Lesson 1 Criteria for Success

Lesson 14
Determining the Purpose of Your Speech or Presentation
General Purpose
Why are you making a speech? What do you aim to achieve at the end of your presentation? Every speech or presentation has a purpose. Many times, you and I have attended presentations at the end of which we were left wondering what the speaker was trying to convey. This may have happened because the speaker was not clear about his/her objective. While planning our presentation, it is important to find an answer to the question ‘why am I making this speech?’. It is vital to be clear about our purpose, as it becomes the basis for our content. Expressing the purpose of our speech or presentation in one sentence or writing down a statement of purpose provides clarity. Generally, a speech or presentation is made to inform, persuade or entertain. If our purpose changes, so does our content. Hence, it is a vital step in the planning process. When the purpose of our speech is to inform, we want our audience to learn about a new topic or develop a new skill or advance their knowledge on a subject that they already know. Suppose we are addressing a set of students about the new facilities on campus or we are training a group of executives on a new technology, our purpose is to inform. A sample statement of purpose could be “To inform students about the new facilities on campus”. Such a presentation or speech would contain facts and figures aimed at helping the audience to increase their knowledge about the topic of the presentation. When the purpose is to persuade, we wish to convince the audience about a new product or idea. Suppose we are attempting to convince a set of faculty on the efficacy of the new grading system or we are trying to persuade our audience to buy our product or persuading the CEO to implement a new idea to bring down manufacturing costs, our purpose is to persuade. A sample statement of purpose could be “To persuade the CEO to implement a new idea which would help in cost cutting”. Such a speech would contain information to back our claims that the new method is better. When the purpose is to entertain, we intend to amuse the audience. Speeches where the speaker attempts to regale the audience with humor, stories, anecdotes etc. are planned with this purpose in mind. Humorous speeches made by entertainers are the best examples as their sole purpose is to delight the audience and make them happy. While humor can be a part of an informative or persuasive speech, there the purpose is not to entertain.
There are three elements that combine to create a specific purpose statements: your own interests and knowledge, the interests and needs of your audience, and the context or setting in which you will be speaking.
Keeping these three inputs in mind, you can begin to write a specific purpose statement, which will be the foundation for everything you say in the speech and a guide for what you do not say. This formula will help you in putting together your specific purpose statement:
To _______________ [Specific Communication Word (inform, explain, demonstrate, describe, define, persuade, convince, prove, argue)] _______________ [Target Audience (my classmates, the members of the Social Work Club, my coworkers] __________________. [The Content (how to bake brownies, that Macs are better than PCs].
Example: The purpose of my presentation is to demonstrate to my coworkers the value of informed intercultural communication.

Formulating a Central Idea Statement

While you will not actually say your specific purpose statement during your speech, you will need to clearly state what your focus and main points are going to be. The statement that reveals your main points is commonly known as the central idea statement (or just the central idea). Just as you would create a thesis statement for an essay or research paper, the central idea statement helps focus your presentation by defining your topic, purpose, direction, angle, and/or point of view. Here are two examples:

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  Specific Purpose—To explain to my classmates the effects of losing a pet on the elderly.
  
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    Central Idea—When elderly persons lose their animal companions, they can experience serious psychological, emotional, and physical effects.
    
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  Specific Purpose—To demonstrate to my audience the correct method for cleaning a computer keyboard.
  
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    Central Idea—Your computer keyboard needs regular cleaning to function well, and you can achieve that in four easy steps.