This summary is organized around the questions found at the beginning of the chapter. See if you can answer them before reading the summary paragraphs.

1. How do I choose a topic for my speech?

Pick a topic that interests you. Your enthusiasm for a topic will be contagious to the audience and help you deliver a lively presentation. Almost any topic can be a successful speech. Select a topic early and spend most of your preparation time gathering material for your speech and adapting your topic to the audience.

2. What is the difference between a general and a specific speech purpose and how do they affect my speech?

The general speech purpose is the overall goal of your speech, such as to inform, persuade, or entertain your audience. A speech to inform explains a concept, idea, or process to the audience. A speech to persuade motivates the audience to believe or act in a certain way. A speech to entertain amuses, enthralls, cheers, charms, or pleases the audience. The specific speech purpose states your objective for the speech in precise detail. An effective specific purpose should narrow the topic and focus the speech. It should clearly indicate what you expect of the audience once the speech is over. One way of formulating an effective specific purpose is to complete the following sentence: I want my audience to (understand, believe, or do) .

3. How can analyzing the situation help my speech to succeed?

A careful analysis of the situation includes an examination of your strengths and weaknesses as a speaker, the audience, and the occasion. When analyzing yourself, determine how much you know about the topic and identify any biases you might have toward the topic. When examining the audience, consider the age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and levels of education of the members. You should also consider your audience's familiarity with and attitudes toward your topic. In analyzing the occasion, consider the time, mood, purpose of the gathering, and physical setting of the speech. It is also a good idea to take into account any speakers who talk immediately before and after you. Consider how those speeches might influence the audience's reception of your topic.

4. What kind of research should I do for my speech?

You will want to gather more information than you can use in the presentation. An abundance of research allows you to select the most interesting or persuasive material for use in your speech. Thorough research will also make you a more credible and trusted speaker. The computer's ability to store, retrieve, sort, and deliver information has radically changed the way many speakers find material for their presentations. Electronic indexes catalog types of speech materials, including newspapers, magazines, journals, books, audio files, video collections, and photographs. The World Wide Web can also enable you to access an enormous amount of material directly through homepages on the Internet. Much of this information is valuable, but much of it is also dubious. Critical researchers evaluate the reliability of the information by examining the source and currency of the information they find, the consistency of the material contained on the Web page, the intended purpose of the computer site, and even the actual design of the homepage.

5. How can I plan a responsible presentation?

You can prepare a responsible presentation by selecting an appropriate topic for the audience and occasion, and presenting a balanced perspective by using information from a variety of sources. A responsible speaker also makes proper attribution of all sources used in the speech, either in the bibliography or in the actual speech itself. You should not plagiarize the work of others. Take the time to carefully prepare your speech, using your own ideas and words.