Setting up the oral's structure
OK, so you’ve got the research out of the way. Time to start doing a rough outline of your oral. In some ways, this is similar to doing the outline of an essay. The normal structure convention applies:
I was told the old ‘tell them what you’re...’ convention fairly early on at school. I always thought that it was a bit deceptive. Most of the time, you don’t really want to do it as obviously as the convention suggests. It suggests you march in there, go, "Today I am going to talk about...", and end with, "Today I have talked about...". Okay, so not necessarily that blunt, but I always felt it lacked a bit of sophistication. But as a general guide, I guess it’s pretty spot on - you introduce your topic and what you’re going to say, you then say it, and then you conclude by recapping on what you’ve said.
However, the structure can go into a bit more detail than just these three parts. How you go about creating your outline will depend on whether you’re doing an informative or a persuasive oral. Even within each of these types, there are several different ways you can structure your oral.
Click here to move on to the next topic: Persuasive oral structure