions), ethos (simply put, your credibility and authority) and logos (data, logic - or tricks merely imitating logic).
It's worth to mention that arguments do not need to be logic-based in a formal sense. A good rule of thumb is the ARG rule (described by Trudy Govier) which says that an argument can be deduced from premises that meet the following criteria:
We recommend constructing arguments that use logic to infer some premise from statistics, data, and research - if that research was conducted in an impartial manner to minimize error (for example, by using scientific method).
At the same time, a well-narrated anecdotical evidence that taps into emotions can be of similar strength (in reception) to a logical argument. However it depends strongly on the target audience. Appeals to authority are similar in this perspective.
A decision which arguments and which types of arguments should be chosen depends on the goal, message, audience expectations. If the audience needs to make a decision on their own, it's desired to put more data and logical arguments. If the speech should motivate people to do some action, arguments relying on personal stories and emotions can persuade audience.
If a speech contains a thesis, this thesis must be supported by arguments.
Arguments can refer to different modes of persuasion - Aristotle pointed out three: pathos (simply put, emotions), ethos (simply put, your credibility and authority) and logos (data, logic - or tricks merely imitating logic).
It's worth to mention that arguments do not need to be logic-based in a formal sense. A good rule of thumb is the ARG rule (described by Trudy Govier) which says that an argument can be deduced from premises that meet the following criteria:
We recommend constructing arguments that use logic to infer some premise from statistics, data, and research - if that research was conducted in an impartial manner to minimize error (for example, by using scientific method).
At the same time, a well-narrated anecdotical evidence that taps into emotions can be of similar strength (in reception) to a logical argument. However it depends strongly on the target audience. Appeals to authority are similar in this perspective.
A decision which arguments and which types of arguments should be chosen depends on the goal, message, audience expectations. If the audience needs to make a decision on their own, it's desired to put more data and logical arguments. If the speech should motivate people to do some action, arguments relying on personal stories and emotions can persuade audience.
It's hard to remember contents of the speech - even if takes not more than three minutes. That's why every speech should be ended with a few most important conclusions in concise manner. By repetition, rephrasing and focusing on key points you will improve the changes of passing your message onto your audience.
In the summary you should clearly state if your thesis was proven or disproven. If neither is the case, show why your argumentation is not sufficient to prove or disprove your thesis and focus on other causes that should be taken into consideration.
Motivational sequence introduction should grab attention of your audience. You can start in many different ways:
Consider what your audience already knows. If possible try referring to that knowledge. Most likely the need presented in your speech should be present in your audience, even if they do not know or do not put much care to satisfy that need. It is important to find why they do not focus on this need right now. It might help you structure the whole argumentation.
Your introduction may be a little longer, such as long enough to introduce hero of your story or to tell a personal story that will smoothly transition into stating the need.
This sequence is based on three elements: need - satisfaction - visualizaton. At first you need to describe a need.
This element should appeal to audience emotions for them to identify with the need. You should discover this need before your audience and make sure it is accepted by them. If there were no stories in the introduction, here is the time to tell them to illustrate the need, its scale and situations in which we are likely to encounter these needs.
Additionally you can support these with numbers and statistics showing that the problem is not isolated (that way you can break taboos if the need refer to delicate matters that are rarely discussed in public). You can also argument that the need spreads to other people (e.g. family members) when not satisfied, to make it more attractive to the people that do not directly face this need.
We encourage you to speak about values here and to find additional common arguments that are related to the topic (even if these are going to pesuade only some of your listeners).
Consider placing your needs on a Maslov's hierarchy of needs to gain insight what people need to have in order to be interested in satisfying that need (e.g. someone barely tying ends together might not exactly be intereted into donating books to the libraries in the city). Try to find out what emotions are related to this need (security, self-realization, closeness, loss avoidance, etc.)
Show the direction and the path that needs to be taken to satisfy the need. What emotions are related to that?.
Describe your solution. What your audience needs to do to use that solution? What arguments support that solution and why specifically this solution is better than other solutions? Is is innovative? Did anyone ever tried to solve that problem before?
Try to reassure your audience that your solution is sensible, reasonable and can be implemented. Do not stray away from data, research, results of implementing similar solutions elsewhere in order to attain that goal.
This argument is based on a visualization of a world, where you make a few controlled changes and form a logic-based reasoning showing what would happen to this world under the changes implemented.
It's very similar to how science-fiction writers construct their stories. Make one or two key changes and let the consequences play out on their own. Try to find out how such change would affect people living in the near and far future - or if that change was introduced in the past, what has been changing until now? Are there benefits to these changes? Are there problems or issues to them?
A very important aspect of visualisation here is security. People do not like too many changes and you should address their fears and anxieties in order to make the solution more plausible and safe to use.
You can focus on benefits of your solution or focus on losses and possible catastrophic consequences of not choosing your solution. Of course, do not overdrammatize here.
Consider putting your auditorium in the center of your visualization, how they would behave, how they would act. This allows for more interaction and engagement.
This is a very similar argument to an example used elsewhere in this app.
It is here that you paraphrase your whole speech into actionable points for your audience to follow. The speech up to this moment was explaining problems and possible solutions, but at this moment you are going to put the tools into the hands of your audience. You can call to do a specific thing, to stop doing a specific thing or to maintain status quo.
How to end with call to action? E.g.:
Focus on the power to spread the idea by using memorable, short sencences. Consider answering the question: What your audience should tell somebody who does not know anything about the topic?