Persuasive | Rhetoriclab

A persuasive speech is structured like an informative speech, but the aim of persuasive speech to convince the audience about a certain viewpoint they may be positive, negative, neutral, or unfamiliar with. A persuasive speech template will keep you on point. Persuasive speeches are written and delivered to convince a certain group of people. While persuasive speech topics can range from the mundane to something that transforms society, a persuasive speech outline generally remains the same: It has a good introduction, body, and conclusion. You can easily use a persuasive speech template to help you construct your speech. How Do You Structure A Persuasive Speech? In the introduction, you must grab the audience’s attention with a hook, such as a quotation, anecdote, statistic, or question. This is also where you give your central idea and a preview of your main arguments or points. The body, the longest part of your speech, discusses your points: Why should the audience believe or support you? How will it impact them and others? Are there pieces of evidence to support your claim? How can they act (i.e., what’s your proposed solution)? In the persuasive speech outline examples, you’ll also notice that it all ends with a compelling conclusion where you summarize what you discussed and deliver a strong call to action. Why Is It Important To Know The Audience Before Writing A Persuasive Speech? In public speaking, essay writing, or speech writing, identifying the topic you want to discuss depends on who your audience is. If your audience members are high school students or business leaders, you must tailor your speech and its content to something that will resonate with them. If you want to make an effective persuasive speaking effort, you must ensure that your topic and the approach (e.g., tone, language, style) you will use in delivering it will be relevant to who you’re speaking to. The same applies to all the examples, stories, and supporting facts you will use. This will help you strengthen the emotional appeal of your narrative. Additionally, if you know your audience, you can anticipate their concerns and pre-empt counterarguments that they might have. With this, you can further establish your credibility and reinforce your authority so that they will be enticed to follow suit when you state your call to action. Remember: It’s not just about spotlighting your point of view. An effective persuasive speech is all about swaying the audience to your side and compelling them to take action. How Do You Decide On The Right Appeal For Your Audience? When you have proper insights about your audience, you can also decide on the most ideal appeal to use. A persuasive speech is a type of speech whose specific purpose is to persuade and convince. Unlike an informative speech, it must end with your audience — or, at least, a good number of them — convinced to support your idea. So, to create a good persuasive speech, you must conduct thorough research on your audience. It includes knowing their demographics, preference, and even cultural influences. Then, upon knowing these, see where your and their values intersect. This is where you want to concentrate your main points. You want the emotional triggers you use to align with the beliefs they uphold. Even if you’re using the right tone, words, and body language in delivering these emotional touchpoints, it won’t be as effective if they’re not in the interest of your audience. The key is to tap into what matters to them the most. For example, you will discuss the perks of a hybrid work setup, and your audience will comprise C-suite executives and managers. Suppose you are to craft a speech that motivates them to implement a hybrid work setup instead of just pure on-site or pure work-from-home. In that case, you must dig deep into their priorities, highlight the benefits of this setup, present how it can be strategically implemented, and prepare arguments that would tackle common communication and performance monitoring issues. What Are The 5 Steps Of Persuasive Speech? When searching online for a persuasive speech outline template, one of the techniques you’ll encounter is Monroe’s motivated sequence (Other popular methods include problem-solution and comparative advantages). In Monroe’s motivated sequence, the five steps of persuasive speech include: 1. Attention The first thing you want to do is to capture your audience’s attention and pique their curiosity. For you to accomplish this, you must use an attention grabber. As mentioned earlier, it could be an intriguing story or statistic, a moving story or anecdote, or thought-provoking rhetorical questions. Once you have their attention, introduce your topic — your thesis statement — as clearly as possible. Give a glimpse of your key points and make your audience understand why it’s important that they listen. This will help set your audience’s expectations about what you will discuss. 2. Need This is where you will discuss in detail the statement you initially presented. State the problem and showcase its realness by citing examples, pieces of research, studies, and stories. These proofs will illustrate and concretize the need and the consequences that will happen if not addressed. To ensure the audience resonates with it, you must put it in their context. Show how it affects them and why they must care about — and take part in — resolving the problem. 3. Satisfaction To help your audience be part of the solution, your speech must present a course of action. In this step, you must first convey what you’d like the audience to support or believe — and why they must be one with you in achieving your goal. Then, explain the action you want them to take to meet that goal. Like the previous step, you must give examples and testimonials proving that the solution you’re telling them is effective. If you’re using a PowerPoint, back these up with appropriate visuals (e.g., graphs, tables, images, videos). 4. Visualization To strengthen the effectiveness of a persuasive speech, you must guide your audience in visualizing the future and the potential impact of your proposed course of action. There are three approaches to this. You can let them imagine what it would look like if they followed your proposal to address the need. On the other hand, you can show the negative counterpart: What would the future be if they didn’t adopt your solution? The third approach is to combine the positive and negative methods. 5. Action The conclusive step of this technique is to convince your audience to do something. Now that they’ve learned the need, the solution, and its benefits and/or consequences, it’s time for them to take action. To make your call to action more compelling, you can give them practical tips on taking part. Your goal is to encourage them and not overwhelm them. What Are The 3 Parts Of A Persuasive Speech? A persuasive speech has three main parts: An introduction, a body, and a conclusion. The opening part is where you captivate your audience’s attention, establish credibility, and provide an overview of your thesis statement. In the body, you will discuss the main points and provide examples. Based on Monroe’s motivated sequence, your main points can include the need, the solution, and the impact of your solution. The concluding remark is where you sum up your main points, emphasize your thesis, and deliver a stirring call to action. Apart from these three main parts, you must also remember the three main pillars of a persuasive speech: Ethos. This is about your trustworthiness as a speaker. You can establish your authority and believability by showing that your ethical principles are aligned with that of your audience. Pathos. This is how you appeal to your audience’s emotions. When writing and delivering your speech, you must evoke feelings and spark connections with your audience to influence their beliefs and perception of a topic. You can do this by maintaining eye contact, being mindful of your tone, and effectively using body language. Logos. Apart from appealing to emotions, your speech must be logical and reasonable. The logos pillar reminds you to take advantage of available facts and proofs of evidence to strengthen sound arguments. How Do You Write A 5-Minute Persuasive Speech? Five-minute speeches can provide ample time to discuss your thesis statement and sway your audience to your side. When you study any sample persuasive speech, you’ll realize that a ton of effort, creative thinking, patience, and dedication are poured in just to create a cohesive and convincing narrative. If you want to write something effective, you must know and take into account your audience. Put yourself in their shoes and analyze their goals, attitude, principles, and pain points. Then, you must lay out your thoughts and create an outline (you can easily find a sample speech outline online). Then, you must choose the right and powerful words to expand your outline clearly. Opt for brevity and conciseness because you only have a few minutes to deliver the speech. Beef up your speech by citing reputable pieces of evidence. You can also hold brainstorming and critiquing sessions with peers to help you enrich, tweak, and polish your arguments. What Is A Useful Persuasive Speech Template To Follow? To help craft an effective speech, here’s a persuasive speech outline template you can use. Introduction Attention grabber Thesis statement Credibility and relevance Preview of your main points Body Transition sentence Need Description of the problem Discussion of its effects, Presentation of evidence Transition sentence Solution Description of the solution and its goal Presentation of evidence (how effective is the solution) Visualization of adopting and/or not adopting the solution Plan of action and an explanation of how to implement it Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Conclusion Transition sentence Summary of the importance and relevance of your topic Review of your main points Call to action Closing statement