Things You'll Need:
- Word processing software or just pen and paper
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Step 1
Attention getter step. Make the first words out of your mouth a quote, a short story, an arresting statistic, an example, or a question (one of these, not all of them!). This step is to catch the audience's attention, much like a lure catches a fish's attention. For example, in a speech on skin cancer, you might begin this way: "The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 40% of Americans will have contracted some form of skin cancer by the time they are 65."
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Step 2
Audience connection step. Follow your attention step with a statement that makes the audience care about your topic. Use "you" or "we" language. The point here is to motivate the listeners to care about what you are going to talk about by connecting the topic to them and their lives. In the hypothetical speech on skin cancer, for example, you might say to a room of forty listeners, "This means that, statistically speaking, sixteen of us here in this room will get some form of skin cancer in our lifetimes." This connection step is equivalent to the baited hook when fishing. The lure of the first step caught our attention; now you've hooked us and we can't stop listening because you've motivated us to care.
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Step 3
Topic orientation step. Now you can reel us in to the topic itself. In this step, you simply state the topic of your speech in one to three sentences ("Today I want to consider skin cancer rates in the United States today, since it is a threat to so many of us. Skin cancer is defined by the World Health Organization as ..."). Naming the topic AFTER you have hooked us makes us interested in the topic. If you had started right into the topic without steps one and two above, you risk getting yawns from the audience.
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Step 4
Thesis step. This should be one sentence that again names the topic BUT ALSO GIVES YOUR ANGLE on that topic. It is the main idea of your speech. It is the point you want to make ABOUT the topic you just named for us in step 3. To continue our example on skin cancer: "Skin cancer is a growing trend in the United States for several reasons." Simple is better than complex when it comes to your thesis statement.
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Step 5
Preview step. This is the last step in your speech introduction before you begin with the first main point in the body of your speech. Simply look at what your main points are in the body of your speech (many speeches have as few as two main points, to as many as four or five). Then conversationally list them for the audience. This is a kind of table of contents of the speech, and like a table of contents, it helps the listeners know how to fit each point you make together since you have given them the structure of the speech before launching into the body of the speech. It might sound like this: "In the next few minutes, I want to talk about the social, environmental, and epidemiological causes are for the increase in skin cancer rates."
