Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Now that you have brainstormed and created a list of topic ideas you are now ready to
narrow down one of your favorite topics into a more specific topic.
This Instructional Guide is designed to help you determine the Specific Purpose statement.
Before you can begin writing the speech you must clearly state the Specific Purpose and
be able to meet the criteria for the assignment. This video can be stopped and restarted at any time.
This will allow you to review slides and take notes at your own pace.
The Specific Purpose Statement is a single infinitive phrase that states precisely what a
speaker hopes to accomplish in his or her speech.
Since your next speech assignment is to prepare an Informative Speech the sentence
will always start with these words and how you end it determines your specific topic.
The other goal in writing a specific purpose statement is to identify whether the speech
will be based upon a Process, Event or Object. The wording of this statement will
determine which type of Informative Speech we are planning to prepare.
As you read in your text, the goal of a process speech is to tell how to do something or how something is done.
The key words that identify this statement as a process speech are “how to”.
Events and object speeches are relatively easy because they both use the key words “about”.
The specific words that will follow identify whether it’s an event or an object.
In the previous Instructional Video I highlighted 3 of my Brainstorming topics that I
might consider for an Informative Speech topic. Swing Dancing-New Hampshire-
Whitfield/Manjiro Friendship Society.
In order to write them as a Specific Purpose statement I would simply add the topic to complete the statement.
In this illustration all three were written using the word “about”
signifying that the are either about an event or an object.
There is only one that could be written as a processing using the words “how to”.
This would indicate that I am going to tell you how to Swing Dance.
As I think about this one topic idea I realize that this is a very broad topic,
and so are my other two.
In order to narrow down one of my topics, I am going to need to get a bit more specific with
the goal of this speech if I am going to meet the criteria for this speech.
Be Conscious of Time relative to the parts of the speech.
This speech assignment is a 4-6 minute speech presentation. This does not need to be exactly 4 minutes, but should
be fairly close. I expect it to be at least 4 minutes (no less because that means that
you did not put enough effort into what you planned to talk about.) If it needs to go
longer please don’t go any longer than 8 minutes. We need to stick to a time limit due to
the number of students that we have in the class and the amount of time that we have for our
class meetings. If everyone goes over time we will not get done in one class meeting.
So, how do we make sure that our topic will fit the time frame? Let me put it into perspective.
There will be 3 parts to the speech. If you look at the Informative Speech Outline you
will see that the speech has an Introduction, a Body, and a Conclusion. Which part do you
think will be the longest or have the most information? Much like a written paper the
Introduction and the Conclusion will be a minimum of 4 sentences equal to a paragraph
each. So, they are both relatively short. The Body of, say a 2-4 page written paper is
generally 3-5 paragraphs. So, it is the part of the speech that will take up the most time.
If you said the Body you are right! How does this translate in terms of time?
If you were to read a 4-8 sentence paragraph it shouldn’t take you more the 15-30 seconds.
This means that the Introduction and the Conclusion will probably only take you about 1 minute to recite.
If you are trying to stick to 4 minutes that means that you will have 3 minutes to
recite the Body of the speech. These 3 minutes need to be divided up between the number
of Main Points (or paragraphs).
Usually, it is recommended to limit the number of Main Points for a short speech. A speech
that is anywhere from 4 -10 minutes speech, should have 3-5 Main Points.
Typically, if you can keep it to 3 Main Points you will be successful at keeping your time
on track. If you have 3 Main Points, then on average you will have a minimum of 1 minute
to explain each Main Point, if you want to complete it in 4 minutes. This is just an
average. Some Main Points may take longer than others. So, if you need more time, that is OK,
as long as you don’t go over 8 minutes.
With all this in mind, then you need to be VERY specific about what you are going to talk
about. For example, using one of my topics, I can start by asking myself some basic
questions. These questions can help trigger ideas related to my topic.
This will help me decide, "Am I going to do a speech about swing dancing" or something related to "how to".
One strategy that can help narrow down the topic is called web-design.
You may be familiar with this if you ever had to complete a Web design in order to find
a specific topic when writing an English paper.
The simplest way to create a web is to draw it out on a piece of paper. This is much like a
spider web where the center circle encapsulates your Topic and then the topics with
corresponding topics branch out from there. The Main Topics are the first branches out and
the sub-topics extend from the Main Topics.
If you have only a few Main Topics then you can consider those to be your Main Points
and the sub-topics would be your sub-points. These are what you would then use in your outline.
These are what you would then use in your outline.
However, if your Main Points and sub-points look like they might take too long to explain, then
you may need to further refine your topic. It may work out to use one of your Main Points as the Topic
and the sub-points would then become the Main Points for that NEW topic.
Concept Mapping is another strategy for “mapping out” or organizing the speech. It is
pretty much the same thing as Web Designing.