Lesson video

Hello everyone.

It's Mr. Brown here with your English lesson for today, and we are going to be focusing on how we decide the purpose for a speech.

How we know what to make the purpose of a speech, working out what a purpose actually is, and then how we're going to decide what we will be speaking about, because that's our purpose.

Knowing what impact we want to have on the audience, knowing what we're going to talk about, that's all in today's lesson.

So lots to cover, let's get started.

The outcome for today's lesson is I can decide the purpose of a speech.

And the key words which will help us with our learning today are purpose, persuade, inform, provoke, anecdotes, some words there that I wonder you may not have come across before.

Let's go through them one more time.

I will say them and I'd like you to repeat them back to me.

My turn, your turn.

Purpose, persuade, inform, provoke, and last we have anecdotes.

Very good.

Do not worry if they are new words to you.

We're going to cover them in today's lesson and we're gonna look at some definitions of these words now.

Purpose, now, purpose is the reason for which something exists or is done.

Persuade means to convince someone to think or feel something.

To inform is to give someone information.

To provoke means to stir up feelings or emotions.

Anecdotes, well, they are short stories from a person's real life.

All of these will be covered in today's lesson.

The lesson outline for our lesson on deciding the purpose of a speech, we are going to first look at deciding the purpose, then we'll move our learning onto provoking an emotional response.

So deciding the purpose.

Purpose is the reason for which something exists or is done.

Everything we do in life has a purpose, has a reason for us doing it.

We go to school with the purpose of learning.

Most things in life have a purpose, a reason why they exist, a toaster, well, that has the purpose of toasting bread.

A kettle has the purpose of boiling water.

People may have a purpose for doing things too.

A teacher has the purpose of teaching their class something when they start a lesson.

You, right now, for watching this lesson, your purpose is to learn all about how to make speeches.

So let me check your understanding on this.

What is purpose? Very simple question, what is purpose? Is it A, the length of a speech, B, the reason for which something exists or is done, or C, the name for a group of people listening to a speech, A, B, or C.

Pause the video, and decide for yourself now.

And welcome back, so the question was what is purpose? The length of a speech, absolutely not.

Purpose is not the length of a speech.

It has nothing to do with the length of a speech, the name for a group of people listening to a speech.

Well that's, we know this, don't we, So what is that? Audience, exactly, yes.

So it must be B, the reason for which something exists or is done.

Well done if you've got that correct.

Speeches have a purpose too.

Every time a person stands up to make a speech to an audience, they have a purpose.

They have a reason for making that speech.

There are many different purposes that a speaker may have and each one will have a different impact on their audience.

However, the one thing they all have in common is that they must be considered and the purpose decided on before the speech is written.

The purpose of a speech will determine every decision that you make when you are writing that speech, it will help guide you.

If the purpose is to educate the audience, then everything you write needs to build towards achieving that purpose.

If the purpose is to make the audience feel sad, then again everything you write, and then delivering your speech is building towards making the audience feel sad.

A speaker must decide on their reason for making a speech at the very start of their speech writing process.

There are many different reasons for making a speech, but most can fit into one of these three categories.

I'm gonna share them with you now.

To persuade, to inform, to provoke an emotional response.

To persuade, to inform, and to provoke emotional response.

They are the three main categories that everything fits into.

So every reason for making a speech can fit into one of these three categories.

Let's check your understanding, to inform, to persuade, and to provoke an emotional response are all examples of a speaker's what? A, plan, B, purpose C, potential.

To inform, to persuade, and to provoke an emotional response or all examples of a speaker's what? A, plan, B, purpose C, potential.

Pause the video and decide now.

Welcome back, let's see if you are right.

To inform, to persuade, and to provoke an emotional response are all examples are best speakers.

Purpose, well done if you said B.

These might influence your plan, and these might influence the potential of your speech, but it's the purpose that these are all examples of.

Persuade means to convince someone to think, feel, or do something.

When making a speech, the speaker is often trying to persuade the audience to think the same as them.

This can involve persuading them to agree with the ideas being presented to them.

Often a speaker will present their opinion.

They will say what they think or believe, and the speech is written to try and persuade the audience to think exactly the same.

They might not start thinking exactly the same at the beginning of the speech, but by the end the speaker's job is to convince them, to persuade them, to feel the same as them.

Now, to inform well that's to give someone information, and this is one I think you'll be most familiar with, because most lessons that you have at school, the teacher is informing you, they're giving you information.

Sometimes the speaker is trying to inform the audience about a particular topic, therefore their speech may contain more information and the proof section will be full of facts and statistics to help.

When a teacher is teaching you, they have a knowledge about a particular topic and their job is to increase your knowledge on that particular topic, and it's the same if you are making a speech with the purpose of informing the audience.

Let's check our understanding, which purpose of a speech involves convincing the audience to think, feel, or do something? Is it A, persuade, B, inform, C, provoke an emotional response.

Which purpose involves convincing the audience to think, feel, or do something, A, B or C.

Pause the video and decide for yourself now.

Welcome back.

Okay, let's see if you were right.

The question was which purpose of a speech involves convincing the audience to think, feel, or do something? If you are convincing them, then you are are persuading them.

Informing is giving information, and provoking an emotional response is making them feel a certain way.

So the purpose that you were looking for was A, persuade.

Well done if you've got that answer correct.

Let's have a look at a practise task.

I would like you to now decide what the purpose should be for each of these speech titles.

Number one, why sweets should be banned.

Number two, how to bake cupcakes.

Number three, the best book ever written.

Your job is to decide what purpose should be for each of these speech titles.

Pause the video and decide the purpose for each of these now.

And welcome back.

So the question was, decide what the purpose should be for each of these speech titles.

That was your task.

The first one for why speech is, why speech is? Why sweets should be banned.

Persuade the audience to agree that suites should be banned.

I felt this one was a persuasive one.

You might have come up with a different idea, but the purpose that I would use for this number one would be persuading, because the title is why sweets should be banned.

So therefore my speech is going to be all about persuading the audience to agree with me that sweets should be banned.

Number two was how to bake cupcakes.

I felt this was informing the audience of how to bake cupcakes.

The title, how to bake cupcakes implies that we are going to be giving the audience information.

We're going to be telling them how to bake cupcakes, and that's informing.

Number three, the best book ever written.

Well, this would be persuade again, I'm persuading the audience to agree with the speaker's choice of the best book ever written.

So if I have a certain opinion on what I think the best book ever written is, then my job is to persuade the audience to agree with me to feel the same.

Let's move on to provoking an emotional response.

We've looked at deciding the purpose, now we're going to look at how we provoke an emotional response, because this I feel is perhaps the trickiest one, perhaps the one that you'll be least familiar with.

So let's dive in.

A speech can impact an audience in lots of different ways.

It can even make them feel a range of emotions.

Emotions such as sadness, guilt, sympathy, happiness, humour, passion, anger.

When a speaker successfully does this, it can be said that they have provoked an emotional response.

Really important, my turn, your turn, provoked an emotional response.

Very good.

This means the speaker and their speech have had an impact on the audience, which has changed the way they feel.

That phrase, impact on the audience, it's so important.

Every time we make a speech, our aim is to have an impact on the audience.

However, this shouldn't happen by chance, and should be an intentional choice from the speaker that they make right at the very start of the writing process.

When they're writing their speech, they need to decide how they want the audience to react, how they want 'em to feel.

Let's check our understanding.

When should the speaker decide on what emotional response they want from the audience? Would it be A, while writing the speech, B, while delivering the speech, or C, before writing the speech.

When should the speaker decide on what emotional response they want from the audience? A, B, or C? Pause the video, and decide what you think now.

Welcome back.

Okay, let's remind ourself of the question.

When should the speaker decide on what emotional response they want from the audience? Now, A was while writing the speech.

If you decide this while writing the speech, then the speech that you've already written, the parts of the speech you've already written are not going to be focused on achieving that emotional response, because you haven't decided it yet.

So it's not A, while delivering the speech, well, this is when the speech has been entirely written.

You are only delivering it now, so it's not B.

Well done if you said C.

Before writing the speech, that's when the speaker must decide on what emotional response they want from the audience and then every decision they make after that, every sentence they write is designed carefully to achieve that goal, to make the audience feel the way they want them to feel.

The emotional response should be linked to the purpose of the speech.

The speech should make the audience feel an emotion that will help the speaker to achieve their purpose.

The purpose of the speech, and the emotional response of the audience go hand in hand.

They go together.

For example, a speech about why recycling is important may want the audience to feel guilty for not recycling or feel sad about the future of the planet if we don't recycle.

So the purpose of the speech was to tell the audience all about why recycle is important, to inform them perhaps, but maybe they also wanted to persuade them that they should recycle, and therefore making them feel guilty for not recycling or sad about the future of the planet if they don't recycle.

Well, that works really well in terms of achieving the purpose of having the audience feel that recycling is important, feel that they should be recycling.

Let's check our understanding.

When deciding on what emotional response the speaker wants the audience to have, what should they be linking it to? A, the speech title, B, the speaker's purpose, or C, the audience's age, A, B, or C.

Pause the video, and decide which one is the correct answer.

And welcome back.

Let me remind you of the question.

When deciding on what emotional response the speaker wants the audience to have, what should they be linking it to? Well, well done If you said B, the speaker's purpose.

We know that the speaker's purpose and the emotional response go hand in hand.

We know they go together.

If you are achieving the emotional response that you want the audience to have, then you are probably going to be meeting your purpose.

To provoke an emotional response from the audience, a speaker may want to tell anecdotes, one of our key words appearing there, anecdotes that might provoke certain feelings.

Anecdotes, let's remind ourselves, they are short stories told about someone's real life experience.

You will have told hundreds, maybe thousands of anecdotes in your life so far, and your family members who are older, well.

they definitely would've told lots and lots of anecdotes probably to you.

You've probably heard anecdotes from older family members about their childhood, their past.

Anecdotes are stories told about someone's real life experience.

When you go home at the end of the day, and someone asks, what did you do at school today? And you tell an anecdote about a lesson you had or something you did in the playground, they are anecdotes.

These stories can make an audience feel lots of different emotions depending on the content of the story.

We know stories can make us feel different ways depending on what happens in the story, and that's exactly the same with anecdotes.

What's the name for a short story told about someone's real life experience? Is it A, audience, B, automatic, or C, anecdote? Pause the video and decide for yourself now.

Welcome back.

The question was, what is the name for a short story told about someone's real life experience? Of course, it's anecdote.

Well done if you've got that correct, here's a task that I would like you to complete now.

I want you to read the anecdote below, which I'll show on the screen shortly, and decide how you think the speaker wanted the audience to emotionally respond.

The speech title for this anecdote, the speech title for the speech that the anecdote was taken from is why recycling is important.

I'm going to read you the anecdote now.

"Have you ever put something in the landfill bin that could have been recycled? I was in the park yesterday, and noticed that several different people failed to put their empty plastic bottle in the recycling bin.

I could see there was even a moment when they paused and thought about what to do.

However, they then couldn't be bothered to take their rubbish home, or find a recycling bin, and so just threw it away.

Maybe, you've never been in this position, but maybe you have.

And I hope when you were, you made the right choice, instead of the easy one." Okay, that's the anecdote.

So your job is to decide how you think the speaker wanted the audience to emotionally respond.

Did they want 'em to feel sadness, guilt, sympathy, happiness, humour, passion or anger? I'd like you to pause the lesson now, and have a think about how you think the speaker wanted the audience to emotionally respond because that anecdote was chosen and written in a particular way for a particular reason, to achieve a purpose, to achieve the audience emotionally responding in a certain way.

So over to you.

Pause the video now.

And welcome back.

Okay, let's have a look.

So I think guilt could be an example of an answer here.

The speech title, why recycling is important, we know that's the speech title, and then I've highlighted in green, you can see.

A couple of bits that really stand out to me, and make me think this person, this speaker, is trying to make the audience feel guilty.

That's opening question of the anecdote.

"Have you ever put something in the landfill bin that could have been recycled?" Straight away, the speaker is using a rhetorical question to put pressure on the audience to make them think about that one time when they may have just put something in the bin, in the landfill bin that could have been recycled.

And then you can see down the bottom.

I've also highlighted, "Maybe you've never been in this position, but maybe you have.

And I hope when you were, you made the right choice instead of the easy one." And I think this, again, is just cranking up the pressure, making the audience feel guilty about that time when they may have not put something in the recycling bin that could have been recycled.

The speaker has chosen to include these parts in this anecdote to achieve their purpose of making the audience feel guilty.

Well done if you agreed.

You may have thought a different way, but I think guilt in my opinion, is what the speaker was trying to achieve.

Let's summarise our lesson today.

The purpose of a speech is the reason why you are speaking.

Speeches can try to persuade an audience to agree with its main themes.

Speeches can try to inform an audience about something.

Speeches can provoke an emotional response.

And anecdotes can be a very useful way to provoke an emotional response.

Lots of really mature themes covered in today's lesson.

Being able to creatively construct a speech that achieves a purpose and determines how an audience will emotionally respond.

That's really grown up, so well done for completing today's lesson.

I hope to see you again very soon.