Why is it important to set a specific goal for your speech?

Write an essay in which you address the following:

• Why is it important to set a specific goal for your speech? What elements of the speech help you share that goal with your audience?
• Why is it important to choose an organizational pattern for your speech? How does the audience become aware of your organizational pattern?
• Would a speech become less effective if the speaker neglected to use
• any of the functions of the introduction? Which functions do you think are most important? Explain.
• What advice would you give to a classmate about writing an effective conclusion?

• Why is it important to set a specific goal for your speech? What elements of the speech help you share that goal with your audience?

It is important to set a specific goal for the speech because it helps us in being focused towards one direction and it helps us not to deviate because audience are not interested in listening to a person who is speaking without an aim. One should know whether he is making speech to convince, inspire, motivate, sell a product or warn the audience. Having a specific goal helps the speaker in evaluating during and after the speech that whether the speech was effective or not, so if the goal of speech was attained then speech was effective else it wasn’t. Tuleja (2002) discuss that communication has a purpose and it should be expressed in the form of goal so that the purpose is achieved via explicit goal setting. This goal of speech is set in certain context i.e. goal of college speech is different from organizational speech’s goal. The seven elements of speech are sender/encoder, medium, receiver/decoder, feedback, message, context and noise (although noise is not mandatory). The elements of speech which help in goal sharing are message, feedback and the context. The message should be communicated in right manner and environment (context), it should be complete and clear and audience should be asked to share their opinion on the goal as well. This will help in achieving speech’s goal.

• Why is it important to choose an organizational pattern for your speech? How does the audience become aware of your organizational pattern?

It is better to have an introduction, body and conclusion of a speech because this organization of speech helps the audience to know in advance what the speech is about, what topics shall be covered and what to expect, what are details of the topic and then to know the summary and crux of the speech again at the end. If the speech does not have any organization, then the audience will be guessing what can come up next. They should know the layout of speech so that they can relate every idea to what is discussed earlier and what is about to come. This develops better understanding of topic of speech and maintains the interest and attention of the audience too. If the speech lacks an organization, then the audience will not know clearly at the end what was the goal of the speech. There are certain words or keywords that make audience aware of the speech pattern. For instance, if the speaker uses words like “listen”, “know” then the audience will understand that the speech is informative, if the speaker calls audience to action at the end of the speech, this means that the speech is motivational or persuasive. So, the organization of speech in general and the conclusion of the speech in particular helps the audience to understand goal and pattern of speech. The audience can identify cause and effect pattern if they find problems and their impacts narrated in the speech.

• Would a speech become less effective if the speaker neglected to use any of the functions of the introduction? Which functions do you think are most important? Explain.

The common functions of introduction of a speech are i) getting the audience’s attention, ii) introducing the topic, iii) explaining why it is relevant and important, iv) stating purpose of speech, and v) narrating main points of the speech. The speaker makes up the mind of the audience and prepares them for the main content using these five in the beginning of the speech. Although making use of all these components of introduction make speeches effective, some components are more important than the others. For instance, the third and fourth functions i.e. relevance and purpose are more important and if the speaker is unable to mention or clarify the relevance and purpose of the speech then the audience may not know till the end that the speech is important for them and they should take interest in it. Clarifying the purpose of speech in introduction is important especially in cause and effect pattern of speech. It helps the audience to identify problems, their impacts and their solutions during the speech (Patterns of organization, n.d.). The speaker should try to highlight all functions however, the attention and interest of the audience is attracted and maintained by telling them how the topic relates to them. This can be done by giving examples of connection between them and the topic. Example of showing relevance is “as all of you are healthcare practitioners, you should know about the evolving policies in healthcare”.

• What advice would you give to a classmate about writing an effective conclusion?

While advising my classmate about writing an effective communication, I would tell him that people are most likely to remember what was said the last. As for ourselves too, we remember the last words of the teacher during the lecture more accurately as compared to what he says in the beginning or in the middle. So, the conclusion should neither be ignored nor be taken non-seriously. Second advice that I will like to give him is that the conclusion should include both the summary and suggestions. One should tell what are the main points and what does the speaker want the reader to infer from it. Every message has a purpose and the sender of message should summarize message and its purpose at the end in order to remind the reader what is expected of him. If the message is persuasive, the reader should not consider it informative. He should be told what to do next. Hacicaferoglu (2014) discusses the importance of communication for teaching profession and shows how important it is for the teachers to conclude their lectures and messages effectively. So, I will advise my friend to conclude his messages such that the readers know and recall main topics of the message and remember them for a longer period.

References

Hacicaferoglu, S. (2014). Survey on the Communication Skills that the College Students of

School of Physical Education and Sports Perceived from the Teaching Staff. International Journal of Science Culture and Sport. 2(1)

Patterns of organization. (n.d.). Retrieved from:

http://faculty.washington.edu/ezent/impo.htm#CEP

Tuleja, E. A. (2002), A Qualitative Research Study of Oral Communication Performance.

Performance Improvement Quarterly, 15: 130–148. doi:10.1111/j.1937-8327.2002.tb00260.x