Evaluating Speeches: Introduction

Video Transcript

"Alright, now let's talk about organization. The first thing we want to talk about when we talk about organization is the introduction, which is one of the most important parts of the speech. The first thing we have to take a look at is did the first line out of the speakers mouth -which is the attention getter, or should be- did it get our attention? Or did the speaker get up and say, "I'm Tracy, and I'm going to be talking about toads." Okay that doesn't get your attention. Did it get your attention? Did it begin, did the introduction begin to establish a goodwill relationship between the audience and the speaker? And, did the introduction lead into the rest of the speech? Did the introduction make sense? Was there a good statement about what the speech was going to be about? Did the speaker make a statement like, "Today I'm going to talk to you about the three variety of horn-toed frogs, and their mating habits?" and then that's what they talked about? Or did the speaker say, "Today we're going to talk about reptiles," which is a much broader topic. That's not a bad thing, but did it really lead into the speech? So those are some of the things you want to look at as far as the introduction goes."