Learning to Make a Speech Easy to Understand

The main purpose of an informative speech is to teach, a good informative speech is one that's easy for the audience to understand. Thus, it's very important that students learn how to organize their informative speech well. This is a skill students often find difficult, and it's one instructors need to spend time teaching. Some organizational concepts students need to understand include:

* Speech outlining. Much as students dislike this, it's a very important part of the assignment-- and will help with writing skills as well.
* Thesis statements that effectively preview the speech.
* Transitions between points, including the use of "signpost" words such as "first" and "finally."
* Conclusions that summarize main points.

In addition, it's important that students learn to use language that's easy for their audience to understand. They need to learn to avoid jargon, or terms that are familiar only to people with a specific interest or profession.

Much of informative speaking is governed by common sense. The speaker needs to creatively find ways to allow the audience to learn something. Spend some time brainstorming with students about effective strategies that each of them can use to teach their topic to the class. Ask the students to think of useful examples that will make the topic easier to understand.