Patterns for Organizing your Speeches

What are the three things that you look for in a tourist destination when deciding where to go for your vacation? What were the three main reasons why you chose to come to CALU? What are the symptoms and treatments of bipolar disorder? How does the candidate you support for governor stand on the main issues of the election? The answer to these questions gives you a list of categories or topics and it is a logical way to organize the main points of your speech. The best way to identify the main categories of your topic is to brainstorm about its characteristics.

One of the risks of using categorical organization is that you may come up with a list of as many as 9 or even 15 or more categories to discuss. Simply describing a long list of categories to the audience is a sure way to lose their attention and if your list is too long you won't have any time to add any depth to your points with examples, statistics or quotes. Generally the items in the long list can be grouped under a few different headings and so you would use those headings as your main points.

Remember it is not always necessary or desirable to add everything to your speech (even things you may really want to talk about may not fit under the categories you have selected as important). For example, in a eulogy you may describe your friend or family member as having three memorable traits such as a kind heart, a strong commitment to taking care of his family, and a great sense of humor in times of crisis. One of your favorite stories about the deceased may have nothing to do with any of these three categories so you may need to leave it out of your presentation.

One thing to keep in mind when organizing your ideas according to categories is that some may be more important or significant than others. You may want to discuss the most important topic first or leave it to the end. The reasoning behind choosing one over the other is that the audience may be more likely to remember the last thing you say but on the other hand the first thing you say, if it is new to them, will have a very strong impact. This is why it is important to consider your audience as you prepare the outline of your speech. Another consideration regards the complexity of the ideas. It is generally advisable to introduce the simplest idea first and then move on to the most complex.

One novel approach to structuring your speech using categories is to transform your key points into questions which you will answer. The advantage of using this approach is that it may serve to hold the audience's attention better because although you are using a familiar organizational approach you are adding a novel twist which stimulates interest. For example, if your main topic is about the Head Start Program in America you may want your audience to understand the basic structure of the program.

Key points

Statement: Head Start provides provides comprehensive education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement services to low-income children and their families

Question: What are the services that Head Start provides to low-income families?

Statement: Studies point to improvement for children who participate in Head Start programs with mixed results.

Question: What are the results of studies of children who participate in Head Start?

Statement: Studies fail to demonstrate advantages for Head Start programs over regular child care programs

Question: How can the needs of young children and their families be met both by Head Start and by child care programs in the community?

Cause-Effect, Pro-Con, Problem-Solution, & Chronological

Cause-Effect

The patterns we use in speeches reflect ways in which our brains interpret the world around us and we are comfortable looking at situations and examining what led up to the event (caused it) or looking at an event and seeing how the world was changed as a result. Therefore, this is a pattern which will hold the interest and attention of the audience. A word of caution is needed here. Make sure that the event you are describing and the causes you outline are directly linked. Just because one event is preceded by another does not make it the cause.

Cause-effect is often used to describe how certain events occur such as the causes and effects of climate change (which would be too broad of a topic for a short speech) or perhaps the causes and effects of the Tsunami in Japan in 2010 (which would be more suitable for a 10-minutes speech). The event may be something that occurs in nature or it can be man-made such as the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident. The event may have negative consequences such as the events identified above or it may be positive such as photosynthesis which is the process where sunlight is converted to oxygen. There are even political consequences that can be traced to direct causes. For example, as a result of media coverage of food insecurity in America programs such as school lunch programs, WIC, and Food Stamp programs were legislated. Cause-effect is also useful when the topic concerns a medical condition or a behavior that has medical consequences.

Problem-Solution

As the name suggests the problem-solution structure is concerned with problems and their solutions. Actually, there is always a problem that you as a speaker are trying to resolve but there are many ways that you as a speaker may choose to move your audience to the resolution of that problem. With problem-solution pattern the speaker is concerned with describing or defining the problem and identifying how a solution will resolve the problem (or not).

The problem that you are advocating to resolve may be a practical problem or one of ideas. The problem may also be one that the audience is already aware that it exists or it may be something that they do not know about at all. Even if your audience is aware of the problem you can still describe it in a new way or simply remind them of the main aspects of the problem. Often the solution to a problem is presented as a policy or law that should be implemented.

The problem-solution pattern can be presented in either order with the problem first and then the solution to that problem being described or the solution may be presented first followed by a description of the problems that it is solving. The problem may exist in the present time, it may be a future problem, or it may be a problem that existed in the past and a solution that was implemented in the past. It is always possible the solution you are discussing may not have worked or you may believe that a proposed solution may not work in the future.

Chronological Pattern

The chronological pattern divides the topic into time sections usually beginning with the first event and concluding with the last event although the pattern can also be reversed. This pattern is familiar with us in storytelling. If asked by a friend what we did on the weekend we often begin with what we did on Friday night, then tell about Saturday and finally what we did on Sunday. The chronological pattern also best describes a process such as how something is constructed or the sequence of activities or events that lead to a specific result as long as they are described in order of the time sequence in which these events or processes occur.

Time sequence is often the first organizational pattern a person thinks about regarding their topic and for that reason it is often easy for the audience to follow along because we naturally think of events happening in time. However, don't be tempted to use your first organizational structure idea before exploring other options because you do want to hold the audience's attention and if they think they have heard it all before their thoughts are more likely to wander off. Also consider the age of your audience when selecting this pattern. Children and young adults have not lived long enough to have witnessed long passages of time and may have difficulty understanding the relationship between events (in what to them is the distant past) unless you make them clear or help them to come alive for the audience.

An example of a speech using a chronological pattern might be a discussion of the major wars in which the United States was involved during the 20th century. The speaker would start at the beginning of the century with WWI, then discuss WWII, and finally the Vietnam War. A eulogy or a toast at a retirement or a wedding could be constructed as a chronological speech by discussing the life or the contributions of the person being celebrated in order of when they happened. A demonstration speech usually will follow a chronological pattern when a process is being demonstrated such as how to tape an athlete's ankle to prevent injury during a game or how to change a tire or decorate eggs for Easter.