Class,

By this time you should have your topic and the research to help you support your main ideas. Please be sure that you look at the peer review one of your classmates left for you if any. You also need to look at the Week Six rubric for my notes, especially on the reliability of your sources. If you used Wikipedia, be sure that you find information from the library databases to update your sources. Do not use Wikipedia for any scholarly work, it is not reliable.

Go by the details listed on the assignment page for organizing your draft. Remember that a persuasive speech is one that is meant to influence another’s behavior or attitude. You need the expert sources to help support your main ideas. 

Introductions: You put together the intro after you have the body of the speech developed. Otherwise, what would you introduce? There are several ways to start introducing your speech, a quote, a statistic, or a narrative. Remember that these attention getters need to be relevant to your topic. For instance, if you were going to talk about the importance of taking care of diabetes, you could start with what a diabetic goes through in the morning to check the blood sugar, and what could happen if not checked. Also in the intro you should preview your main ideas, such as “Today we are going to talk about…”

Conclusions: Your conclusion should always review the main ideas, such as “We talked about…” What this does is help your audience keep in mind the important points of your speech. Your conclusion should also give your audience closure on the topic since most persuasive speeches have an emotional aspect in it. So always close it off for them.

So there are three important parts to your speech: introduction, body with expert support and the conclusion. We need to recognize all three. You will need to also develop your transitions from one idea to the next. You need one between the intro and your first main idea, between each main idea and then between the last main idea and the conclusion.

Do not forget to cite your sources in the speech and to have your reference list after the conclusion.

Any questions? Contact me by email or text.