The Speech Opening

Before the Speech

Speech Content and Structure

The Audience and Context for the Speech

Analyses

Speech Analysis

The ability to analyze a speech will accelerate the growth of any speaker.

The Speech Analysis Series is a series of articles examining different aspects of presentation analysis. You will learn how to study a speech and how to deliver an effective speech evaluation.

1. Questions to ask yourself when assessing a presentation. Ask these questions whether you attend the presentation, or whether you view a video or read the speech text. These questions also apply when you conduct a self evaluation of your own speeches.

2. The Most Important Thing to Analyze: The Speech Objectives

Knowing the speaker’s objective is critical to analyzing the speech, and should certainly influence how you study it.

- What is the speaker’s goal? Is it toeducate,tomotivate, topersuade, or toentertain?

- What is the primary message being delivered?

- Why is this person delivering this speech? Are they the right person?

- Was the objective achieved?

Different techniques will be applied when communicating with teenagers as opposed to communicating with corporate leaders.

- Where andwhenis the speech being delivered?

- What are the key demographic features of the audience? Technical? Students? Elderly? Athletes? Business leaders?

- How large is the audience?

- In addition to the live audience, is there an external target audience? (e.g. on the Internet or mass media)

The content of the speech should be selected and organized to achieve the primary speech objective. Focus is important — extraneous information can weaken an otherwise effective argument.

- Were there other speakers before this one? Were their messages similar, opposed, or unrelated?

- How was the speaker introduced? Was it appropriate?

- Did the introduction establish why the audience should listen to this speaker with this topic at this time?

- What body language was demonstrated by the speaker as they approached the speaking area? Body language at this moment will often indicate their level of confidence.

Due to the primacy effect, words, body language, and visuals in the speech opening are all critical to speaking success.

- Was a hook used effectively to draw the audience into the speech? Or did the speaker open with a dry “It’s great to be here today.“

- Did the speech open with a story? A joke? A startling statistic? A controversial statement? A powerful visual?

- Did the speech opening clearly establish the intent of the presentation?

- Was the opening memorable?