Introduce Your Purpose and Topic

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As you were capturing your audience’s attention with stories, questions, quotations, and so on, it’s likely that you gave them a fairly overt introduction to your topic. It is essential that your introduction clearly establish what your speech will be about and what you hope to achieve by speaking (your thesis statement). Imagine that you just caught your audience’s attention with the description of a fun-filled and active day: kayaking on a pristine lake, hiking in a rain forest, rock climbing on a craggy coastline, and so on. You would then introduce your thesis: “All of these activities—and many more—are available to you in one of our nation’s most diverse protected spaces: Olympic National Park. I hope to persuade you to visit and to take advantage of all this park has to offer.”