Decide what you want to accomplish with your speech. For any given topic, you should direct your speech toward one of three general speech purposes—to inform, to persuade, or to mark a special occasion. Thus you need to decide whether your goal is to inform your audience about an issue or event, to persuade them to accept one position to the exclusion of other positions, or to mark a special occasion such as a wedding, a funeral, or a dinner event.

Your speech should also have a specific purpose. This is a single phrase stating precisely what you want the audience to learn or do as a result of your speech. For example, if your general purpose is to inform, your specific purpose might be “to inform my audience about three key qualities of distance courses.” If your general purpose is to persuade, the specific purpose might be “to convince my audience that they should support funds for the development of distance courses.”