11.1 Purposes of Speeches
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To Entertain. After-dinner speeches are generally designed to entertain. Although these speeches may have a secondary objective of informing or persuading through their messages, the content and delivery is developed with entertainment in mind.
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To Inform. When your major objective is to have the audience understand a body of information, concentrate on the logical presentation of content.
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To Persuade. Political speeches fall in the persuasive category because they attempt to
influence or change the attitudes or actions of an audience. Entertaining and informative speeches use the following expository type of organization:
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Narrative-Telling a Story. Autobiographical stories and tales of adventure are examples of narration.
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Descriptive-Describing a Situation. Speeches about how certain companies or industries handle problems of personnel, competition, new product development and similar topics are common at trade and industry association meetings and fall in the descriptive classification.
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Explanatory-Suing a Logical Sequence. Explanation is the basis for many talks within organizations. The talks are designed to explain existing or new policies and procedures to staff members.
Planning your strategy
With the understanding of the purpose of your speech – why you are giving it, what you hope to achieve and a conception of the size, interest and background of the audience, you should arrive at the best type of speech organization to use.
Make a few written notes about your purpose and about the make-up of the audience, keeping in mind the time of day and probable attitudes and mental alertness of the audience. These notes should assist you in selecting content for your speech.
Outlining your speech
Assume you are a successful business executive and are well known as the chairperson of the local “Say No to Drugs” campaign and you have been invited to speak at a major session with about 200 students – both men and women as your audience. Yours must be a motivational speech.
To build the foundation for an emotional appeal, you may draw from several examples, methods
and techniques first to ensure audience understanding and then to reinforce it.
These examples, methods and techniques might include any of the following items:
. Use Statistical Support. Are statistics or other quantitative measures available to lend authority and believability to your points? Surely you can find material on numbers of addicts, ages, dollars spent on drugs, and the cost to society in lost work time and hospital treatment.
. Use Anecdotes. Anecdotes are stories having a relationship to the speech topic or a moral ending. As the speaker, you are expected to have qualifications to speak. Stories about prominent citizens or role model athletes who support your program or perhaps have had careers ruined by drugs have strong emotional appeal.
. Use Quotes from Prominent People. Comments made by other authorities are always helpful. In case of drug problems, the local chief of police and a hospital administrator represent sources of quotation.
. Use Jokes. You know young people like humor, but you rule jokes out of this speech. You simply can’t find any that are closely related to your topic, and you know this relationship must exist for any joke in any speech to be effective. 中国航空网 www.aero.cn 航空翻译 www.aviation.cn 本文链接地址：电子商务专业英语实用教程(113)
