Signal Your Thesis

After you’ve riveted your listeners’ attention, your next step is to indicate the thesis of your speech. You can use your topic statement for this purpose. Recall from Chapter 6 that your thesis statement is the single sentence that expresses the aspect of the topic you will be emphasizing in your speech: your thesis conveys the speech’s “bottom line.” Providing this statement early in the speech answers a question that is in the minds of many audience members—“What will this speech be about?” It also helps listeners to focus on your message rather than use their mental energy figuring out what your speech topic might be.

Your thesis statement should clearly convey your topic and purpose in delivering the presentation, further preparing your audience members to listen. It also should be specific and include a signpost that makes it clear that your attention-getter is finished and you are now revealing your topic.

Consider the following example:

ATTENTION-GETTER

  1. The tallest mountain in North America. Grizzly bears eating berries just ten feet from the road. Clean, fresh air that you will not find in “the lower forty-eight.”

TWO POSSIBLE THESIS STATEMENTS

  1. Vague thesis statement: All these features can be found in a pristine wilderness environment.

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  2. Specific thesis statement: You can find all these features in Denali National Park, Alaska, and I hope to convince you to visit Denali.

Notice that the specific thesis statement clarifies that the subject of the speech is Denali and that the presenter’s purpose is to persuade his audience to go there.