You should have no difficulty finding authoritative sources of information to support that claim. This is clearly within the scope of energy economics. Your third point, the point some audience members will want to hear, is the cost for generating electrical energy with windmills compared with other sources. Now all you need is supporting information to support this second claim. Perhaps you will say that once windmills are in place, they require virtually no maintenance. Perhaps in another speech, your thesis will address environmental impact, but in this speech, you must stay within the economic scope. You must resist the temptation to add it. However, you will quickly note that this claim is unrelated to the thesis. In your second main point, you might be tempted to claim that windmills don’t pollute in the ways other sources do. All you need is information to support your claim that only a small land base is needed. Your first main point could be that modern windmills require a very small land base, making the cost of real estate low. You have many choices, but let’s say your specific purpose is to inform a group of property owners about the economics of wind farms where electrical energy is generated. Now you must narrow this to a specific purpose. Let’s say the general purpose of your speech is to inform, and your broad topic area is wind-generated energy. If you find a poor match, you will know you’ve wandered outside the scope of the thesis. The test of the scope will be a comparison of each main point to the thesis statement. Each of the main points should directly explicate. When you begin with a clear, concrete thesis statement, it acts as kind of a compass for your outline. But on the other hand, we find that students who carefully write a full-sentence outline show a stronger tendency to give powerful presentations of excellent messages. On one hand, we understand that reluctance. It’s a task too often perceived as busywork, unnecessary, time consuming, and restricted. Your authors have noted among their past and present students a reluctance to write full-sentence outlines.

Remember that live audiences for oral communications lack the ability to “rewind” your message to figure out what you said, so it is critically important to help the audience follow your reasoning as it reaches their ears. It helps both you and your audience remember the central message of your speech.įinally, a solid full-sentence outline helps your audience understand your message because they will be able to follow your reasoning. It suggests what kind of supporting evidence is needed, so less effort is expended in trying to figure out what to do next. It reduces the amount of research you must do.

It helps you focus only on information that directly bears on your thesis. It helps you exclude irrelevant information. It helps you frame a clear, concrete thesis statement. As we have seen in other chapters of this book, writing your specific purpose in clear language serves you well.

It will call on you to have one clear and specific purpose for your message. It might even deteriorate into a list of bullet points with no apparent connection to each other except the topic, leaving your audience relieved when your speech is finally over.Ī full-sentence outline lays a strong foundation for your message. Without an outline, your message is liable to lose logical integrity. Using a standard outline format, you can make decisions about your main points, the specific information you will use to support those points, and the language you will use.

You will need to take careful steps to include pertinent information your audience might not know and to explain relationships that might not be evident to them. This is especially true if you already know a great deal about your topic. Information will need to be presented in a way your audience can understand. In order for your speech to be as effective as possible, it needs to be organized into logical patterns.

Manuscript for speech