How to Write a Good Speech

Having a good speech is a lot like making a good cake. Having the right ingredients is the key to its success. You can deliver a successful speech with just a few easy steps.

Ask yourself what your main idea is. Outline the key components of your idea and the ultimate goal for your speech. It should look something like this:

Main idea: What is the main idea I want to get across? Goal: What do I want people to learn from my speech?

This should be simple; people generally learn two or three key points, so it is better to do a speech that is clear and well-planned with a couple of simple points than a long speech that confuses people.

Include the three basic elements in your speech (just as in a commentary or paper).

Introduction: A summary of the points you want to get across. This gets the attention early and it sets the tone for your speech. If you begin early with a long introduction or have a confused introduction, people will start to tune you out.

An example of an introduction: "The following speech is about Italian food. I wish to talk to you about this because it has been an important part of my life, and it helped make me the person today. Maybe you won't ever eat more than spaghetti in your life, but you might become more open to the idea of sampling a broader range in Italian fare."

An introduction should be interesting, to the point and not too long. Your voice should be confident and loud, which will engage the audience from the start.

The midsection should discuss your main ideas. Aim for a couple of points for a 10-minute talk. For example: what Italian food is, why I like it, the benefits I get from eating it and some of the drawbacks of consuming too much.

Within those points you should have subpoints like this: what Italian food is; it is a food that came from Italy; it includes many pastas; two of the main ingredients are cheese and sauce; bread and sauce made one of the more famous dishes called pizza.

Now you have a paragraph of one of your key points. After you have made the categories, you simply make them full coherent sentences.

Move to the conclusion. This should sum up all of your key points and serve as a reminder of what you just talked about.

For example: “Finally, I would like to say that Italian food for me is one of the most delicious and satisfying foods in the world. There are many types of pasta and sauce and it has served to give my family a sense of unity through food ... if you haven’t tried Italian food, you have no idea what you are missing!”