Identifying Your Main Points

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First and foremost, you must determine the main points of your speech, which are the central claims that support your specific speech purpose and your thesis statement (which you learned about in chapter 11). That is, you need to identify and organize key ideas that will lead the audience members to accept or weigh what you are asking them to do, believe, or consider.

Before you begin developing your main points, you may be wondering how many you will need in your speech. Because each speech is unique, there is no easy answer—but the general rule is that audiences have trouble remembering more than three or four main points. This will generally serve you well for the purposes of your human communication course, but always check with your instructor if you have questions.

With this in mind, let’s consider how main points work in action. Let’s say you’re giving a persuasive speech advocating for listeners to vote in favor of removing unhealthy candy and soda vending machines from your local high school in order to combat obesity. What key points do you think will influence your listeners to vote this way? Perhaps they would be motivated to do so if they knew the scope of the problem:

Main Point 1: Obesity in children and adolescents is a growing national health problem in the United States.

You’d likely further your argument by connecting the types of food and beverages in vending machines to the obesity problem:

Main Point 2: Vending machines typically offer food choices and beverages with low nutritional value in addition to excess fats and refined sugars.

Finally, they might want to hear about some success stories to motivate them to take action:

Main Point 3: Several major school districts successfully removed soda machines from their schools with positive benefits.

Note that each main point includes only one major idea. This prevents you from overwhelming your audience with too much information and makes it easier for you to supply the examples, testimonies, statistics, and facts to back up each point. When in doubt about developing your main points, ask yourself, “Does this point prove my thesis? Does it help me achieve my specific purpose?” If you can confidently answer “yes,” then you’re on the right track.