To become effective leaders, teens must hone their public speaking skills. One of the fundamental skills that a leadership class should teach is how to structure a speech. Read this article to learn an easy and effective speech structure to use to make your message resonate with your audience.

Fred’s concern about his speech

Fred has to give a speech to his leadership class next week. He is worried because he hasn’t given many speeches and he doesn’t know how he should put the speech together. He knows that public speaking is an important skill that he needs to learn if he wants to become a leader. He decides to go to his leadership teacher for help. His leadership teacher offers encouragement as well as an outline of how to structure a standard speech…

In a nutshell, this is what Fred’s teacher said:

“Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you told them.”

In general, most standard speeches follow the same type of structure, which includes an introduction, a body consisting of three main points, and a conclusion.

The three standard parts of a discourse structure

Part 1. Introduction

The opening or introduction of the speech sets the tone and topic of the speech:

• It usually contains a quote, example, statistics, or humorous story to grab the audience’s attention.
• The speaker must also give the main topic of the speech.
• Also, you should summarize the main points that are going to be addressed in the speech.

Part 2. Body consisting of three main points

A standard speech has a body that contains three main points:

• These points come from the main theme of the speech given in the introduction.
• The speaker should give examples, illustrations, statistics, stories, and/or quotes about each of the central points to support them.

Part 3. Conclusion

The classic saying about a speech is that you should “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them what you’re going to tell them, and then tell them what you told them.” The first part represents the introduction, the next is the three main points of the body of the speech, and the last, “tell them what you told them,” is the conclusion.

At the conclusion of the speech,

• The speaker should remind the audience what the main topic was and how each of the three main points relates to it.
• The speaker should summarize the main ideas of the speech.
• Depending on the type of speech it is, the speaker may need to make a call to action based on the ideas of the speech.

How Fred applied this to his speech

Given his high school leadership teacher’s outline for how to structure a speech, Fred worked on his speech throughout the week and organized his ideas. His speech was excellent, as he presented his topic, went over the main points and gave his conclusion. His teacher was pleased and he received many high fives from his classmates for his speech. He then thanked his student leadership teacher by saying:

“Crafting a speech is not as difficult as I thought, when you have the right speech structure.”