3809ADAE-9D53-3603-FF6EA00F93E09621
Introductions should secure audience attention and interest, orient listeners to the plan and content of the speech and set expectations.
- Get the audience’s attention with a story, quotation, personal experience, etc.
- Identify the topic and indicate why it is relevant, important, or interesting.
- Establish your credibility through words or behavior.
- Provide context, background, and definitions listeners might need.
- State your purpose, thesis, or research question.
- Preview the body of your speech.
- Make a transition to the first point in the body of the speech.
- Start with “um" or "OK.”
- Apologize for weaknesses in your content, preparation or speaking ability.
- Complain about food, accommodations, equipment, facilities or other speakers.
- Use “humor” that might disparage, offend or alienate your listeners.
- Use cheap tricks to get attention.
- Go on about how hard it was to choose a topic.
Conclusions should reinforce the message and give the speech unity and closure.
Do:- Summarize the main points of your speech.
- Restate your purpose or thesis.
- Create closure, a sense of finality.
- In persuasive speeches, make a final call for commitment or action.
- Open new areas of discussion or argument.
- Change position or viewpoint.
- Resort to feeble closing phrases like “and that's all I have to say.”
- Say “thank you” just because the audience doesn't seem to realize that your speech is over.
The speech conclusion has four basic missions:
- Wraps things up- This portion is often referred to as a ““. Much like brake lights on a car warn us the car will be stopping, this “brakelight” or transitional statement warns the audience that the speech is coming to a close.
- Summarizes- A solid conclusion briefly restates the preview statement in past tense to remind the audience of the main points that were covered in the presentation.
- Tells the audience where to go from here- Depending on the purpose of your presentation, this component may play different roles. If your goal was to inform the audience, this is where you might tell them of a rich source they can go to for more information if their curiosity was piqued. If your goal is to persuade, this spot serves as a great opportunity to challenge the audience to take action based on the goals of your speech. Tell them what you want them to do now that they heard your speech.
- Closes the speech- The note of finality, clincher, closing statement or whatever you want to call it is an important element that leaves the audience reflecting on the topic.
Hopefully, your audience will want you to speak for an hour, rather than just five or eight minutes. However, when you transition into your conclusion and use appropriate signposting, your audience realizes that the speech will come full-circle. Usually the first transitional phrase is a “brakelight” of sorts. It lets the audience know that you are starting to wrap up your presentation. You may use a transitional statement to illustrate this such as, “In conclusion…”, “In summary…” or “To wrap things up…”.
Just as you used a mapping statement to preview your main points, now you will your points within your conclusion. Often simply rewording -or even restating -your original thesis statement or preview statement in the past tense will effectively summarize your speech. While this will feel very repetitive to you as a speaker, it is useful in helping the audience understand and retain the information you covered. While you may be tempted to revisit all the details of your speech, this element is best served by a clear concise declarative sentence that restates the main points you addressed.
The conclusion is the last chance you have to speak to the audience about this topic. Depending on your general purpose, this portion of the speech will vary. Informative speaking often creates an interest in the audience to learn more about your topic. It’s best to give the audience a good resource to check out if they want to learn more information. Avoid telling the audience “to google it”. We all know how to do that. Since you’ve done the research, tell us the best one you found. An example is, “If you’d like to learn more about the history of Stillwater, I recommend visiting The Sheerar Museum at 702 South Duncan here in Stillwater.” Persuasive presentation conclusions want to utilize the last opportunity to challenge the listeners to action. This portion gives you a specific opportunity to tell them what you hope they do as a result of hearing your speech. You may say something like, “As you leave here today, I challenge you to pick up five pieces of trash as you walk back to your dorm or car.”
Note of finality: It let’s the audience know, “The speech is over.”
Your speech conclusion is a mental takeaway for the audience, and you will want a strong . Your conclusion should contain enough memorable words and phrases that will help the audience positively recall the experience – and even recollect certain points that you made. Do not forget to include that “ta-da ” moment. The last statement of your presentation should be thoroughly planned to let the audience know you are done. Many speakers, who do not come up with a strong closing statement, will end their presentation with, “Thank you.” While it is polite to thank the audience, it doesn’t really serve as the best closing statement. You want your final statement to leave a strong lasting impact. It should leave the audience reflecting on your topic and your information. Some speech writers like to reference the attention getter as a nice way to bring the speech full circle by revisiting a story, question, or video clip they used originally to grab the audience’s attention. After your closing statement and applause from the audience, you are, of course, welcome to thank them for their attention and/or attendance.
transitional phrase that lets the audience know the speech is coming to a close
clear sentence that restates the preview statement in past tense, outlining the main points that were addressed in the speech
last statement that wraps up your entire presentation and lets the audience know the speech is finished
So: You are at the end of your speech, and you can’t wait to sit down and be done! You start speeding up your rate of delivery, but your volume goes down a bit because you are rushing and running out of breath. You finish the last main point of your speech and race off to your seat: That is not the best way to conclude a speech.
Just as with introductions, conclusions have specific functions to fulfill within a speech. And just as with introductions, there are a number of types of conclusions. In this section of this chapter, we will look at these functions, discuss the relationship between introductions and conclusions, and offer some strategies for preparing and delivering an effective conclusion.
The basic structure of a speech is not linear but circular. Speeches should not take you on a straight line from A to Z. Speeches should take you in a circle from A to Z. Speeches start at the top of the circle with the introduction, work their way all around the circle, and end up back at the top with the conclusion. All the parts fit together and flow together in this circle, and the conclusion takes you right back to the introduction—with an enhanced understanding of the topic.
Prepare the Audience for the End of the Speech
A speech does not just stop—or, to be more precise, a speech should not just stop. A speech, effectively structured and delivered, should move smoothly from point to point and then to the conclusion. One of the most important functions of the conclusion is to prepare the audience for the end of the speech.
Throughout the speech, you have been providing the audience with verbal and nonverbal cues to where you are going in the speech. As you move to the conclusion, you need to continue to provide these cues. You can use language cues (“now that we have seen that we can solve this problem effectively, we can review the entire situation”), movement cues (physically moving back to the center of the room where you began the speech), and paralinguistic cues (slow the rate of the speech, use more pauses) to help prepare your audience for the end of the speech.
When you prepare the audience for the end of the speech, you let them know that they need to be ready for any final comments or appeals from you, and that they should be prepared to acknowledge you as a speaker.
Present any Final Appeals
Depending on the type of speech you are presenting, you will be asking the audience for something. You may be asking them to act in a certain way, or to change their attitude toward a certain person or topic. You may be asking them to simply understand what you have had to say in your presentation. Regardless, one of the tasks of the conclusion is to leave the audience motivated positively toward you and the topic you have been presenting.
Psychologists and sociologists (as well as communication scholars) know that there is both a primacy and recency effect in presenting information. Essentially, people tend to better remember information presented first or last—they remember what they hear at the beginning of the speech or at the end. In presenting your appeals to the audience, you can take advantage of the recency effect to increase the likelihood of your audience acting on your appeals.
“LBJ at the University of Michigan” by Cecil W. Stoughton. Public domain.
Former President Lyndon Johnson, in a speech announcing a major policy initiative known as the Great Society, concluded his speech with a series of challenges and appeals to his audience.
For better or for worse, your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.
So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?
Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?
Will you join in the battle to make it possible for all nations to live in enduring peace — as neighbors and not as mortal enemies?
Will you join in the battle to build the Great Society, to prove that our material progress is only the foundation on which we will build a richer life of mind and spirit?
There are those timid souls that say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will and your labor and your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.
“President Johnson poverty tour” by Cecil W. Stoughton. Public domain.
The appeals were significant in that the speech was delivered as a commencement address at the University of Michigan, at a time in American society when college and university students were protesting many government actions.
When Demosthenes was asked what were the three most important aspects of oratory, he answered, Action, Action, Action. – Plutarch
Summarize and Close
A conclusion is structural in function. Just as the introduction must include a statement of the purpose of the speech, as well as a preview of the main ideas of the speech, the conclusion must include a restatement of the thesis and a review of the main ideas of the speech. The review and restatement are mirror images of the preview statement in the introduction. Structurally, the restatement and review bring the speech back to the top of the circle and remind the audience where we started. Functionally, they help cue the audience that the end of the speech is coming up.
Let’s go back to the thesis and preview example. The example was from a speech on ethanol, and the sample thesis was “So right now let’s see how dependence on fossil fuels costs you money and how use of ethanol as a supplement will save you money and save the world from energy obsolescence.”
In the conclusion of this speech, one effective method to summarize and wrap-up is to simply restate the thesis and preview—but in the past tense, since we have now heard the speech.
Today we have seen how dependence on fossil fuels costs you money and how use of ethanol as a supplement will save you money and save the world from energy obsolescence. We learned first why we as a society are so dependent upon fossil fuels in the first place, and then secondly we found out what causes this dependence, and third, we saw how ethanol as a fuel supplement will help end this dependence, and finally we discovered how simple it is to implement this solution and make the world a better place for all of us.
By restating the thesis and reviewing the main ideas, you once again take advantage of both the primacy and recency effect, and you create a complete and coherent structure to your speech.
End with a Clincher
With conclusions, however, there are some additional forms you may wish to use, and there are some variations and adaptations of the introductions that you will want to use as you prepare your conclusions.
Earlier in this section when we discussed introductions, it was argued that stories are quite possibly the most effective form of introduction: Stories appear to be almost “hard-wired” into our individual and cultural make-up; and stories have a built-in structure. Stories, then, also make excellent conclusions, and can be used as conclusions in at least two ways. First, you can complete the story that you started in the introduction. Remember: You stopped right before the climax or denouement, and now, you can finish the story. Alternatively, you can retell the story, and this time the story will reflect what the audience has learned from your speech. Either method provides coherence and closure to the story and the speech.
Humor also remains an effective type of conclusion, but the same dangers with the use of humor discussed in the section on introductions applies to the conclusion. Still, effective use of humor leaves the audience in a receptive frame of mind, and, so long as the humor is relevant to the speech, provides a positive reminder to the audience of the main purpose of the speech.
Because of the functions of conclusions, there are two additional types of conclusions you may wish to consider: Appeals and Challenges.
I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed? – Angelina Grimke
Appeals and Challenges
Since the conclusion comes at the end of the speech, it is appropriate to leave the audience with an appeal or a challenge (or a combination of the two). Similar in nature, appeals and challenges primarily divide by tone. Appeals are generally phrased more as requests, while challenges can take on a more forceful tone, almost ordering or daring audiences to engage in thought or action.
One of the most historically memorable and effective conclusions that utilized appeal and challenge was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring. And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!