Section 6. OUTLINING YOUR SPEECH

Now that you have analyzed how to put a speech together, you will soon be ready to speak. First, though, you should develop an outline of the speech and practice talking through its main ideas.

Sometimes speakers read a speech, word for word, from a fully written manuscript. On rare occasions they also commit the speech to memory.6 These approaches may be helpful for highly formal speeches when every word matters and will be recorded for posterity. But for most of your speeches in this course, writing out and memorizing every word not only is a waste of time but may actually hinder your communication with the audience.

On the other hand, neither is it a good idea to speak impromptu – without preparation, trusting that a flash of inspiration will strike you as you speak. Most successful speakers aim for middle ground with an extemporaneousspeech, meaning that they have a clear sense of the main ideas and how to organize them, but they have not planned the speech in advance word for word. In speaking extemporaneously, an outline of the speech is a tremendous help. In fact, two outlines are even more helpful: a preparation outline and a presentation outline.

PREPARATION OUTLINE.Begin developing your speech with a preparation outline,which is more complete than the outline you will use when presenting the speech. The preparation outline helps you to identify your main ideas and to organize them sensibly, and it lists supporting materials and how you will use them. Write complete sentences in your preparation outline, as in this example for a section of the speech introducing John Patterson:

Main Idea:

John has a clear sense of his roots.

Support

A. He still lives in the same house in which he grew up.

B. He marched in the Fourth of July parade every year.

C. He has never wanted to go anywhere else.

The rest of the speech would be outlined similarly.

PRESENTATION OUTLINE.Although the preparation outline is valuable in developing the speech, it is too complete to use while speaking. Your interaction with the audience will be limited if you are busy reading a fully elaborated, complete-sentence outline point by point. Instead, prepare a very brief outline of key words that will jog your memory and remind you of what comes next. You will use this presentation outlineduring the actual speech. Here is the previous example reduced to a presentation outline:

Main Idea:

Sense of roots

Support

A. Same house

B. 4th of July

C. No desire to leave

Because you are familiar with the ideas of the speech, seeing the phrase "Same house" will remind you of the statement you want to make about how John still lives in the room he occupied as a child and how that experience has affected his perspective on life. You may never need to refer to the presentation outline while you are speaking, but if you do, a quick glance at the words "Same house" will remind you of the point you want to make.

You probably can reduce the presentation outline to fit on index cards, which are easier to handle than loose sheets of paper. For the first speech, you may need only one index card; three or four cards will usually be enough even for complex speeches.

Grammar Focus: The Verb

We will next go to some aspects of verbs, many of which you should already know. The recommended chapter in Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum's A University Grammar of English is chapter three. At a more elementary level, you may also find the relevant pages from Anthony Hughes An On-Line English Grammar[10] useful.

The verbs in English can be generally categorised in terms of auxiliary and lexical (or content, or what Hughes describes as 'ordinary') verbs .

The auxiliary verbs perform their function only in relation to the lexical verbs (and are hence sometimes also known as function verbs). Auxiliary verbs, unlike lexical verbs, are sometimes described as a closed category, as their total number is limited, and has not changed very much in the recent history of the language. Due to their limited number, all the auxiliary verbs in English, unlike the lexical verbs, can be conveniently listed in a typical grammar of English.

Some of the auxiliary verbs are categorised as modal, whereas the others can be categorised as primary.

The primary auxiliary verbs in English are do, have, and be.

The modal auxiliary verbs are can, could, may, might, shall, should, will, would, must, used to, need, dare.

One must be careful with these examples, because some of them can function as lexical verbs. All the primary auxiliary verbs for example, depending on their meaning, can function as lexical verbs, and this is also true for some of the modal auxiliaries, such as need and dare (and arguably, will and would, although their meanings are different from those of their auxiliary equivalents).

In order to see whether a verb functions as an auxiliary, we have to see whether its essential function is to modify another verb; if the verb stands on its own, then it should be regarded as a lexical verb.

For example, the verbs in the following clauses are all lexical:

he needs some money,

he has two houses,

she is a teacher.

However, the same verbs are auxiliary in the following examples, because they modify other verbs:

he needn't do it,

he has done it,

she is doing it.

Basic Verb Forms

It was mentioned in the previous paragraph that finite verbs have tense as a feature.

Past tense in English is usually indicated by a morpheme spelt with a '-d' or '-ed' at the end of the verb, but as you know, there are a number of irregular verbs where past tense is indicated by other means, eg. 'to see' -- 'saw', 'to go' -- 'went', 'to sing' -- 'sang' etc.

The future tense is indicated by the auxiliary verb 'will' before the lexical verb.

Related to tense is aspect, where one specifies whether the action denoted by a verb

has been done or

is going on.

As you know, one uses the perfect aspect, which is indicated by the auxiliary verb 'to have', followed by a lexical verb in the form of what is sometimes called the '-ed participle' in the grammar of English, to specify that an action has already been done at a particular point of time. The perfective in English can either be in the present or past tense (indicating that the action has been done at the present moment of the discourse, or at a point of time to the past of the discourse).

The progressive aspect is indicated by the auxiliary verb 'to be', followed by the lexical verb, which is in the form of what is called the '-ing participle' in the grammar of English, to specify that an action is (or was) still going on at a particular point of time. Again, the progressive in English can either be in the present or past tense (indicating that the action is going on at the present moment of the discourse, or at a point of time to the past of the discourse).