comm_and_you

Connecting Your Points

Page 264

When organizing your speech in a narrative pattern, put your feet in a storyboard artist’s shoes. Visualize your outline as a storyboard, and think of your speech points as scenes.

When you’re pulling together, supporting, and arranging your points, you may find yourself falling into what we like to call the “grocery list trap.” Essentially, this occurs when your speech begins to seem like a thorough list of good but seemingly unrelated ideas. So, how do you move smoothly from one point to another? The key lies in your use of transitions, signposts, and internal previews and summaries.

Transitions. Transitions are sentences that connect different points, thoughts, and details in a way that allows them to flow naturally from one to the next. Clear transitions cue the audience on where you’re headed with the speech and how your ideas and supporting material are connected. They also alert your audience that you will be making a point. Consider the following examples of transitions:

I’ve just described some of the amazing activities you can enjoy in our national parks, so let me tell you about two parks that you can visit within a three-hour drive of our university.

In addition to the environmental benefits of reducing your energy consumption, there are some fantastic financial benefits that you can enjoy.

Notice how the transitions in both examples also serve to alert your audience that you will be making a point that you want them to remember. Transitions are therefore essential to making your points clear and easy to follow.

Technology and You

Do transitions function similarly in mediated communications? For example, how might you transition between points and ideas via text message or instant message?

Signposts. Effective speakers make regular use of signposts, key words or phrases within sentences that signify transitions between points. Think of signposts as links or pivot points at which you either connect one point to another (“similarly,” “next,” “once again”) or move from one point to a related but perhaps opposing or alternative point (“however,” “on the other hand”). Table 12.1 details various examples of signposts and considers how they function effectively to achieve a specific purpose.

Table 12.1 Useful Signposts
Function	Example
To show comparison	Similarly
	In the same way
	In comparison
To contrast ideas, facts, or data	On the other hand
	Alternatively
	In spite of
To illustrate cause and effect	It follows, then, that
	Consequently
	Therefore
	Thus
To indicate explanation	For example
	In other words
	To clarify
To introduce additional examples	Another way in which
	Just as
	Likewise
	In a similar fashion
To emphasize significance	It’s important to remember that
	Above all
	Bear in mind
To indicate sequence of time or events	First . . . , Second . . . , Third
	Finally
	First and foremost
	Once
	Now . . . , Then
	Until now
	Before . . . , After
	Earlier . . . , Later
	Primarily
To summarize	As we’ve seen
	Altogether
	Finally
	In conclusion

Source: O’Hair, Stewart, & Rubenstein (2007), p. 181. Adapted with permission.

Internal Previews and Internal Summaries. Like a good map that shows travelers points along the way to their destination, internal previews prime the audience for the content immediately ahead. They often work best in conjunction with internal summaries, which allow the speaker to crystallize the points made in one section of a speech before moving to the next section. The following examples have both an internal summary and an internal preview.

So far, I have presented two reasons why you should enroll your puppy in obedience school. First, it benefits your dog. Second, it benefits your family. Now I will address my third point: taking your dog to obedience school benefits your neighborhood.

Now that I have explained what asthma is and the two main types of asthma, allergic and nonallergic, I will discuss what you can do to avoid an asthma attack.

Direct the audience from one point in your speech to the next with signpost words or phrases, such as “similarly” or “on the other hand.”

By first summarizing and then previewing, the speakers in these examples have created useful transitions that gracefully move the speech forward while offering audiences an opportunity to synthesize the information already received.

LearningCurve

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