Once you’ve arranged your main points in an organizational pattern, think about how connectives—words and phrases that link your ideas together—will help you move from one idea to the next. Using connectives will help your audience accurately receive and understand your speech because they show how your ideas are related. As we will discuss later in the chapter, you should write connective phrases into the outline of your speech. Doing so will help you think through the relationship of your ideas and the flow of your speech. There are four types of connectives: internal previews, internal summaries, transitional phrases, and signposts.

Internal Previews. Sometimes you will want to provide your listeners with a first look at the information you’re about to cover with statements known as internal previews. These statements let your audience in on what you are going to tell them before you actually do. Consider this internal preview in a speech about why students drop out of school:

Three factors contribute to student dropout. These are a lack of academic readiness, financial need, and poor advisement. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

When a main point has subpoints, an internal preview can help your audience follow along as you develop each subpoint.

Internal Summaries.Internal summaries provide a short review of information you’ve discussed within a section of the speech. This connective is especially useful when you have covered a main point with multiple aspects, as in the speech about student dropout rates:

As you just heard, poor academic preparation, inadequate finances, and misguided advice prior to enrollment are contributing causes to student dropout rates.

Providing your listeners with internal summaries will solidify the most essential information about the main point before you move on.

Transitional phrases.When you want to indicate that you’re shifting to another point or idea, you can use transitional phrases. These phrases provide a verbal signal that you are moving on:

Now that we’ve examined the reasons for student dropout, let’s focus on what you can do to prevent it.

These simple phrases can keep your audience from getting lost when you begin to make a different point.

Signposts.Signposts are brief words—often numbers—that quickly introduce a new idea. Words like First, Second, Next, Additionally, and Finally are signposts, as in the following:

Additionally, students can take action to control the forces causing them to drop out.

These are most helpful when you are covering several steps or examples that your audience will need to keep track of.